Some strategy starship games never get old. But you may get frustrated when your ship gets destroyed, causing your crew's lives to end in permadeath.
We all get tired of restarting or finishing a single-player campaign game in a few days, but there is a new 8-bit strategy game that is ready to hit the online universe — and it's the first to give gamers total starship management and control.
In a new Kickstarter campaign, Melbourne-based indie iOS studio SavySoda is launching its flagship game called Pixel Starships, a multiplayer starship management game developed for hardcore gamers.
In Pixel Starships, each user is the captain of their own starship in a massive online universe. The game combines elements from popular games like FTL, XCom, Eve Online and Home World. Similarly to World of Warcraft, the game never ends because new content and players are constantly added.
Citing indie strategy games FTL and the Kairosoft series as his personal favorites, SavySoda founder Xin Zhao says while these games "both made a mark on the gaming scene," gameplay ended in a short time period, and the mechanics were limited to a single-player world that couldn't be shared with friends.
"We wanted a game with similar feel and mechanics of 8-bit indie strategy games, but set in a persistent online universe where you can interact with real people," Zhao says in an email. "And we think we've cracked it in Pixel Starships."
Pixel Starships is different from other starship management games because the captain is responsible for all aspects of ship — both the interior and exterior — instead of just battles.
The goal in this game is to make your ship the biggest vessel in the universe by exploring the galaxy to find new resources and battling opponents to steal theirs.
To win a battle, the user must make the best use of their ship's power, subsystems and crew. Captains can program their crew to assign them orders and situational commands (such as aiming for the enemy shields with EMP until it's down, then fire lasers). "This allows talented commanders to pull out some amazing macro strategies, as well as automated offline play," Zhao says.
Captains also go on missions, mine resources and study alien races and artifacts to find the most powerful weapons to conquer enemies during head-to-head combat.
Stylistically, the game has a retro feel, which fits in perfectly with the game's cross-section angles — not to mention, the characters are adorable. "Because this is a Kickstarter/community driven game, having 8-bit focus means we can custom-design characters for our backers," Zhao says.
As part of the campaign, new features will come about based on requests of the community. These include new ships, weapons, systems, mission and alien races.
Pixel Starships developers at SavySoda are launching the Kickstarter campaign on May 26. The game will launch for iOS in December 2015, and on PC in 2016, with extra platforms to be planned the future.
Check out Pixel Starships in the trailer below.
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Photo: SavySoda | YouTube
