Children of the Galaxy

Children of the Galaxy has the smooth shine of modern polish, but sadly lacks the depth to engage in many ways. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKMxdp5-rJI Text: Let me start by saying that i have high hopes for this title, but find their "6 months" (6+ minimum) in early access to be ambitious to a impossible degree. Currently, what is in the game works - but calling it fleshed out is a massive stretch. Also taking the currently missing features along with that - there is years of work here to rival other titles in the genre. Lets break it down: Exploration mostly boils down to "let it auto explore" with little to no influence you want to expand to doing - you just create a bunch of scouts and send them into the void on their own. Anomalies, unique finds, planetary exploration, systems and galaxies are mostly flat and have no depth in terms of unique elements in them. Expansion is also... flat. Outside of a few research points that provide passive buffs here and there, most of your expansion is spamming all possible buildings on a new planet and building a ton of stuff floating in space to mine and defend it. There is no customization and depth in terms of expanding your planets, borders and supply-lines, adaption to different planet biomes or even differences in resources available outside of the hard number. Basically again - planets are fire and forget. And these two already illustrates the issues with the game. The building works, the expansion works, the exploration works, the production empire expansion works. There are no game breaking parts to the game in any of these. But they are so very limited in gameplay interaction. Most of the early to mid-game consists out of queuing a bunch of things and pressing "next turn" 20 times. And while the research systems has hints of greatness in the way you can assign a % to a type of research to focus on - the nature of needing those pieces of tech to get anything done means that multiple search items at once doesn't benefit you until the very late game stages. I've not touched on diplomacy much, nor on combat and the fact is that these are... non existent in my eyes. Diplomacy they've said is still in development, so that aside - the combat is a rock-paper-scissors affair that mostly requires "lots of rocks" and little else, with balance being messy and combat interaction having little to no weight. Again, the core idea is great and the "in world" combat that allows for smart movement and usage of the environment as needed is great - but its so damn shallow. So with enough time in the oven - this could be great, and with the level of quality they have on display it is clear the developers care immensely about this product - but it's not there by a long shot, even on systems they are already advertising as implemented, that are missing anything but the barest of bones. For now i'd be hesitant to jump in with the current lack of content, but the game shows promise to keep iterating on good ideas down the line.

Since I'm the only one who actually play Children of the Galaxy in my Steam community or whatever it is called nowadays, I think it's fair to write a review for it, even while it's in EA atm of writing and even when it's far from finished. I'm in good standing with the developer of the game, since I provided some feedback in EA in a casual way and the developer always responded friendly, helpful and always was willing to implement suggestions if he thought it made sense. While the development of the game is very slow (compared to most games in EA I played), there was at least an update every month. They were named by the month, so it was easy to know when a new patch or update arrived. December update January update etc etc But since last year December updates became less frequent and communication from the developer in the forums went from less to zero. If I remember correctly there was an invasion of space 4 x games in 2016 - 2018 and CotG was one of them. Polaris Sector, Galactic Civ, Endless series, Stars in Shadows, Master of Orion and many others arrived at the same time and I believe all of them in a way have more to offer then Cotg atm. So it's probably fair only 1 out of 140 Steam friends owns the game on Steam now. All the time I ask myself the question what it is what this game lacks, but I believe that is the wrong question. The question should be: "What makes this game unique" for example. And if I only had to answer that question my review was very short. It's almost impossible to describe what Cotg does better in any way or more unique or original then any of the other space 4 x titles around. If you search long enough, there is one word that describes Cotg at best I think. Abstract. The game is abstract in every way, which is a compliment and a problem with the game at the same time. You need to use large parts of your brain were the imagination channel is triggered since that's the only way to be able to play the game. There is really nothing going on. Space is as empty and large as we know it as mankind. There is not a single image in game represents any ship, character or planet in the game outside the 3d/2d images on the map, which are not impressive. So the game is fresh in lacking content. Another aspect from the game, and that is the interesting part, is that it feels a bit like a boardgame more then the other space 4x titles mentioned before. It's just a large map of hexes, probably random generated planet and star systems under the surface of those hexes. It's very difficult to see the differences between multiple games I started in terms of variety and meaningful content that makes one game different then the other. It's the same image of stars, the same way too small -planets- that only diverse in size and color mostly. But it might be my own fault if this represent real space and it might be simply as boring as it is. Do not expect aliens, do not expect various races, quest elements, many different ships, logical resource gathering or anything else then clicking -next turn- a few hundred times before you notice anything on your screen you played the last four hours was changed... Cotg isn't a bad game at all. There is just not enough to do, specially in early game which can be hundreds of turns, it get's boring pretty soon. This feeling of being bored, was accompanied by some annoying UI decisions that made me click, drag, scroll large area's on the map to often. Warnings are hidden, ships set to auto explore when on different planets are hidden when you are on the world map, the drag speed for world map planet map is not consistent and various but numerous smaller problems made it feel hard to play for many hours. It's very hard to supply a developer with support and feedback if the feedback from the developer is so limited. There isn't really a clear path/direction it seems anymore. Probably the game is not a big commercial success and probably the developer moved on. Not confident anymore that under the surface and with a little more dedication there is still room for another space 4 x game. But the developer should promote the game imo, work on it, give feedback on his Steam forum and improve the game, so one day he can get out of EA and label the game as released. I'm very tolerant towards indie titles, I can live with very slow progress, I can also live with not all my feedback will be implemented in any game. But I cannot stand the fact that updates get less frequent, less robust and less interesting every month without any community feedback and real ambition to improve the game.

Quick Review: Buy if: You enjoy 4X games that offer something different. Pros Very responsive Dev team that listens to feedback Huge Tech Tree that is spherical and easy to figure out Hidden Secrets waiting to be discovered Large amount of building possibilities for planets Cons Must play Tutorials – The UI and controls are not the norm Micromanaging Planets can become tedious This is kind of a mix between MOO and Stellairs. On one end, you have Masters of Orion, the game that made 4X games a genre back in the mid-90s. The other end you have Stellairs, which was just released a year ago, but in my opinion it added features and changed how the whole 4X genre is handled. Children of the Galaxy is a weird mix of simple and complex that blends well together. It does some things not seen before, like moving galaxies, which has it planets obit around there sun. When you target a planet if it takes more than one turn to get to, you must target its next movement location. It’s displayed on the map, so It’s not a complete guessing game. Another cool thing is warp magnets, you build these in a system and they make ships warping land around them. It’s a resource hog but who doesn’t want to know exactly where the enemy fleets will drop in at? Little things like this give it an identity that stands out from all the other 4X’s. Check out my youtube channel for game play videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2a-Uk6CfPeOt4Y0Goghf8Q If you enjoyed my review please consider following and joining my Steam group [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/MatureMindedGamers#curation]Mature Minded Gamers[/url] We have free game giveaway's every month for all Members, just click Follow and Join!

Syntetic early impression for the game in alpha stage Plus + Nice tutorial + Like the strategic/tactical view and sense of "scale" + Very talkative developer + Modding from the start + Love 4x Cons - Barebone at the moment - Very few races or differences between them (for the moment) - Some bugs here and there - Lot of clicks It's a good enough fundation for an Alpha release as it is Believe will need many many months of development (1 year?) to be considered final but it is already in this state playable RECOMMENDED as a token of support for the developer to continue the good work done so far

Picked this game up on a whim. Dived straight in. Ignored the tutorials. Built a fleet of 23 Colony Ships thinking I could storm the solar systems and pick up the production from the awesome gas giants that orbited the sun. Then I discovered that you could only colonise Rocky planets to start with. And so having grasped the basics of the controls and UI, I'm starting again. "properly" this time. If anyone wants a preview, I'll be streaming the game for maybe an hour or two at the weekends (GMT) so check in to the channel's discord for the times. So far in this game's favour + Nice art style + Consistency + Plenty to check out and uncover if you don't do the tutorials *cough* + Recognisable influence from games like Civ + Not too many nags, handholding + Tutorials included for those that want them (and you should want them!) + Quick to load, small download + Very responsive developer, helping with my noob questions and taking feedback for the next version + easy and quick to pick up and put down. I don't always have hours to spend at a time, so this fills the void + Having come from just playing Homeworld: Desert of Karak, I really like the freedom to go anywhere. + Game starts off very chilled + I've not uncovered any game breaking bugs On the negative side - UI has some less-than intuitive elements - Research tree seems to be a little too understated, there's a lot going on, but I don't feel like I'm progressing through it with any meaningful choices at the moment, it's just set-and-forget. - You have to do the tutorials - It's not up there with Civ or Stardock's Sins (but then why should/would I expect that?) Conclusion So it's an early release game. If you like early release games, being part of the development of the game, and having a responsible ,responsive Dev to chat to about what you're experiencing, then great. If you like indi games rather than AAA titles in the same genre, then there is a lot to commend this title. I'll update this review once I've played through a game, and check out my stream via Discord and Twitch so you can see for yourself. The fact that I'm interested enough to keep playing and stream it, is where this recommendation comes from.

I'll make this short. I find the game so far to be well designed and looks like it will be a asset to 4x gaming, however, I don't know if will have that special feature(s) to make it unique.

Rarely found this game on Steam's 4X bargain bain. It is now out since early 2017 but didn't get known too much. The look is quite nice, the UI is fresh and charming. You could even adopt the letter size... There are several tutorials to give you a first inspiration about what you could do with your new empire. All short and quite good understandable. When you hit start game, you are asked to go with a predefined empire or a custom tailored one. Custom setup shows quite detailed and it's fun to design your own flag with rotatable layers you could adapt by different symbols and colors. You are free to choose from a palette of detailed ship models. The needed pieces of information are all clear and available, the research tab is incredibly detailed and you could even do several tasks at once while splitting the research points. It remembers me a bit on Endless Space 2. There are some rough edges and it is a small indie company to develop the game, so it may take some time till the game leaves Early Access. The dev is taking care of every posting in the forum, so the players will certainly get the game they like. Updates coming every now and then, while there is a monthly broadcast about the progress. If you like 4X and are positive about Indie early access games, grab this one on a sale. I will definitely come back to see where this journey leads to later.

I wanted to like this game but at this time its just too barebones. Keep this on follow if i were you.

This game is a very interesting take on Civilization and Space Empires. It's sort of a hybrid between the two, with detailed planet stats of Space Empires and streamlined unit control/production similar to Civilization. It's still in early access, but progress seems quite fast.

Great game, having a lot of fun.