Children of the Galaxy Preview

Introduction

If you are not a fan of Grand Strategy games, you can stop reading now.  This game is so complex and in-depth, it requires a level of micromanagement I haven't seen in many games.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this is one of those games where you can start playing at the start of the day then when you next look through the window the sun has gone down.  Fortunately I am a fan of those kinds of games so I did enjoy myself when playing Children of the Galaxy, but it did test my nerves at times and it definitely isn't for everyone.  

I should say now that this game is early access and the developers are frequently updating.  It looks like they have some great plans and I'll definitely keep up to date on the development.  Sadly, I can only talk about what I received.  What I received I wanted so desperately to love, but I just couldn't.

The gameplay is very in-depth and I did enjoy it after I learned my way through the game, but unfortunately I cannot say I love this game due to the uninteresting graphics, the homogeneous factions, messy interface, and frequent bugs and crashes.

Children of the Galaxy is available on Steam for $19.99

Story

There are four factions warring for control of the galaxy:  The Earth Union, the Kingdom of Kaga, the Menron Great Empire, and the Ata Tribes. That is all I can say with any certainty.  The four factions are distinct looking and sounding, but there is no background lore on who these empires are or why they're at each other's throats.  I don't need a Warhammer 40k universe in which there are novels and novels of why these empires hate each other, but I would like to know more about the empire whose name in which I'm conquering.  I would even take a loading screen blurb like in Sid Meier's Civilization telling me a little tidbit about who I'm playing.  As it stands, the only story you get is based on their abilities.  My theory is the Earth Union may be expanding too quickly, the Ata are basically Klingons, the Menron are the more technologically advanced society, and the Kaga are especially industrious merfolk.  That's just a theory though, and the lack of any background whatsoever made it a bit harder for me to care.

Gameplay

The Basics

This is a turn-based game on a hex grid map in which you have to control builders, place colonies, control military, choose research, find rare resources, do diplomacy with rival nations, you can micromanage each planet to be sure they are perfectly optimized, and even a few features not copied from Civilization.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you're going to copy off of someone's paper copy the top student.  It does do plenty to try to make it unique, but if you're a fan of Civilization, you already have an idea of how it plays.  There are several tutorials, and I do recommend you go through all of them and pay attention to everything.  Even so, there are still other things it doesn't quite prepare you for.

The Maps

The map is divided between galaxy and star system views, which does lend to a feeling of the game's immense scale.  The majority of your action takes place in each star system, and the galaxy map is how you move your ships between them.  There are also asteroid fields which you can mine for resources and your units move slower through them, but that is all there is by way of terrain.  As a result of that, the maps can feel a bit empty.  I guess that does make it an accurate representation of the vast nothingness of space, but perhaps another type of terrain or obstacle to help break the monotony would help the maps feel more alive.  As is, I just found myself rapidly clicking through all my star systems that all looked more or less the same.

Factions

Imagine you get a small box of four chocolates.  Then, slowly but surely, you find one has peanuts, one has cashews, one has walnuts, and one has almonds.  They're all delicious, but they all taste more or less the same.  You'd probably also be disappointed hat for such a small quantity there was such little variety.  That is unfortunately the case in Children of the Galaxy.  Aside from which types of planets on which your faction will best thrive, the differences are very very slight, at most a 5 percent bonus to a resource or decrease in consumption.  The Ata get a bonus to unit ranks and the Kaga get faster ships, but that never really impacted the way I played in any way, shape, or form.  Aside from the one unique unit upgrade, every class of starship in every faction is the same.  Same stats, different skins.  The differences being small wouldn't bother me as much if there were more than four factions.  Small selection is fine if each one feels like a unique experience.  A game like Universe at War:  Earth Assault is works well with the three faction selection because each one plays completely differently.  In the end, unless you care that much about an unbelievably small difference, just pick the one whose emblem you like most and you may as well use that one.

Resources

This game throws a lot at you initially, but it fortunately it doesn't make you jump through a lot of hoops.  There is energy, research, intelligence, and rare resources.  All of those are shared throughout your empire.  On top of that you have to manage each planet's population, food, energy, production, and research.  Then there are the aforementioned rare resources, which you get by building miners in asteroid fields and by colonizing planets.  Said miners have a massive range and so gathering isn't at all tedious, which is something I enjoyed.  It very much streamlined the gathering process typical of most strategy games in that regard.

The Interface

In a game that requires you to have this much to micromanage, you need a smooth, organized UI that lets you find whatever you are looking for quickly and easily.  Children of the Galaxy just kind of tells you everything at once and you have to sort through it yourself.  It tells you everything you need to know at any given time, but it's all a mess.  The planets are all named for their corresponding place in their star system which is a good move when sorting alphabetically, but it's very difficult to know what's happening at any given time.  If there were drop down menus for each star system you own so you can more easily navigate your territory that would be awesome, but for now you have to do some intense searching and flipping through a lot of your territory to find anything.  After a few hours you do kind of get used to it, but a game like this shouldn't require you to have a notebook on hand just so you can remember which star systems are where, where your military is, which planets are optimized for what, and all of that other stuff that goes along with a turn-based strategy game.  The politics view is a little better, but it still isn't as helpful as it could be.

Colonization

In order to colonize you first should scout a star system, which thankfully can be done automatically with an "auto-explore" option.  Once the planet has been scanned, you know what innate potential it has:  food, energy, and rare resources.  On top of that, each faction does have a stat called "Preference," which influences your growth potential on different planets, which is something I would like a bit more if every one didn't prefer rocky, earth-like planets with an exception of the Kaga, who prefer ocean planets.  That would all mean a lot more if there was some sort of benefit to having a small empire, but the game actually encourages you to span as far as you possibly can and you can't colonize the planets that typically have the lowest preference until later anyway, so the first part of the game is always a rush to grab all the planets you can so you don't lose by the opponent holding 25 percent of the planets.

Military

Another possible means of victory is the classic military takeover of hostile capitals.  Your units also gain experience whether or not they have been fighting, and there is an almost RPG-like system of leveling up each troop, which is nice.  You can also combine them into strike groups of up to seven ships, which seems like its good for streamlining the process, but then you realize that they only move as one unit in one hexagonal formation which they will not break.  Attacking is easy enough, but defending is incredibly difficult.  Thanks to a warp ability all ships have which lets ships go from one part of the map to another once its charged, your defensive line can be completely bypassed and your planets will be under siege, which halts production and gradually ticks your population down to 0 unless you have troops on the planet to help break the siege.  The problem with that is it's very passive.  It doesn't feel like you're breaking a siege, so it's a bit boring.

There is also a diplomacy mode, but the only options there are open and closed borders and to declare war and peace, all of which require the resource "intelligence."  I group it here because as of now, the diplomacy is, ironically, only good for war.

Research

One of the best parts of this game is the tech tree.  Well, perhaps "tree" is a bad term, it's more of a tech web.  Though it isn't quite complete yet, there are a ton of options from which to choose, and if you really want to rush to the Dyson sphere, which is the grounds for the science victory, you don't need to go through a bunch of things you aren't going to need.  You can also split your research between multiple projects, which is something a little different that I appreciate.

Bugs and Glitches

This game is early access, and man does it show.  As of writing I have only been unable to finish several match due to constant bugs and crashes.  In one particular match my game would crash at 200 turns.  It was like Y2K happened but only in the Earth Union.  There were another few matches I played where it kept telling me a unit needed orders before it would let me take the next turn, but it wouldn't take me to what needed orders so I went across all of my units to be sure all of them were doing something, but the problem persisted so I just had to start a new match.  I had other crashes sprinkled sporadically throughout the experience.  Some just needed me to reload the game, others rendered the match unable to be finished.

Graphics and Audio

The backgrounds are pretty at first, but they seem to only have the one that just has a few colored filters to go over it as you flip through systems.  I don't know if they're planning on adding more backgrounds later, but as of writing it felt more like I was playing a board game than playing a video game.  Each faction has a specific style in their ships and they are all distinct that someone put a lot of work into, but it all gets lost in the vast bleakness of space.  At first it's kind of cool, but after a while you want something to happen.  The graphics aren't necessarily bad, just dull.

The audio is much the same way.  At first it feels epic, but after a while it all starts sounding the same.  The first few hours I enjoyed the music, but then I just turned it off and put on some other galaxy conquering music while keeping my ear open for the little tone that meant something was finished building.  Again, not necessarily bad, just dull.

Conclusion

I want to love this game so much, but I just can't.  Every time I got into it, I found another problem:  A fatal bug, something that wasn't explained, or I just couldn't keep full interest.  That isn't to say there aren't good elements.  The game has a solid skeleton to it and I am eager to see where Empty Keys goes with their game, but as it is right now it's a bit of a mess.  I will definitely be keeping an eye on it to see where it goes from here.  If they can fix the bugs and bad interface, this could be a great game.

I am not judging by what it could be though, I can only judge what is in front of me.  As is, it's a messy game that can be difficult not to win, but to play.  As it is, I can only recommend this game to the most die hard of science fiction strategy games who are willing to overlook a messy interface, dull graphics, samey factions, and countless fatal crashes for a game in which you not only can, but must micromanage a truly massive empire.  It isn't terrible, but for now if I need a fix on grand strategy, I'm going to stick with Civilization.