Developer: Blue Wizard Digital
Publisher: Blue Wizard Digital
Rrp: £14.99 (Steam)
Released: 27th Feburary 2018
Available on: Steam
Played Using: A mouse
It’s not easy being a tyrant. Sure, I have wealth and power beyond measure but just you try finding just one person you can trust. I mean, the other day my courtesan tried to assassinate me. ME! You’d think I murdered her family and enslaved her people. Oh, wait… actually that does explain it.
Space Tyrant is a one part turn based strategy, one part digital board game and one part real time strategy. Such a blend of genre’s should be a total clusterfuck and it is, in the most beautiful and fantastic way possible. Real time strategy shouldn’t work with turn based just by its very nature and yet within this game these two game types are brought into harmony.
In case the name hasn’t given it away, you play as a Tyrant…. in Space. It’s all a bit Saturday morning cartoony especially in its aesthetic but don’t let that fool you, beneath that facade lies a game that will quite happily devastate all your best laid plans.
From the starting screen there are two modes to play; skirmish and the campaign. I’ll be speaking on the campaign for the most part but pretty much everything I say applies to the skirmish mode as well. When you enter the
campaign mode the missions are randomly generated to help prevent the game from going stale.
Most missions will have quirks applied to them, these quirks are special effects that affect the whole game. In some cases these quirks are helpful but more often as not they tend to do something that will hinder you.
You start each mission with an Overlord who don’t engage in the combat themselves but have a ability that can be used to aid your forces. Each Overlord has a different ability which can range from defensive, offensive, buffing your own ships or debuffing your enemies.
They gain experience with each combat they’re involved with and will eventually increase in level. These level increases not only make their abilities stronger (which was expected) but also increase the number of space’s the ships at their command can occupy. In other words, the higher the Overlords level is the larger their fleet can be.
Missions will have two objectives which ,if you complete either of them, will make you win.
Every mission completed within the campaign mode unlocks a relic that you can equip before a mission. If equipped these relics grant specific bonuses that can great help you in that mission. Completing missions will also grant you a perk that gives a permanent bonus to your fleets throughout the campaign.
Interestingly its actually in your best interests to lose the campaign a few times as any new Overlords and cards that are unlocked are carried over from each failed attempt, with new rewards appearing to replace the old ones. Of course you lose the perks and relics that you gather but that really isn’t that big a deal overall.
As with most strategy combat has a very important part to play. However in this game it combat works rather differently. For starters you don’t get to have
direct control over the ships themselves, you can purchase, upgrade and position them but you don’t get to decide what targets they’ll go for or have and control over their movement beyond the galaxy map.
Instead this game highlights a ship that can have a special ability used (or a status effect removed), once the ability is used the ship will lose the highlight. Using this ability costs energy that slowly regenerates as the battle progresses. Your Overlords special ability also takes from the energy pool and once used has to cool down before it can be used again.
Conquering a planet is a simple affair. Simply wipe out any fleets that presume to be able to stand against the might of your forces and then click the ‘invade’ button. Upon doing so you merely need to roll the dice that is on screen higher than the number indicated within the planets shield.
This may require several attempts if the die rolls are insufficient. If you leave the planet before fully destroying its shields they will start to regenerate and begin to rebuild its fleets. Never leave a job unfinished unless you absolutely must.
The planets you can conquer come in many different forms and will sometimes have different abilities they can perform, some do nothing at all, others generate money, there are even some that can fire a cannon at enemy fleets orbiting nearby planets.
Once a planet has been successfully conquered you’ll start to explore it, sometimes this turns up nothing but usually some kind of event will occur that will allow you to make a choice. In some cases a few of these choices will be unavailable to you because you lack a specific trait (which can only be gained through exploring planets).
Each time you conquer a planet your tyranny meter will increase and even if you don’t manage to conquer a planet on the first attempt just bombing them also gives a small bonus to your tyranny.
So, I keep going on about tyranny or the tyranny meter but I’ve yet to actually explain what that is. The Tyranny Meter, fills up as you preform tyrannical deeds such as conquering (or bombing) planets. However, that meter doesn’t
only go up, galactic unrest will take some of it away from you at the end of your turn. If the meter ever reaches empty then you will lose the game, however if the meter becomes sufficiently full you can fire a death ray which can target any of your enemies fleets destroying up to three ships. Of course, doing this also uses up a portion of your tyranny meter but since unrest takes some away every turn why not use it?
As you wander the map conquering planets and crushing armies your scientists (located on planets that generate research) will occasionally make a break through. When this happens you’ll be given a choice of ship upgrades that will be instantaneously applied to all ships within your various fleets.
Every turn you will gain a card that you can use to your advantage, your maximum hand size is three and if you have more you will have to discard cards until you only have three in your hand. Using these cards costs crystals, which
regenerate at the start of each turn, At the beginning of a mission you’ll only have two crystals but you can gain more by conquering crystal planets each of which will give you another crystal.
What really impresses me with this game is the level of tactical thinking that can be achieved with what seems to be a group of simple systems. You have to carefully think about which planets to attack and in what order, which fleet will you use and with what composition, whether you will play any cards before hand or use the death ray (if its available). All of that is before you even enter into the combat itself which has its own layer or two of tactical decision making.
I think I’ve gushed enough about this game, it’s pretty obvious that it’s one I recommend highly. True, it’s not as deep a strategy as the Civilisation series or the Total War franchise but that isn’t to say it’s without depth. Honestly I think this game may surprise even the most hardened strategy player while being entertaining enough to allow those who are not so experienced to enjoy it.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
The Last Federation
Endless Space
The Civilisation series
