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%
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Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
The game is developed by only-one-man-dev and is available in several languages. There is also a sandbox (without time limit) mode available with a several difficult features.
Slipways is available at gog, steam and itch.io.
There is also a tutorial incuded in the main menue.
I absolutely adore Slipways. I was always drawn to space 4X games, with their endless possibility for energent storytelling, intriguing races with different strategies, technologies and quirks. But considering that a single 4X campaign can last anywhere from 10 to 30 hours, I could never explore them to the fullest. Slipways feels lage a game tailor-made for me, cutting all the chaff, and leaving all the excitment I was looking for in 4X games thanks to it razor-sharp design. Hightly reccomended.
I was going up and down asking myself if I should buy it at a full price. But as the money will go to help our eastern neighbours I just have to buy it. I would do the same with This War of Mine but I already own it. Even if the game is less than 4 stars it still gets them from me for this gesture.
First off, let us get out of the way the most important bits.
1. Game runs like butter in native resolution on MacBook Air M1 from 2019. Even on infamous Big Sur system version that made many games unplayable.
2. Game is stable, does not crash unexpectedly.
Having said that, I have already spent a good few hours trying to grow my galactic empire. Perfect for short bursts but also long sittings. I wouldn't call it a pure strategy game as it reassembles a more sophisticated and in depth space puzzle game than your typical 4X title. Nonetheless it provides hours of immersive and challenging fun.
The game is really well done. It's solid. However I wouldn't say it is strategy, but a "tactical" game with a lot of luck.
The game, basically, consists into connecting planets which needs resources. When you expand, you discover new planets, which may have the resource you need or not. Also, you have some research, but the most of it doesn't seems useful. There is a campaign with some special rules too, which unlocks other game modes with extra difficulty added.
You cannot have a long term strategy in this game. You only adapt to the RNG, but frecuently, it becomes unmanageable and you need to look for another direction to expand your empire.
That wouldn't be bad if you were trying to "win" against a rival. But this isn't that kind of game. It's a score based game, and if you consider "to win" reach 5 stars in each random map, after 35 hours of game I may tell you that some maps are simply impossible, you will never get that score. In other words: the RNG disables you from "winning" every map.
After these game hours, I'm a bit bored because I know that I don't achieve max score due to bad luck, even playing safe, but had some nice moments.
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