Stars!

Without a doubt Stars! is one of the best strategy/empire building games I have ever played - despite the fact I remember playing it as far back as 1996!

The basic premise of the game picks up where a lot of Empire Building games (like C-Evo) seem to end; you have just achieved the ability to colonise other worlds - you start the game with an unmanned probe and a colony ship commanded by a race of your own design - with pro's and con's according to what traits you choose (examples of which are "Inner Strength", "War Monger" and my person favorite "Space Demolitions"). It is then your duty to colonise other worlds, research technology to aid you in this noble quest, build up a trade infrastructure and build fleets of custom designed warships and planetary defenses to protect your newly forged empire against the rampant AI - which have amusing sci-fi satirical names; such as the Turlindrones and the Kirks.

Stars! is highly customisable; you can set the "win parameters" to be many things; colonise 100% of all planets, wipe out all other races - there is a great degree of customizability within Stars! right from get go up through to actual combat. Every aspect of the game can be altered from map size to planet and player positioning criteria - you can even create "Battle Plans" for your combat units to refer to when engaging specific enemy targets. You can also set the difficulty (easy, medium and impossible effectively) and traits of the AI; some "hyper expand" some hide within small but well defended Empires - some wander around rather aimlessly. You have to get to know your enemy within each individual game. Hardcore stuff.

One of my ship designs, I called it a Battlestar, you see what I did there?

Stars! features some of the most strategic in depth game play I've ever be drawn in by; wars can last weeks playing a few hours a day, and long term battle plans have to reflect this. But at no time does it ever feel 'forced'. You plan because you need to, and the planning remains just as enjoyable as the final alien annihilating big push.

You can also play it with friends via email.

So, this game sounds great huh? Well, there are two problems. The first, it looks like this:

Fear my Empire... That's the bits behind the blue lines and er... blue dots.

Second of all, it's almost impossible to find on-line for download. Indeed after writing this review we couldn't find a link for it at all... Doh.

Summary

Fantastic game.

Where Can I Get It?

We can't find a download site online, but drop us an email and we might be able to send you the original shareware version.

SGR Rating


95%