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Shadow Empire

in library

4.4/5

( 40 Reviews )

4.4

40 Reviews

English
Offer ends on: 12/11/2025 00:59 EET
Offer ends in: d h m s
39.9915.99
Lowest price in the last 30 days before discount: 15.99
Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
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Shadow Empire
Description
Shadow Empire is a deep turn-based 4X wargame with a unique blend of military focus, procedurally generated content and role-playing features. Shadow Empire places you into the seat of the supreme ruler of a small nation. Destiny and greatness awaits if you succeed in reconquering a devastated pl...
User reviews

4.4/5

( 40 Reviews )

4.4

40 Reviews

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Product details
2020, VR Designs, ...
System requirements
Windows 8/10, 1.5 GHZ, 2 GB RAM, 8MB video memory, 1280x768 or higher resolution, Version 9.0c, 1 GB...
DLCs
Shadow Empire: Oceania
Description
Shadow Empire is a deep turn-based 4X wargame with a unique blend of military focus, procedurally generated content and role-playing features.

Shadow Empire places you into the seat of the supreme ruler of a small nation. Destiny and greatness awaits if you succeed in reconquering a devastated planet. Plunge into an alien universe and explore another world in a dark and unforgiving future.

Take command and engage in great military conquests and delicate diplomacy. Control your nation’s budgets, recruit and manage governors and commanders, build your economy and infrastructure and much more.

Shadow Empire is one of the most ambitious games VR Designs has ever made. It is a rich experience and a truly unique game. One that is unlike any you have ever experienced before.


Make agonizing decisions in response to events occurring in your Nation, demands from your Leaders or from third parties such as cults and crime syndicates. You can also use your available Stratagems to create new opportunities and enhance your Nation. You will be able to optimize every aspect of your rule.

Recruit Leaders and appoint them to become zone governors, council directors, army commanders or advisors. Leaders can have over 40 different skills and can receive Leader feats to augment their statistics.

Install a parliament, senate or politburo in your nation and change the machinery of your government over the course of a game.

Engage with your neighbours on the diplomatic front: Minor regimes can be coerced to become vassals. Major regimes can be tied down with pacts and deals, ensuring a peaceful coexistence or you can use your spies to manipulate their politics and reveal their military forces.

Attempt to manage the expectations of your people and your leaders. There is a strong role-playing and human dynamics element to Shadow Empire. If you are not careful in their management, you may have to deal with discontent, strikes, corruption or even all out rebellion.


Shadow Empire has specialized procedural design that ensures high replayability and allows vast experimentation. It is not just the planets that are procedurally generated, your equipment, vehicles, leaders, location and more are variable.

Explore procedurally generated planets that follow the rules of Astrobiology. Including detailed climate, rainfall, deserts, snow, glaciers, lava streams, deep forests, alien evolutions, mountain chains, resources, rivers, biohazard levels, respiratory hazard levels and more.



Exploit the planet with a huge variety of mining operations: Water, metal, rare metals, oil and even radioactive materials. Prospecting is often necessary for discovering resources that could be mined and you‘ll need to scavenge through the ruins of fallen empires and discover rare artifacts from a lost age.

There is also a separate system for discovery of technology, formations and units. Your Research and development path is different every game and this ensures that the route to success is different every time, too.


Explore 150+ stratagems and deploy them as you see fit.

Stratagems are complete plans and series of actions that allow you to complete vast swathes of micromanagement tasks simply and easily. This system can also help you respond quickly to a crisis or unforeseen situation.




Discover and design 30+ different unit types such as light tanks, walkers, missile launchers and much more. Design your units to fit the needs of your army, choose their loadouts, balance speed and armor and create the exact land and air forces that your nation needs. Shadow Empire comes with over 100 different formation types, deploy Infantry regiments, Siege Battalions, Tank Divisions and so much more.



Fight battles with detailed combat resolution taking into account factors as readiness, morale, supply, experience, entrenchment, landscape, recon, rivers, weapon and armor technologies, concentric attacks, leader skills and posture stratagems.


Discover and research over 100 different fields of technology.
The game starts at a low level of technology as your nation drags itself out of the ruins of a galactic collapse, but at the end of the tech tree you’ll find knowledge that allows you to build exciting technologies such as ICBMs, laser guns, atomic missile launchers, walkers, shield-generators and more.

Manage a realistic supply chain that has real consequences, running out of ammo could mean that your military is unable to attack or defend itself. Running out of food could have even more dire implications.

Extend your logistical network capabilities by building roads or rails as well as constructing truck stations, maglev stations and supply base assets. Develop transport helicopters and cargo planes to set up Air Bridges to support Invasions or to drop supplies into isolated positions.

©2020 Slitherine Ltd. and Matrix Games Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Shadow Empire, Slitherine Ltd, Matrix Games Ltd. and their Logos are all trademarks of Slitherine Ltd. All other marks and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Developed by VR Designs.

System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
Safety and satisfaction. Stellar support 24/7 and full refunds up to 30 days.
Game details
Works on:
Windows (8, 10, 11)
Release date:
{{'2020-12-03T00:00:00+02:00' | date: 'longDate' : ' +0200 ' }}
Size:
942 MB

Game features

Languages
English
audio
text
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User reviews

Posted on: June 12, 2023

RoskoeIX

Verified owner

Games: 71 Reviews: 10

Flawed Strategy Game with neat ideas

I am giving this game a 5/5, though it probably deserves a 4/5 for some of the strange places where it falters against expectations. I left a side review for the DLC, which unfortunately fell flat, this vanilla/original release of this game though is a strategy game in its own right. True, there are other games out there that use similar mechanics, so it is not necessarily the most original in this strategy game genre, BUT it more than makes up for it in terms of creativity. PROS: -Military structures or OOB concept is very in depth -Custom designing models/units -Logistics & resource management actually matters -Tactics/Strategies (like defeat your enemy in detail) are viable methods -Lots of original lore on these fallout-theme alien worlds -Interesting nation building mechanics with some intriguing political UI CONS: -Can't custom name things that you could in say a CIV game (like small towns or terrain features) -In respect to the military or OOB, I don't like how when a unit is destroyed, you can't seem to properly resurrect it with the same name (custom names disappear) -The UI, as hinted at here, can be a bit odd in places where you don't expect it, like when units disappear (destroyed) and you bring them back, they don't sort themselves in Unit number order, which makes your OOB menu kind of a cluster to deal with -Lack of naval assets, that the DLC attempts to deliver, but does not deliver actual boats I know some of the CONS seem kind of nit picky, but I like the idea of being more immersed into a fantasy/sci-fi setting where I can go to town naming locations. Also, you can't customize the unit designation number on the unit icons (which is weird), so you will have mismatched units with your customized names. I will say this, the game has so much promise or at the very least the promise of a future where strategy games make a comeback. If the studios improves on the flaws (UI mostly) then any sequels are sure to be worth considering. Try this one.


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Posted on: June 4, 2024

AZA

Verified owner

Games: 159 Reviews: 5

Good idea but cryptic and frustrating

There's likely a good game in here somewhere, it has a lot of depth and mechanics and nuances that would make early paradox games jealous. However, like early paradox games the concept of QoL and Accessibility for the player was utterly ignored by the Dev, the game makes little to NO effort to explain anything to you. The manual is a weighty tome, but I'm sure diagrams on how a nuclear reactor works would be more clear, a lot of pages are just the dev showing off the games equations and formulae, but again, DOESN'T explain any of it. The games unwillingness to explain anything can also result in Hidden fail states, one for me being that your zones can get admin strain not too dis similar to empire sprawl in Stellaris. But Stellaris WARNS you about it, this game? Nope not even a pop up from your advisor so by time you realise its too late. I know there's YT vids from people like Das tactic etc. But sorry if I'm having trawl forums and wikis and watch hours of YT videos just to know how to even play a game then it has failed in my opinion. If you have the time and patience to play hundreds of hours in a game before you can even start grasping the core mechanics then have at it. If like me though you have a full time job and other commitments don't bother, the game just ends up an exercise of confusion and frustration. I clocked in 50 hours and just gave up...I've got better things to do and games that are more fun to play.


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Posted on: January 18, 2022

poikaboy

Games: 281 Reviews: 11

The best 4X game

Without any reservations and caveats, the best 4X game. Sure, it's not perfect, and there are places where a bigger budget would've allowed for some streamlined UI. But everything works and is easy enough to learn. And once you do learn the game, there is nothing else like it. The things the game is good at are done so well they easily make up for any lack in polish and presentation. Games this detailed don't get made by big studios and million-dollar budgets, so in the end it doesn't really matter "what if" a big studio made it. Because they won't.


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Posted on: April 16, 2023

Shmacky-McNuts

Verified owner

Games: 201 Reviews: 24

Illogical game Mechanics

When you get a vibe that makes you think of Command and Conquer, with a turn based logic and think"cool, I'm interested". But after planet creation, everything goes down the toilet. Every part of the game is so unintuitive to logic, it feels like I'm expected to learn how to use my feet in lou of my hands to live life. Each function of the game seems so overly complicated. Imagine you get hungry. You think of what you want to eat. Now instead of fetching a bite to eat, it becomes a rabbit hole of endless charts and graphs, with a long seminar about the history of food. Then add a lot of random math tests and buttons that do seemingly nothing except confuse the player with information, that does not seem to do anything. It looks like it should be a more in depth table top game, but buckles under its own weight of messy design. In short, think of tying your shoe laces. Now make it micro managed and overly complicated, with charts, toggles and un-needed busy work to perform a mundane task. This game is like that. Itblooks amazing until you actually play it. Then...not so fun.


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Posted on: March 10, 2025

AkitoK

Verified owner

Games: 32 Reviews: 2

Great deep game BUT

I absolutely love that game, getting to see your empire evolve from a barbaric city state to a full blown empire is very satisfying. Seeing a city's economy collapse and investigate until you understand that the governor's corruption is not only taking money from the economy but applying a morale malus to your population as well feels great once you understand how this whole thing works. Although the waiting time gosh, I played that game years ago on a solid computer and I had the same problem as now with my potato laptop, the waiting times for the AI turn are so long. I played a game on a medium world with 4 other major regimes and had to stop once each turn took 15 minutes before I could play which frequently meant checking on the economy and passing my turn awaiting buildings to be built. It feels a bit like playing one of those facebook games from back in 2010 where you had to wait an afternoon before you could come back to act again on the game. I hope getting a new processor will help with that for I'd like to be able to finish unifying a planet for once before I end up quitting because the AI is slower than my grandma.


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