Startopia

Quirky. Weird. Little buggy. But ultimately well worth your time. You run a Space Station with the goal to attract extra aliens to it. How'd you do that? You build rooms, decorate them, then wait for different races to beam aboard. Certain species dislike one another (Remember Flys/Spiders from Dungeon Keeper?), so you either try to advoid this or place the aliens in seperate zones. When you run out of room, you simply power on more "sections" of the space station, which is set out almost like a Halo ring. Navigation can be a little bit fiddly, but it's a very cool idea. It's got a very "British" sense of humour. There's quite a few articles about how the development of this game came about and you can really feel the late 90s gaming style oozing from this one. It's only downside comes to some of the later missions being rather hard. I remember needing to look up some guides online for "build orders", as money is often tight or if you fail to attract the right aliens in time the mission ends. I never played it when it came out, but I do own the SoldOut CD and I'll probably pick up the GoG version for backwards compatability sakes. Well worth it at this price.

Dungeon Keeper in space, more or less. I'm a newcomer to this game, playing this GOG version for the first time. I found it absolutely charming. The writing and humour adds a lovely, playful tone, and the game plays well. If you like management/builder games a la Dungeon Keeper or Theme Hospital, you'll like this. As management games go, it's fairly docile. It's not especially difficult once you understand how everything works, and sadly it's too short. It is, however, highly enjoyable. A bit of a google will turn up around 20 user-made missions which aren't half bad either. Highly recommended.

I remember getting this game after playing a demo when I was very young. It was the only game I spent countless hours on while the other games I had collected dust. It might have been a simple sandbox simulator at times, but I loved designing and building my space station. Oh, and the soundtrack... the songs are truly great. If you've never had the chance to play this title, then I highly recommend it.

"What's in this room over here?" Well, one of the best games ever developed! I've had my copy for umpteen years, and I can ALWAYS go back and play it from beginning, to end. Spectacular voice acting, great animation, and a wonderful soundtrack. You haven't lived until you've played for 20+ hours in the same sandbox with 100+ Scuzzers zooming around. I always chose the MKI toward the end, just because I like the way they walk. Lol. Still works on my Win7 64bit box. After so many hours in a single game you may run into recurring crashes. Use cascading saves. If only multiplayer didn't fail so epically when a game crashed. Those sessions are so fun while they last. :)

My review title states it all. A game you can take at your own pace once you unpack rooms for your station and the missions give you a wide variety of of challenges with the hilariously well voice VAL helping and sassing you all the way. A variety of 9 different races, plenty of little details which add to the hilarity to each level, fun trading with passing merchants, virtually full customisation of your station as to where your rooms are placed, how big they are. how many items as well as a habitation deck where you can change the environment to either suit your guests/residents/yourself. When you play Sandbox you can completely customise win conditions, whether it's number of items/rooms researched, energy (money) collection, number of territories controlled or just plain old 'kill everyone'. A thoroughly well designed, fun and relaxing game to play.