Starships has a ‘Spaceopedia’, which contains some very basic information about the game. I can’t remember the last game I played that didn’t have some kind of tutorial. Which brings me to a major feature that Starships is missing: a tutorial. However, I have no idea what they are or how I got them. Apparently playing one will unlock options in the other, and over the course of playing more Starships, I unlocked at least a couple of things for Beyond Earth. After my victory, I discovered a little button on the main menu that let me make an account and link my Starships and Beyond Earth games. At this point I had unlocked over 60% of the achievements for the game. This was after maybe an hour or 90 minutes of playing. Needless to say, I accidentally won my first game by building the required number of wonders across my planets. Like most strategy games, there were resources to gather, technologies to research, enemies to wipe out, and other factions to negotiate with. I was a little overwhelmed by all the options available, but forged on, building my fleet of ships and conquering… I mean, “influencing” planets and expanding my empire. I elected to play on the lowest difficulty, because, hey, I had no idea what I was in for. I started up a new game, randomly selecting a faction and map size, and so on.
While Starships does look quite good, this lack of options, especially on the graphics side, suggest that this is a mobile title more than a PC title. I was a little surprised by the somewhat low-ish resolution intro video and the complete lack of game options (apart from sound and music volume…), but I vaguely remembered reading that this game was also headed to iOS. I had gone in with almost no knowledge of what the game was about, so I was a bit confused by the modest ~700 MB download. My first couple of hours with Starships were pretty great.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly the case. At only $14.99, I wasn’t expecting a huge game like Civilization or Beyond Earth, but with Sid Meier’s name on the game, I was expecting to be impressed. If you’re anything like me, you were probably pretty excited when it was announced, and even more excited when the game finally arrived last week.
Set in the universe of Civilization: Beyond Earth after the age of the Seeding, Sid Meier’s Starships offers sci-fi/strategy fans a full stand-alone game experience that also features cross-connectivity with Beyond Earth, expanding the depth of both games. Build a planetary federation as you strengthen your fleet and secure your homeworld as you attempt to preserve intergalactic peace and your vision of humanity. Travel to new worlds, completing missions to help save and protect the planets and their people from dangerous Space Pirates, to powerful Marauders and other hostile factions. Take command of a fleet of powerful starships in this adventure-driven strategy game from legendary designer Sid Meier.