introduction
Andromeda has seen quieter days, and it's up to you to take the reigns of one of many civilizations and guide it through the many dangers hiding in the galaxy. Dawn of Andromeda is a pause-able, real-time space 4X game focused on providing a fun, immersive and accessible experience that allows you to truly play as an emperor. Build your empire, colonize new planets, interact with other factions and characters, research new technologies and build fleets so powerful your enemies will tremble!
Explore a galaxy filled with diverse factions, outlaws, merchants, pirate clans and mercenaries but also anomalies, black holes, ancient artifacts, ruins and much more.
Dawn of Andromeda will be available on Steam in early access on December 1st. The game has been developed by GreyWolf Entertainment and published by Iceberg Interactive.
gameplay
When you start of the game, you are welcomed in a beautiful menu. At this point in the game, only the Custom Game option is available. There will be a Choose Era option in the future. Keep in mind that I'm playing the Beta of the pre-release version of the game.
Once you "decide" to start a custom game, you get the option to chose a race, and there are a lot of options! But I didn't expect less from a space themed 4X game with all the competition that is out there. You can chose from 8 races, and have the ability to create your custom race. Some of the races are the Terran Union (the humans), the Kalzur Federation (the lizard people), the Orolyth Confederation (the "greys" as we called them in the X-files era) and the Drekkas Order (the Warmonger). For my first game, I decided to go with the Ynan Commonwealth, a race made out of energy. They are religious, are great farmers and have a high birthrate. Having played a fair share of 4X and strategy games, this seemed like a good race to start off with.
Starting the game I was thrown in a beautiful galaxy, and the options to start a tutorial. Now I am very picky when it comes to tutorials. I don't like to be thrown in the deep, but I don't want anyone to hold my hands during the entire game. I want a balance between the two. If you want me to build something, I want to decide where it goes. And then there's a third kind of tutorial; just a lot of text, and I hate those with a passion. So that's what the game decided to present me with, pages upon pages of text. I got through the first couple of tutorials but quickly skimmed over them to continue the game.
The game offers a lot of features, you can control the buildings that need to be placed on a planet, to a certain degree. You have a lot of technologies to discover and a decent amount of ships to build. I assume you get more options for buildings and ships once you progress through the tech tree, because there are a lot of technologies to research.
You start off with a single planet in a solar system, and you have one scout ship to fly around to different systems to find new planets to colonize or artifacts to discover. These artifacts give you boosts in research once you find and research them.
It wasn't for long until the other races found me and my little home planet, and offered me protection in exchange of money. Apparently I wasn't able to defend myself. Cocky me turned them all down and they didn't seem to like that. It wasn't for long before I found myself at war with the Drekkas Order, who live for war.
As a strategy and 4X enthusiast I had a lot of fun playing this game, and I will continue playing it for sure. I'm excited to see what other features will be added to this game, and I wonder if I can beat the time I played in my favorite space strategy game, Pax Imeria 2.
final thoughts and opinion
I had fun playing this immersive 4X Space Strategy game, and I think most fans of this genre will as well! But does the market needs another one of these games? It hasn't even been a year since Stellaris released and the first expansion of the game just saw the light of day. But then again, competition has always worked great in the gaming industry. I'm keen to see how this plays out. Sice this is a preview I will not be rating this game yet. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Drekkas Order to annihilate!
