Earlier this month I finished, and loved, the first season of Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. Despite a few rough edges, it’s my favourite show in years. I also finished the Silmarillion last month, and went on to read Tales from the Perilous Realm, a collection of Tolkien’s short fiction. Now I need something else to watch — and read. Easier said than done; Tolkien set a high bar!
I’m still extremely positive on hard science fiction strategy game Terra Invicta, although I’ve put it on hold pending another update or two. I watch the beta patch notes like a hawk and the developers have addressed the AI issue that I encountered, so I don’t think it will be long until I resume my game. Lessons learned the hard way: terrestrial militaries are in the game for a reason…
Forming Australia 50 years early in Victoria 3.
The highest-profile recent PC strategy release is Paradox’s Victoria 3. I’ve had my ups and downs with the series — I played a lot of the original Victoria back in the day, but liked the ideas behind Victoria 2 more than the actual game. So far, I’m more positive on Victoria 3. I’m playing a practice game as New South Wales -> Australia, and now that I’ve learned the basics, I’m enjoying it. Should the game measure up, there are a few countries I’d like to try, such as Meiji Japan or Habsburg Austria.
On the Switch, Ubisoft has released Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. The details are quite different from the first Mario Rabbids, but the overall effect is similar. It’s a low-stress, fairly easy tactical RPG – even on hard difficulty, only one battle has given me any trouble so far. Worth checking out for fans of the first game.
Anno 1800 is still my perennial game. The game’s latest scenario, “Clash of Couriers“, arrived as part of the most recent DLC. It’s very charming, with the premise being delivering mail, collecting stamps, and solving city-building challenges along the way. So far, I also find it easier than the previous scenario — although it’s still early days, so this could turn out to be a case of famous last words.
In the video below, Shadow Empire developer Vic Reijkersz explains the upcoming “Oceania” DLC, which will add ocean planets and NPC maritime trading houses. I’m a big fan of SE and once the DLC is out, I look forward to jumping (diving? swimming?) back in.
Tinykin is a short, delightful indie game about exploring a house and solving puzzles as a miniature person.
What I like about Tinykin is its focus on low-stress exploration. Each level is a different room of the house — such as the living room or kitchen — connected by a couple of hubs. The residents of each room are intelligent, talking insects such as ants, dragonflies, shield bugs, and mantises, usually with punny names and entertaining dialogue. Each room’s goal is to help its residents with a quest, be that activating an old CD player, or baking a cake. Achieving that requires the help of even smaller creatures — the tinykin.
Tinykin carrying corn down a ramp made by other tinykin.
Different tinykin have different abilities, such as strength (purple), conducting electricity (blue), or allowing you to climb higher (green). Achieving each room’s objective needs a certain number of tinykin — for example, assembling enough purple tinykin to carry a large object — and these can be found around the room. While Tinykin is a 3D platformer, navigating around is quite easy. The trick is usually working out what to do or where to go next, rather than how to make a jump. The cost of messing up is low — there are few hazards, and dying returns you to where you just were. Instead, I could discover the environment at my own pace.
Yes, that’s a CD.
And that environment is clever and charmingly designed. The joy is in seeing how the insects have repurposed everyday household objects for their miniature society, such as a matchbox used as a bed, thumbtacks used as restaurant seats, a river bank made out of kitchen sponges, and a castle made out of Lego bricks. Even after fulfilling each room’s objective, I enjoyed combing the environment, solving side quests, and picking up collectibles.
Insects enjoying themselves at a venue.
I think the greatest compliment I can pay Tinykin is that I wish it were longer. (Normally, I complain that games are too long!) This is a game I had to ration so that I wouldn’t finish it too quickly. I would love to see a sequel.
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This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Terra Invicta
Terra Invicta is the game I’ve wanted for years. Currently in Early Access, it is a hard science fiction exploration of first contact with aliens, humanity’s response, and our subsequent expansion into the Solar System. It will not be to everyone’s taste. I find it remarkable, and I think it’s worth a look if you, like me, are its target audience.
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At its heart, TI will appeal to players who:
Enjoy complex, simulationist strategy games, such as grand strategy games
Are interested in real-world and near-future space travel
Don’t mind ambitious, slow-burning, and occasionally rough games
I could best describe TI as two games in one — the first on Earth and the second in space. On Earth, humanity has split into seven factions, each advocating a different response to the aliens — from resistance through to an alien-worshipping doomsday cult. As the leader of one faction, you send out agents to rally countries to your cause, mobilise their resources, and build up their space programs. In space, you develop bases on other planets, moons, and asteroids, mine them for resources, and build stations and spacecraft.
What links the two layers is the economy. Lofting resources and equipment from Earth to space costs “Boost”, an abstraction of your supporting countries’ space launch capabilities. Building directly in space saves on Boost, but requires offworld mines to supply the necessary resources. Spacecraft and bases, especially large ones, need money and “Mission Control” to maintain; early on, these come from Earth.
How does this play out? Here’s an example, from early in my game. I chose France as my first country to recruit — it’s large enough to contribute to the cause, small enough to be achievable at the start, and home to the Guiana Space Centre. Countries with space programs or launch sites in real life begin with Boost in-game 1:
France became the inaugural member of the Terran Accords, my custom name for the “Resistance” faction. The Resistance is the equivalent to XCOM or Stargate Command; they defend Earth from the invading aliens. Note the “1.1” next to the rocket icon on the left (this is France’s Boost) and the “1” next to the satellite dish (Mission Control).
From there, I moved into Canada, the Czech Republic, and the US. Offworld, I began with a mining base on the moon, which supplied water and ores. I then used those resources to start mining Mars:
I chose a Fissiles-rich site to set up my first mining base on Mars. Fissiles (represented by the green radioactivity icon) are important for running nuclear reactors in space.
Now, the year is 2031. I’m ahead on Earth. In space, I plan to use Mercury’s abundant solar energy to fuel command centres and nano-factories2, while mines on Mars and Ceres feed the eventual shipyards.
I used my very first spacecraft to set up bases at Mercury. Ion drives gave it the delta-v (a terrestrial equivalent would be “range”) to get there, although it took a while.
The missing part is space technology. My early spacecraft are good enough to putter around Earth or Mars orbit and bully the other human factions. They are nowhere near good enough to challenge the aliens.
The Protectorate advocates surrender to the aliens. I didn’t want to leave them in control of a valuable Martian outpost, so I took it over using a spacecraft loaded with marines.
As this suggests, TI is a slow burn:
In-game, long lead times make it necessary to plan ahead. Just starting a Mars base, for example, takes about a year of in-game travel time with early tech.
Out of game, it’s taken me about a week to reach this point — and I suspect I’m only in the midgame. I could probably have finished a shorter 4X game in that time.
It’s also large and complex. There are hundreds of individual locations in the game — regions on Earth and celestial bodies in space. There are many sub-systems: the Earth and space economies, cloak-and-dagger conflict and outright wars on Earth, spacecraft design, research, and more. The tech tree is really a forest. At a design level, this will appeal to some players more than others.
Moving from design to execution, some of TI’s issues are what I’d expect from an Early Access game, such as buggy tooltips and values that need to be tweaked. I’m not worried about these. The developers have already started fine-tuning the game based on player experience; for example, it’s now tougher to subvert space stations.
I think the biggest area for improvement is the way the game presents information. The worst culprit is research. Here is an example:
Terra Invicta’s tech tree. This isn’t even the most detailed view!
In this case, I can see that researching “Nuclear Fusion in Space” will allow me to develop muon spikers and fusion piles. But is that a good idea, or not? What are their advantages? What do they even do? Will it help me reach my goal of developing better spacecraft drives? I have to look up out-of-game information — for example, this guide on Steam — to get a better idea. It would be much easier if I could check the details in advance.
Another example is simpler — it would be really helpful if in-game lists had some of the same features as real-life spreadsheets. Here is a list of all the space habitats (stations and planetary bases) I control. I can filter by location and faction control (in this case, me), but I’d love a way to sort it by resource production:
The Habs screen. Hermes Base is close to the Sun, which grants a giant bonus to solar energy production. I plan to use it for energy-intensive modules such as command centres and nanofactories.
TI does let me sort the “Prospecting” screen. But I can’t filter it:
The Prospecting screen, which lets me view celestial bodies in terms of potential resource production. I control two of the top three Fissiles-producing sites.
A final example is the events log — the vertical list of icons on the left-hand side of the screen. As is, it’s not very useful. The icons are cryptic and I have to mouse-over each one to bring up a tooltip in tiny font. As such, I think the developers have scope to improve the clarity of the game’s interface before a full release.
Ultimately, I think a decent litmus test of whether you’d enjoy Terra Invicta is whether you like similarly complex, ambitious games such as Shadow Empire, Dominions 5, or even X4: Foundations. I love its premise, I admire its uniqueness, and, even as is, I enjoy its execution. While it won’t be for everyone, it may well turn out to be one of my all-time strategy greats.
