The indie games studio Camel 101 is about to release its most ambitious game project to date, the space RTS game: Gemini Wars. Gemini Wars is part of the Space Sector’s sci-fi/space games you can’t miss in 2012 list, and it is definitely a very promising space game to look for this year. Gemini Wars is scheduled for release on June 8th, 2012 for the PC and Mac.
Early on we had an opportunity to talk to Ricardo Cesteiro, producer and developer at Camel 101. Ricardo, and his team, come from the days of the zx spectrum and they all seem to share the love for science fiction, especially for space operas like Star Wars, Stargate or Battlestar Galactica.
Gemini Wars has gone gold by now, however I had access to a Gemini Wars preview build. Here are some initial impressions on what to expect.
So, how is gameplay like?
At release time Gemini Wars will offer a 16-mission single-player campaign with about 30 hours of gameplay. Yes, no multiplayer options nor a skirmish mode are available as of yet. Those two will come soon after release through a free DLC. This has been confirmed by GW’s producer in our interview. There’s also no word about a sand-box mode, and I have no info that leads me to believe there will be one, at least for now. So, in summary, Gemini Wars will offer a single player campaign with multiplayer and skirmishes to come soon after release.
Contrary to other similar space strategy games on the market, Camel 101 has focused its efforts on a story-driven campaign. So, instead of going with a bunch of unrelated scenarios, or a sand-box mode, Gemini Wars will offer a story-driven single player campaign with dialog and cut-scenes. This was a great bet in my opinion because cut-scene campaigns are surely lacking in space strategy games these days, where usually sand-box is king. You have to get back to the Homeworld series (almost 10 years ago) to see something like that.
Although I don’t like to use comparisons much to describe a game I think it’s ok to use that here, perhaps because, after all, this is a preview and not a review. And, understandably, people want to know a bit more about what to expect.
So, here we go. Gemini Wars plays similar to Sins of a Solar Empire and Homeworld combined.
Plays similar to Sins because both the game’s strategic and tactical layers unfold in the same seamless environment. Seamless because there are no transitions from where you order the construction of a military space station for example, and where you fight wars. It’s also a bit like Sins in the way you plan and develop your economy, with what I like to call exo-planetary enterprises, that is to say almost everything you do is done in the planet’s orbit and what happens on the planets themselves is highly abstracted to you (you may see this in games like Sword of the Stars, for example).
Gemini Wars also plays similar to Homeworld in many ways. For starter’s, there’s a story-driven campaign with cut-scenes, and both games lack a sand-box mode. GW is also a bit like HW in the interesting lore and in the way these games manage to create an interesting science fiction ambiance with a sense of depth and mystery to it. At least I felt that.
But, what exactly can I do in Gemini Wars?
The backbone of Gemini Wars’ gameplay is no doubt the space combat. So, you will be, most of the time, building and moving spaceships around. You will also be spending time researching for new ships and you will want to evolve your colonies, because the size of your fleets will depend on how developed you are. How many colonies you have and how big they are has a direct implication on the amount of ships you can build.
You can build colony ships to colonize new planets. These colonies will start out as small outposts but they will evolve, in time, into bigger colonies. But, again, everything is exo-planetary. All space stations are orbital structures and even colonies can only be seen and interacted with as seen from space. What I mean is that there isn’t planetary development like when you build structures on a planet or terraform, those kind of things.
Regarding empire-building features, you can build mining stations to extract crystals, the game’s main resource (needed to build everything in the game). You can also build research stations to unlock new technologies, such as new ships and ship improvements. In order to build ships you must build military stations. In addition to these structures you can also build a stargate, an impressive structure that will allow you to move between systems quickly. These stargates are monster structures that you will not want to lose, as you will be stranded in a system if you do.
What else can you do? You can invade your enemies’ worlds. But first you will need to take out any weapon defenses and shields to land your transport ships. Invasions are quite cool to watch by the way. During the assault the user interface shows a nice live feed of the battle, which gives you a feeling of how well the invasion is unfolding.
So, besides tactical combat, Gemini Wars provides a considerable strategic layer. So, you will indeed be forced to make a considerable amount of decisions. You can decide to develop your economy, colonize worlds, build ships, build space stations, research new technologies, wage war, invade colonies, in order to vanquish your enemy. In a way it looks like a 4X game right? Well, not really. The game lacks diplomacy aspects and (although not a requirement) it doesn’t feature a sand-box mode. So, Gemini Wars is a space strategy game but doesn’t really qualify as a 4X game (only by a small amount).
My only grips with the game at this moment, which I played only for a few hours, is with the controls. GW’s UI seems to provide all the basic functionality but I had a bit of trouble controlling things. For instance, I keep zooming a lot and sometimes I lose track of my fleets, but nothing too serious I guess.
And, how does it look?
For an indie game developed by a small team, Gemini Wars looks great. Planet models aren’t top-notch and ships and space stations models are not formidable but they surely look nice, no big complaints here. And being Gemini Wars a strategy game, visuals are not even that important, in any case.
The User Interface gets the job done. It provides all the basic stuff you need to play an RTS, like multiple selection of ships, ability to create spaceship groups or selection of all ships for a specific class. There’s also a strategic map in case you lose yourself a bit and need to see the big picture. There’s also a battle camera that allows you to sit back and watch the battles if you want, and there’s a follow camera that you can use if you want to see the battlefield from a specific ship’s perspective.
Bottom line
I’m still getting the hang of controls and camera options because frankly I’m still learning how to play the game. But, I liked what I’ve seen so far. Above all else, I’m pleased to see that Gemini Wars seems to offer a much thicker strategic layer than I previously anticipated. Surely it’s a lot about tactical space combat , but there are also many decisions and planning to be made to get you through the 16-mission campaign, and there are different difficulty levels also.
Pre-orders are already open (box: iceberg, digital: camel 101, gamersgate, gamestop/impulse), and if you’re wondering if you should buy the game right now or wait, I would say that if you like to build and control spaceships in real-time, need to have a sufficiently deep enough layer of strategic decisions to make and you enjoy a story-driven campaign with cut-scenes, then Gemini Wars could be a good game for you.
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While I enjoy a story driven campaign very much, the true content of the game, atleast for me, its the chance to play sandbox mode. I hope they’re planning to add it like the skirmish and the mp via DLC, otherwise Im seriously considering to steer clear from it…
Skirmishes should arrive shortly after release (as for MP), however I don’t know the date for that.
That much I saw, but the deal breaker for me is the lack of sandbox mode.
I did the preorder for this game i love this kind of game this game remember me part of conquest frontier wars with fleets of battleships running in the deep space…i hope camel team add a skirkmish to do the game more replayable….i am sure that the tactical part with invasions planet and boarding ships gonna be a good point in this game….
I was not particularly interested in picking this one up at release, I am a bit more now that you compared to to a SINS and HW hybrid.
If you say it is fair to call Gemini Wars a Homeworld like game with more strategic elements like SINS, then I am more interested now.
Yes, the story-driven campaign does feel a bit like Homeworld. It’s really a campaign, not just a collection of unrelated scenarios. It’s similar to Sins in the way you mine resources, build structures, colonize systems (with not too many available to choose from, as in Sins), research new stuff, amass fleets and then go to war.
Now, if GW is as good as Homeworld and Sins combined that’s a different story, we shall see. After I play through the campaign I’ll publish my review.