Slipways takes the space grand strategy genre and condenses the best parts of it down by throwing away all the micromanagement and the steep learning curve. The result is a unique blend of the strategy and puzzle genres in which you can finish a run quickly, but still have a deep experience full o...
Slipways takes the space grand strategy genre and condenses the best parts of it down by throwing away all the micromanagement and the steep learning curve. The result is a unique blend of the strategy and puzzle genres in which you can finish a run quickly, but still have a deep experience full of tough decisions.
MAKE TRADE, NOT WAR
Colonize planets, carefully pick industries and hook everything up so that your planets support each other. Line everything up just right and watch your colonies evolve and grow, giving you even more options for profitable trade. Make long-term plans and bask in your own glory when that one last connection makes six planets upgrade at the same time and gives you the income you desperately need.
There is no military aspect to pull your focus away from the economy. The game is more relaxed than your typical grand strategy. It's all about exploring space and its endless opportunities, shaping it to your whim and developing it to its full potential. No need for war with so much empty universe to claim.
FASTER THAN LIGHT
Forget about tedious micromanagement and waiting for ships to be built. In Slipways, every action you take has immediate consequences, and every choice you make is of paramount importance. Your planets govern themselves while you focus on making the right decisions to get them what they need. You'll waste none of your precious time on busywork. A single run takes 40-60 minutes and they are all filled with the good stuff.
TECH IT UP A NOTCH
There are no boring technologies here. Instead of making a single building 20% more efficient, technologies in Slipways let you move planets at will, harness stars for energy or colonize planets with sentient machines instead of people. The selection varies each run, so you'll have to plan carefully and adapt to the situation at hand. The path you choose will profoundly change your experience and the way you look at the game's planets and resources.
...ONE MORE GAME?
When a single run takes no more than an hour, what you need is replayability. Almost everything in Slipways is procedurally generated and each sector of the galaxy offers wildly different challenges. To overcome these challenges, you'll enlist the help of the five races populating the empire, each with their own philosophical outlook, varied abilities and a dedicated slice of the technology tree. There are more than 80 technologies to choose from and you'll only be using about 10 of them each run. No two games are ever exactly alike.
PLAY IT YOUR WAY
The standard gameplay mode gives you 25 years to build the best empire you can, but there are others. The endless mode lets you play for as long as you can hold on to power, the sandbox mode allows you to experiment freely, while the ranked run is a chance to measure your skills against others around the world on pre-seeded maps.
The game will also feature a campaign mode, with each scenario introducing a new twist and refreshing the gameplay: supernovae that have to be tamed or avoided, sectors with completely new resources to be mined, a dense nebula impeding your progress. On launch day, there will only be a few scenarios to explore, but their number will increase over time as free updates are released. The new mechanics introduced in the campaign will also feature in other modes, becoming new options for even more varied runs.
Popular achievements
Don't Spend It All in One Place
Reach an income of 120$ per year at any point in a standard run.
common
·
38.33%
Spreading Sentience
Colonize 100 planets across all your games.
common
·
35.24%
System requirements
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It is, at its heart, a puzzle game. The mechanics is a new and interesting idea.
However, please read the last paragraph of the game description carefully. Right now there is a standard, ranked and endless run, and 4 out of 13 campaign scenarios implemented. With over 50% of the content replaced with placeholders I feel it would be more honest to label this game as "in development".
(There have been no updates to the campaign since the release 5 months ago.)
This is a great little puzzly econ/trade game. Just trying to create nice trade loops between planets is sufficient for an enjoyable time, but it looks like there's a lot of depth for those interested in really optimizing/maximizing their points in a run.
It's a very streamlined, very enjoyable connection building game, with decent graphics, good music, nice pace and overall great feeling. It never outstays its welcome yet it's addictive enough you'd always want to keep playing when its over. And rules explanation to this game is one of the best I've ever seen: short, quick, clear and with pictures, making learning the game a breeze, and a short one at that :-)
Although the different races, quests, quirks, techs and game modes do all they can to up the replayability, it's still not through the roof and subsequent plays are still similar to each other.
Overall, it's a really good game. Not revolutionary, but if you have a free hour you'd like to spend building, thinking and enjoying yourself at the process, then this game is right there for you.
to the point: It isn't "strategy" in the traditional sense, but it does require you think very strategically ..it's a visually appealing puzzle game with slightly punishing RNG until you figure out how to scrape a space out and expand around it.
only thing i get frustrated with is the point-to-point trading so that you have to account for making several routes to/from each planet rather than have the planets having a "pass through" ability making it possible to create a circle route.
Once you start building science points, you will find a decent number of skills letting you increase your slipway distance. this helps a lot late game.
I like it, I know what I'm getting, and I know it's going to be a bit devising for it's genre branding.
Get it if you want a break from the other deep strategy games..
I am 10h in. I expect I will put in another 10 to finish the campaign. That next turn/ run feeling is real.
Pros:
1. Compact but complete *puzzle* game with a sprinkling of positional/ resource man. strategy.
2. The space theme fits it wonderfully IMHO.
3. Graphics are nice to look at and do their job.
4. The campaign difficulty is quite high ( in a good way as far as I'm concerned but your mileage may vary ).
Cons:
1. The random generator can and will generate unfair starting conditions forcing a run failure. This is fine as far as I'm concerned and would not put that much work into solving this.
Wishes:
1. More lore, more story stuff ( in single runs too)? Maybe via "quest" events on planet colonization or other in-game triggers ( connections, etc ). Could open a new layer of ... stuff to do.
TLDR: a great puzzle game for non-puzzle players. This is the first one I can honestly say I've enjoyed.
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Last 30 daysLast 90 daysLast 6 monthsWheneverAfter releaseDuring Early Access
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