I was able to stop by the Spacewars: Interstellar Empires booth at Pax East this year to see what all the fuss was about. For those who don’t know, Spacewars is a turn based tactical online MMO with online strategy built in. Let’s get right into it!
In the game you pick one of four races to start as well as a ship. Over the course of the adventure you will gain experience through different means such as combat or completing missions. The game has a skill tree that you can use to upgrade your officer skills or to get better ships to use.
Playing the game is pretty straightforward where you play on a grid style game board. You’re able to power up your four areas of power/strategic layers: for attacks and ships. Those are your propulsion, sensors, force fields, and weapons.
The game is turn based, where you get to upgrade your powers and attack enemies near by as well as move on the game board. Making sure you use the objects on the game board properly such as planets or rocks for cover will make the difference in battle.
You’ll gain your experience points when you take out an enemy ship. You can use this experience points to make your crewmates that much stronger. You can also upgrade your ship and each ship has different variations so you’ll have to figure out which one you like best. There are plenty of ships to choose from, same idea of picking the best one for you to use and upgrading!
Controls for the game are common for grid-based games like this. You can control your ship by clicking on it with your mouse. You can turn your ship as well as aim your weapons. Also, your goal is to dominate the whole galaxy and take over all the other races in space. Since it’s a turn based game, really all you need to do is know where you’re enemies are and what’s in your in your inventory.
It will be key in key in battles to power up your different layers for your ship. This will add to the strategy level of the game since you can only do this once a turn and you only have a certain number of points to add to the layers. The different ships and elements should really add to Space Wars: Interstellar Empires!