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Startopia Review
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
Startopia
Thankfully Muckyfoot have gone back to what they do best. OK so Urban Chaos wasnāt the worst game ever but what I wanted to see was what these former Bullfrog guys could do in their genre, the genre that the likes of Guy Simmons and Pete Molyneux (former Bullfrog head honcho) helped to create. Of course Iām talking about the strategy games, time to dust off the PC remove my copy of Quake 3 and withdraw for the next few days I feel.
In a fitting tribute to the late Douglas Adams let me quote from the Starship Encyclopedia to fill you in on where you start:
āStar-Topia is set during the aftermath of a huge intergalactic war between powerful and aggressive alien races. Planets, moons and even suns have been rendered lifeless. Little has survived, and the war has scattered the remnants of civilization to the far corners of space. A once thriving galactic network of starships, space stations and planets are left lifeless, redundant scars of the apocalypse.
Into this age of darkness comes light. You will lead the way in rebuilding the network of space stations that once served the commerce and communication of the old empire ā“ reuniting the surviving alien peoples under one banner.
The ancient way of Capitalismā¦ā
So itās up to you to control and maintain sections on a Space Station, which in turn will bring peace and happiness back to the galaxyā¦
The stations are effectively giant donuts, split across three decks and various amounts of sections. Each deck has a different purpose; the lower deck provides the industrial and technical sections of your station where most of the work is carried out. Docking bays are placed here and visitors to the station disembark on this deck. Cargo is handled here, factories produce goods and equipment, and research is carried out.
The second deck so called The Entertainment Deck provides all the recreational facilities for your visitors. Do your aliens feel lonely and unloved? Simply provide a love nest and whenever theyāre feeling in the mood they can drop by for a bit of intimacy with one of your hired Dahenese Sirens. A PG rated brothel if you will.
The last deck is The Bio Deck, an artificial environment giving you full control over land height, water, temperature and moisture levels. By manipulating these settings you can create a landscape that can be used for both agriculture and recreation.
So the game treads down the familiar strategy paths, you build settlements to attract the aliens in turn hiring them to do different jobs, and hoping that along the way youāre making a profit. If the game was set in a different environment you might expect a Horned Reaper to make an appearance!
One key feature is the trading aspect, what type of station would you be without the odd barter over black market goods. Here youāll have the chance to buy and sell stock off to passing merchants. The key is to work out which species crave for each item so you can sell them off at a tidy profit.
At first it sounds like thereās far too much going on for you to control, thereās the trading, maintaining the bio-deck, researching new equipment, adding new buildings, man-management (!) of your aliens, whilst trying to complete your mission objectives. Thankfully the guys at Muckyfoot have come up with one of the best tutorials Iāve seen in a long time, the learning curve gradually introduces you to each concept in turn and by the end youāll be engaging in each activity without any hassles. Thereās a lot going on but thankfully with the help of the tutorials and VAL youāll be able to cope, just DONāT PANICā¦
Once the tutorial missions are complete itās time to move onto the proper missions. Each of these has different objectives and like the tutorials start off relatively easy. One mission has you researching 20 new items whilst another asks you to set up a penal colony to rehabilitate 100 prisoners. Once youāve learned the basics from these youāll be asked to use all your newly found skills together in the latter missions to solve more complex problems. One mission has players expanding rapidly in order to boot squatter managers out of a station. Eventually you'll be good enough to manage the station through crises like meteor showers, religious zealots, security problems and other managers in the same station.
At this point Iād like to mention the control system and a big congratulations to Muckyfoot for making it so instinctive. The RMB is used to beam up items, whilst the LMB is an action button. Camera movement is activated by scrolling to the sides of the screen and rotated by using the MMB. It works like a treat.
Graphically the overall appearance may not be as instantly appeasing as a certain other strategy game by a former Bullfrog employee, but it suits the game and works well. Each of the nine species has been lovingly rendered and there are some nice little animations for them. I defy anyone not to have a smirk the first time they see a Polvakian Gem Slug get down at the disco.
There are some great tunes in the game, ranging from ambient melodies to some serious funk. Each suits the game fantastically, and to top things off when youāre zoomed in youāll hear music relevant to the particular area and aliens chatting away to each other.
Comments
In these types of games itās the depth and detail that counts, being able to lose yourself amongst all your inhabitants and just waste hours painfully ensuring each building is meticulously placed and that all of your aliens are getting along like the best of buddies. Despite a few reservations; I think the research section is a little clunky and doesnāt work that well and at times the trading can get a little too monotonous, overall this is strategy gaming at itās finest, with a little touch of humour and rounded into a nice package, much like a chocolate donut, hmmmmā¦
