Welcome to Polaris Sector, my friends! In preparation for an upcoming podcast in which I’ll sit down with the game’s producer at Slitherine to discuss said game, I sat down for a spell and played through an early portion of the game for about an hour to get a feel for it. I have to say, it had a solid feel to it. The colonization portion (once I was able to find a planet suitable for colonization) was streamlined and made sense. The scouting out planets portion was fun (even though constantly running out of fuel — which was my fault — was not so much) and exciting. The diplomacy was both different and hilarious. The research is really unique and fluid, and I really liked how it was less of a tree and more of a stream of discovery. Even the ship building — which I usually hate if any of y’all know me — was fairly painless and intriguing. It’s tough, damned tough, to really stand out amongst all the other spacey 4X games coming out. It’s also a fine line developers have to walk between appealing to classic sensibilities while adding new features that make the game a more suitable and modern equivalent to the games of old. Overall, even in this very early stage, I really like what I’m seeing with Polaris Sector. Even with one race to play, it’s got variety and it has heart. This is definitely one to keep an eye on.
Looks the man in the video is not a 4X gamer, or at least didn’t play complex one; usually we explore the UI as soon as we get into the game without tutorials or stuff like that. And spent 30 minutes or more in building tankers. Anyway you got access to the beta, quite lucky.
The man in the video is a massive 4X gamer, he’s just not particularly GOOD at 4X games. ;)