Today it’s time for Stuart Morgan and his game Galaxial to take the central stage at Space Sector. Galaxial is a real-time space strategy game that features an epic scale number of ships and star systems that you can explore, mine, colonize, and conquer.
Galaxial’s features include galaxy exploration and discovery, resource mining, colonization (worlds with unique bonuses), many different types of ships (frigate, destroyer, battleship, etc), ship design via modules enhancements and research. Stuart states to have drawn inspiration from game titles such as: EVE Online, X3, Sins of a Solar Empire and Total Annihilation. He is developing Galaxial by himself.
One thing that immediately captured my attention when looking at Stuart’s work was his art style. Galaxial features a very unique and interesting visual style. Structures and ships have unusual renderings and shapes that make them … well, unique. At first I thought that these could be some form of graphical prototypes of some sort, to fill in with more realistic models later on. But I’m not sure of this. In any case if the graphics stay like these I wouldn’t mind at all since they are unique and refreshing.
But it’s not only about the object’s art, everything in Galaxial looks very good. Explosions look and sound cool and weapons (beams, missiles) also look great. Music is also special, putting you in that kind of mood where you feel that space is vast and cold… So, aesthetically speaking the game is very interesting.
When you look at the screenshots and videos available you notice that the Galaxial’s main gameplay feature (at least the most mature one) deals with fleets of ships and real-time tactical combat. You can control your ships individually, select as many as you want and activate modules in a typical RTS kind of way. Apparently new and more powerful modules will be unlocked via research later on.
But, besides tactical combat Stuart also plans to offer a strategic layer with some empire-building aspects like exploration, colonization and resource mining. There are four main resources planned to gather from asteroids: common, reactive, radioactive and precious ore.
Couple of months ago Stuart said to be working on these strategic game aspects and in fact there are already news about this. In a recent blog post Stuart announced “resource and items management” and he explains to have plans to create transport ships to ferry cargo between planets and asteroid fields, and that these ships will be more fragile and defenseless. He adds that all ships will have at least a small cargo hold of some sort.
Regarding exploration and colonization aspects there seems to be little still to talk about. Stuart said that the plan is “to have special large coloniser ships. These will be expensive and slow to build and probably one use only”. Regarding exploration Stuart stated that there will be fog of war and that star systems will only appear on the starmap after you’ve explored them.
Research is planned to be used mainly to unlock new ship hulls and modules. The idea apparently is to have lots of these.
In his Galaxial FAQ Stuart states that there will be three gameplay modes available: sandbox (no objectives, ends if your empire is eliminated), survival (single planet game ala tower defense style) and missions (no empire building, just a single ship or small fleet that must complete objectives). Stuart also clarified that multiplayer is not planned at the moment but could be added later if there’s time. The game will be moddable due to the use of XML files for some parts of the game. Galaxial will be PC-only for now with possibility for ports later on.
Stuart said to be in pre-alpha a couple of months ago, and he has been updating his blog from time to time, so he seems to be progressing steadily. About a release date, the dev hopes to have a beta version (for pre-orders) version ready sometime this year.
Stuart is, as so many indie developers, looking for your feedback on the work he has produced so far. In fact I discovered Galaxial because he announced it on the space sector’s forums. He said to be “very interested in hearing any feedback you might have”. If you’re interested in knowing more about Galaxial or you want to contribute you can visit Stuart’s blog and leave your feedback there. You can follow his blog by email. Or you can use this blog post by leaving your comments here. I’ll make sure Stuart finds this post :) Or, alternatively, leave your feedback in the space sector’s forums in the thread the dev created to presented his game.
And now, Galaxial (pre-alpha).
“Stellar Indie Venture” is a Space Sector rubric created with the intention to help independent game developers in their bold ventures on developing their own sci-fi or space strategy games. Our intention with these articles is to offer more visibility to these indie projects and their talented developers early on, so that other people can know about them sooner and start interacting and supporting the devs in the best way they can. In the end players will have fun helping and more games, and talented devs will get earlier support, which will give them a better chance to make a living out of their dreams, and talent.
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This looks sleek, stylish, and very promising. =)
If one thing I have learned over the years is that graphics take backseat to gameplay. This game looks promising. =) Adam I am going to go broke with all the treasure finds you keep us aware of. =)
Agreed, but that doesn’t mean good graphics should not be appreciated. And a game with good gameplay and good graphics is always better than one with good gameplay only ;)
About the wallet. Well, look at it this way. Having more available games doesn’t necessarily mean more expense but more options to choose from :) And there are other equally valid ways to support the devs besides buying their games.
Hey, this looks really cool!
[throws money at screen]
lol, exactly what i felt like. I asked the producer if he’s considering kick starter, but he said he’s not based in the US, so no.
I’d help him out any way tho. This game looks so promising.
I wonder, whether there are bigger ship classes than these “Impaler” cruisers…
Funny thing, despite its stylised graphics, it somehow reminds me of Homeworld more than any of these other games, maybe cause of the music?
Theres currently 12 classes of ship, cruiser being the 4th smallest.
Many people have said it reminds them of Homeworld, maybe its the engine trails?
This looks terrific, honestly I am getting a bit tired of those Indie games trying to be unique with still a somewhat generic art style but this is truly different. It looks smooth, fluid and has a nice touch.
I hope that the strategic aspect does not come to short in terms of gathering ressources, colonizing and such. Combat is great but I also like to manage stuff.
Pretty impressive game so far considering that it is developped by only one man.
I might actually get this 4x game. Sins of a solar empire didn’t really impress me that much, but this game and its art style seems lovely. Is it free? Is it on kick-starter? Game looks fun, can’t wait.