Galactic Civilizations impressions

Publisher Strategy First recently dropped by GameSpot's offices and showed off Galactic Civilizations, a turn-based space strategy game that will attempt to follow in the footsteps of classic strategy games like Master of Orion and Civilization. Galactic Civilizations takes place in the 23rd century, in a futuristic universe that humans have only just begun to explore. A number of technologically advanced alien races preceded humans in the exploration of space, but these aliens tended to rely on wormholes in their travels to distant worlds. The introduction of human hyperdrive technology not only let humans finally travel through space in huge cruisers to communicate with their extraterrestrial neighbors, but it also made their alien neighbors begin to consider the humans as a potentially profitable trading partner--and a potentially useful slave race.

Galactic Civilizations will be an unusual game for several reasons. For starters, the game won't ship with multiplayer support, or with a predefined campaign game or single-player scenarios. Instead, it will randomly generate a universe, similar to the Civilization games, based on how big players want the universe to be, what sort of relations they'd like with the aliens, and so on. Players can create a huge universe that contains literally hundreds of planets, or they can create a universe small enough to let them finish a game in about an hour. In addition, Galactic Civilizations won't have a set story--instead, it will have many different random events that will help give the game context.

Galactic Civilizations isn't the most visually impressive game we've seen, but the game isn't about looking good, it's about using interesting strategies to conquer the universe through trade, diplomacy, research, or force. Galactic Civilizations does look colorful, and the game generally takes place in one of several different menu interface screens that let you communicate with your alien neighbors, research technology, or wage war.

Galactic Civilizations is scheduled for release next year.