Galactic Inheritors (Hands-On) (PC) Preview

The pace is slow and in terms of features Galactic Inheritors is quite a lot like a top down Sins of a Solar Empire, yet Galactic Inheritors has a turn-based battle system. This system is quite complex and more or less requires that the player completes a small number of tutorials first. The turns are made up of:

• Diplomacy
• Exploration
• Building
• Researching
• Strategic ship placement

With Diplomacy it is possible to make deals with other races to change their opinion. This changes the dynamic of the skirmish by providing the influence required to begin a war or gain an ally. The diplomacy is mostly controlled via media coverage - on the menu there is a race select with options for either bad or good media portrayal and for each eight or so turns of media portrayal of a certain race they will offer something with a view to lowering one of the statistics that make up their opinion. These are Fear and Hate (mainly) and they are affected by player race media and actions. The other races' fear may rise if the player's race owns more solar systems or ships than them, which can lead to war by about game turn 70.

The turn-based setup can prove to be intense with each skirmish lasting several hundred turns. The ship variants available at the beginning of a battle are quite limited but as research is completed, more ships become available. This expands the military power of the chosen race, which increases fear and potentially makes allies a little wary or enemies scared enough to start a war. Players can barter their way out of war using the diplomacy and in later updates the combat will change (according to developer notes).

Each planet has a few options for building, which can provide defensive upgrades for the citizens of that planet, ships for exploring, and colonisation or structures that bring in extra resources. It pays to have as many planets as possible, all building structures to keep the game going, and to keep the AI under the player race's thumb. The core gameplay is pretty much self-explanatory with a click to select and then another to commit, and action as should be expected of a strategy game.

While it is easy just to go through the different systems, how about the visuals and audio? Graphically, the game has little in the way of animation and uses mostly static sprites to represent the planets and ships. Everything on the screen is laid out nicely with the controls on a bar at the bottom with the rest of the menus being kept simple and uncluttered. The music is awesome when it works, although occasionally the game will load up with no sounds, which will most likely be patched at a later point. It presents fairly typical space war music but with a more upbeat heroic tone than most other space games. There is no tranquil ambience this time round either, as far as sound is concerned, as Galactic Inheritors offers only the most basic of sound effects at the time of this write-up, but again there are updates promised from the developer that will hopefully add some more on this front. Also, it is hoped that the team intends to offer some sort of campaign mode as it would make the game much more fleshed out and quite possibly bring in a bigger player base.