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Copies of reviews for Stars! Supernova Genesis
GameSpy/GameStats
Stars! Supernova (PC) Your newly re-emerging civilization faces impending doom. Your astrophysicists have learned that a nearby star, only a few light years away, will become a supernova in 50 years. They predict that the resulting blast of heat and gamma rays will kill most of you outright and leave a toxic world for the survivors.
A mysterious alien savior has built a massive and empty space station in orbit of your world, and left. On board you find plans for technology advanced far beyond your own: faster-than-light engines and communications devices, deep space exploration ships for discovering new homes in other star systems, colony ships to take you there, ships for mining uninhabited worlds, and enormous bristling ships for conducting war. You also find housing for thousands of people, production facilities, and a space dock. In one of the bays, you find a prototype scout ship and a colonizer. You might just get everyone to safety, before everything you've worked for goes to hell.
Currently in development, Stars! Supernova Genesis is a multi-geared, multi-player space strategy game with deep, well balanced gameplay that doesn't submit to a few winning formulas, that you can play either solo or online at almost any pace (from near real- time to scheduled turns).
- Developer: Mare Crisium
- Publisher: To Be Announced
- Genre: Strategy
- Release Date: Cancelled
- ESRB: TBA
- GameSpy Score: N/A
- Multiplayer: Up to 16 players over LAN or the Internet.
- System Requirements
Minimum:
- Pentium II 266 MHz, 64 MB RAM, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000, DirectX-compliant video card capable if displaying a minimum of 800x600 16-bit high color display, 16x CD-ROM drive, and 400 MB hard-disk space
Recommended:
- DirectX-compliant video card capable if displaying a minimum of 1024x768, 24-bit high color display
IGN
Stars! Supernova
This sci-fi strategy game offers more than just good looks.
by IGN Staff
US, July 31, 2000 - The original Stars! was a deep and complex (and often complicated) turn-based science-fiction strategy game (or TBSFSG if you're busy). Well several of the games that helped to shape the genre are being remade and are taking advantage of today's technology. Jeff McBride, FigureHead and founder of Mare Crisium, stopped by to show us Stars! Supernova, the follow-up title to the original Stars!
Set a thousand years after the original, Stars! Supernova puts you at the head of a space faring race. Your scientists have just discovered that your star is going to go supernova in a short while. You must evacuate the planet and begin your takeover of the galaxy. Along the way you'll enlist the aid of diplomats and spies, traders and technology merchants, pirates and soldiers. The new game, like the original, is all about planetary conquest. Take your armies or your dollars and crush your opposition any way you can. Victory is the ultimate justification. Jeff describes Stars! Supernova as "the game we wanted to write and play."
If you've played the original, you'll notice that the interface has been streamlined and redecorated. If you haven't played the original game, you'll just have to take our word for it -- this one looks and plays a lot better. The game benefits greatly from the inclusion of over 3GB of hi-res artwork rendered in 24-bits. There are 650 separate ship designs, 350 tech parts and 48 different race portraits. Beyond the look of things however, there's also a new battle model, a new economic system and improved diplomacy tools.
One of the problems with the original game (and with nearly all games of this type) is the complexity they achieve in the later stages of play. Who has time to manage forty or fifty colonies personally? The new game should go some lengths to alleviate that problem by allowing you to input several commands at once. Add several buildings to a planetary construction queue. Issue multiple orders to a single fleet. You can also tell your colonial governors if there is a general policy you'd like them to pursue. If you need a planet to look after mining interests or research, you can just give them a quick order and they'll take care of the rest. You can even set up a planet to run for maximum population growth.
The game will ship with dozens of playable races, each with particular attributes and abilities. Those of you who just have to have everything your way will be pleased with the race customizer feature. It's too bad that you can't just accept the races that ship with the game, but I guess that's just how you were raised. In any case, you'll need to select the physiology of your race. Biological races are organic in nature and use existing population to create even more population. Synthetic races, in contrast, can be constructed in factories. You'll also need to pick a social structure for your race. Human social order is the default standard by which the others are judged. You can opt to pursue a futurist policy of research and scientific investigation or you can pursue the warmonger path and stomp on the silly scientists. Take that, Blaise Pascal! Mwahaha!
Although Stars! Supernova offers three main branches of technology, Jeff tells us that "the technology system isn't based on needing to get Item A to get Item B to get Item C." The availability of each technology is instead based on levels of research in six separate fields -- things like propulsion, energy, construction...you get the point. Equally refreshing is the deemphasis on cash as a substitute for research. The research model is so separate from the resource model that having the most money doesn't necessarily mean you'll have the highest technology.
The new game will also feature a much more involved spying and diplomacy model but since we're a pretty tactless bunch here at IGN, let's just dispense with a discussion of the diplomatic options and get right to the good stuff. Spies in this game cost money and the more spies you have, the more money each of them asks for individually. This keeps the more devious players (like Trent) from maxing out their spy rings and stealing everything you and I worked so hard to create. Spies can be assigned to both general and specific counterintelligence in both military and economic spheres. Naturally the spy's skill will increase through training and field experience. A spy can also be caught however and can only be bought back through a huge cash payment or some sort of spy exchange program.
There's a random map and scenario generator once you tire of the 25 stand alone scenarios. You can set variables for both the size and type of galaxies, from small to large and in spiral, ring or blob shapes. Set variables for stellar phenomena and even write your own storyline and import original art and music if you like. There are all sorts of options to set the victory conditions exactly how you want them, You can even change the physical nature of the universe in Stars! Sick of Newton? Think Einstein was a knucklehead? You can show both of these chumps up by creating your own rules of planetary motion and physical interaction. Jeff hopes that the game will really take off on the strength of the multiplayer experience. It is, he admits, "designed first and foremost as a multiplayer game." Up to 16 players can compete in short skirmishes or sprawling space epics.
It seems as if we're in a true renaissance of the turn-based space game. Both Reach for the Stars and Master of Orion are both being remade (Master of Orion for the second time). Hopefully there's more to these remakes than a simple facelift. It's tough to strike a balance between giving gamers something new while also preserving the appeal of the original. Still, turn-based strategy isn't as popular as it used to be and while Imperium Galactica II is a great addition to the space strategy catalog, there's something very fascinating and meditative about the old turn-based games. It's good to see that so many of them are coming back in more pleasing forms. Let's hope they can live up to the reputation of the originals.
-- Stephen Butts
