"Slipways" is simple and addictive blend of strategy game and puzzle. It's one of those "easy to play, hard to master" games where you expand your empire through colonization and trade (there is no war aspect in game). One thing that bugs me is randomness: maybe I'm just unlucky, but for most of my campaigns I had almost none compatible planets, wchich made my game harder, even on normal difficulty. But otherwise, game is perfect and for that price, it's a steal!
Slipways is the kind of game you can play any way you want. You can ignore the score, relax while listening to an amazing soundtrack, colonize planets, grow your network and watch the grass grow.
Or you can really take every turn carefully, understand how you can master the (ever chaning) tech tree, and go for the highest score. With almost endless replayability, this game is a must play for anyone interested in strategy who might also want to play a game to chill every now and then.
The core concept of Slipways is building a transportation network: connecting nodes to fill supply and demand. Think of it as a Railroad game (e.g. Railroad tycoon), except...
However, your entire success or not in a scenario -- especially when attempting the campaigns -- is dependent on RNG. Sometimes you'll get a map without useful resources near each other. Or you'll need an objective to have highly successful node (those that make a lot of trades) nearby, but they can't be promoted because compatible resources are simply not nearby.
And this is also where the Railroad metaphor falls apart. Goods will not travel more than one node. And you cannot have intersecting or crossing tracks. Even if you get "relay points", they're just used to lengthen a path; still no crossing.
A lot of this might be mitigated if the "relay points" (and related techs) were available early (rather than half-way down the tech tree, and only sometimes!) so you could actually use strategy.
A perfect example is the 4th campaign scenario where you have to research time rifts: The time rifts occupy space (so you can't have paths cross them), significantly destroying paths you could make. To research a rift, you must connect it to a lab, and a person. (And labs need a person, and a raw resource). You need 70 rift points to pass. A rift lab only generates one per year. And you have 25 years. To have it generate two, it needs extra people and TWO extra research. And to make a lab generate multiple research requires multiple people, and lots of spare resources all of the same type, in a tight area. With no crossing paths.
And don't think about building multiple labs. Each rift can only support one research point. Also, you can effectively only build one lab for each of the game's 7 raw resources, since researching the same thing multiple times cuts its almost to zero.
All the while you have to make sure your networks fulfill basic demands or the game ends early.
Sadly, this is an avoid.
The game just suck you in and time flies by as you try to figure out the best way to build your empire.
The music & sounds fits very well and never gets boring to listen to.
