I was reading Greg Ford’s “The Indie Scene: A to Z” column today, and noticed that he was missing a very interesting title for his “G” edition. Positech Games’ Cliff Harris has an ace up his sleeve – Gratuitous Space Battles.
Positech is probably best known for its Kudos and Democracy games, which are sim-feature heavy titles. Gratuitous Space Battles is shaping up to be a nice departure from those titles by not necessarily toning down the sim but turning up the action.
Earlier this week, Rock, Paper, Shotgun conducted an interview with Harris on the upcoming game. Described by Harris himself:
It’s a bit of a hybrid game, it’s part ship design, part pre-battle planning, and part interactive cut-scene space battle viewer thing. Basically it’s like a big space battle simulator where you can go back to the start of the battle and re-jig things and try to correct for why your fleet got destroyed. In gameplay terms, it’s a sort of tower-defense game, but with moving spaceships you designed.
The Positech page for Gratuitous Space Battles describes the game as skipping past the base building and other delays common in strategy games and getting right to the action of massive space battles.
The game empowers players with the ability to build star fleets from modular components and issue engagement orders. Gratuitous Space Battles will then play out like a tower-defense game where the player watches her fleet combat an AI or human player fleet, hoping for the best.
In the Rock, Paper, Shotgun interview, Harris describes the pains he took to find the right artist for the job, and it looks like his efforts paid off. The ship designs look great and the animations and sound effects are a pleasure to the senses. From the video and screen shots available, Gratuitous Space Battles will offer plenty of customization and ship design variety.
Right now the game is currently in beta, open only to those who pre-order. If you enjoy massive space battles, this is definitely one you should check out.
