Horizon

With many games trying to innovate popular genres, it’s tough for old designs to stay relevant. Despite staying in the past, space strategy title Horizon does look like it’s going to be able to latch onto a nostalgic atmosphere with a capable game. If that’s going to attract younger or less experienced audiences still stands to be decided.

This space quest works as most 4X games do: The game starts on a map filled with planets and players get 1 of these, scattered among civilizations with a similar setup. By building a fleet of space crafts, the universe is up for grabs to anyone who can outwit opponents and suppress them through either military, diplomatic or technologic supremacy; though it’s usually a mix of all elements. Visuals are definitely from a different era, with low resolution textures. Then again, the game does uphold a clean style by not trying to overstep its scope with rich details and so forth. Things are kept mobile and elegant, so it has a sort of timeless quality to it. That will work in its favor as it mixes this into its gameplay as well.

Any planet is divided in advance in 6 sections that affect food, the economy, production and research. Predetermined sections are also kept for auxiliary military buildings, which can feel light because of it. A shipyard will make ships of different classes build faster, while a starbase operates as a supply post. Still, this planetary management screen doesn’t budge a lot for a while and that could lead to some sense of routine pretty early in the game.

To overcome that, research can unlock new elements to the game in a more novel way. Each scientific field is again predetermined, but periodic advances will add newly discovered techs to the table. Additionally, instead of immediately having access to foreign or abstract technologies, players will need to work towards an understanding of the discovery, before being able to use it.This is a lot more logical as a way to approach progress, since alien gibberish doesn’t immediately seem as obvious. More so, technologies can further be selected in their own section and their grid in itself can be highlighted to truly pinpoint where the goal should go next.  If Horizon does one thing well, it’s trying to alter the tech tree design a little. Other aspects in the game, particularly military ones, are much better off with this interesting exploration of discoveries.

When it comes to combat, things stay in a traditional turn-based model, set on a large map. It’s possible to give commands like movements, boarding ships and so on. Attacking ships can be done from a distance, but this also affects the hit rate. It’s also important to be aware of facing the fleet in a certain direction, as weapons are set on a custom design and can’t fire if they’re not positioned correctly. There’s a certain dynamic to these fights, though the short tutorial may leave the upcoming struggles of these huge fights to be a little unclear. Certainly as the politics side of the game is equally elusive, the first few wars may be a harsh epiphany of wrongly prioritized technology.

Diplomatic relations follow the same eb and flow as ever, with mild adjustments. It’s still possible to gain treaties and alliances through a set of conversations, except in this case a rudimentary trading zone is collected just from visiting neighboring systems.

A lot more fun and versatile are the game’s random missions that periodically pop up. Players can be beckoned to retrieve an ancient artifact or perform a favor that may boost relations with a civilization. These quests often even have different choices on how to be handled. For example, a race might ask to bring back one of their artifacts, but the one that holds the item might offer an entire new deal. This prompts other game mechanisms as well, such as using a ship to dig on a planet to uncover riches. Furthermore, ships can survey planets to find out interesting locations that could enhance colonization there, such as a robot factory that could boost production.

Right now, colonization still feels rather light, with only minor disadvantages to expanding quickly, which could hinder the game in long terms. As long as exploration is kept up, balancing finances shouldn’t be too hard and the stress of branching out isn’t as impactful to become a factor. It’s a trick that needs to be learned, but once that’s out of the way, the filter of finances kind of dissipates. Hopefully that will be slightly adjusted in later stages of development.

It could go either way for Horizon, but it does already hold some solid ideas in place to retain that classic strategy gameplay with a few adjustments. It may not become the world’s greatest, but it would certainly please many a fan looking for a fix.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed. (@Daavpuke)