The developer of Gratuitous Space Battles, Cliff Harris, sends word that his space strategy game will be free to play on Steam this weekend until Sunday at 1 pm PST (check below the game’s description on how to download and play).
Along with the free weekend event, GSB will also be sold at a substantial discount (75% off) for both the base game and the complete pack, which includes five DLCs that unlock new races, ships, techs and other goodies.
Gratuitous Space Battles combines simulation and strategy elements with a particular focus on ship design and space battles. In GSB you customize your ships, assemble them into fleets and then instruct them with what they need to do in battle through a series of missions. At release time all you could do after that point was sit down and enjoy the fireworks, but now, apparently, you do have some degree of control over your ships during battle. But, you can assess that by yourself since the game will be free this weekend :)
To know our opinion on Gratuitous Space Battles check out our review. GSB is available for the PC and Mac.
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I played the demo quite a bit, and while the ship construction and battles were interesting, I never pulled the trigger and bought the game. There seemed to be something missing from the experience: why am I doing this? There was no larger game involving a war, campaign or civilizational conflict to flesh-out the battles.
I think GSB would make an excellent combat module for a 4X game, but it is pretty shallow by itself.
Pretty much this.
I love the construction part. I get hung up on the battles because, much like Dominions 3, I have no control over what my beautiful ships are doing and can’t stand to see everybody die in a fire because they weren’t following my pre-programmed orders exactly how I intended. The weird thing is that I’m not sure how much more I’d be interested in the game even if I had direct control over every ship. It’s fun for a couple hours, but there’s nothing really enticing me to come back to it… like Jeff said: there’s no larger conflicts, wars or campaigns to draw me in.
Cliffski added direct control over the ships several months ago. You can control the ships and give them direct orders.
Sounds good… but I’m not wondering most of us was not aware of this change, since Cliffski completely forgot to advertise this anywhere. Even their own website still states you have no control in the battles at all – over and over.
Time to take a look again on the game on this weekend :)
Fun game and inexpensive as it is you definitely get your money worth.
For 3.50 its a gift. Get it!
Quick fun games with a lot of stuff blowing up, for enthusiasts you can play around with all the cool equipment and do a lot to improve you combat effectiveness, to the point of giving orders to the single ships making them stay in formation, breaking off, protecting your capitals or going after wounded enemy’s.
GSB is a decent game, especially for the offer price.
Just a note that the latest expansion pack – The Outcasts – is NOT included in the sale and is £4.49, a pound more than the GSB ‘complete pack’ with the base game and all the previous DLCs.
I think the “complete pack” missing that DLC is a bit of false advertising by steam, even if I understand the sale on the older stuff will help drive sales of the new DLC.
It’s advertised like that the other places I check, I don’t think Steam has anything to do with it. It’s probably just going to be like SOTS where it takes a couple of “complete” packs before they actually mean it.
Is the latest DLC worth picking up if it’s your first time playing? I heard it adds in a funky 4X mode or something.
I haven’t got the latest DLC, although I’ve previously purchased all the others. From the info the Outcasts just seems to be a new faction pack with a few new ships and modules, same as the other DLCs.
A ‘campaign’ mode was added to GSB quite a long time ago in an attempt to offer some sort of persistence and meaning to the one-off scenarios. I think it’s this mode you might have heard of. It doesn’t really work as it’s too much of an afterthought and doesn’t add anything other than a randomised map to choose your next mission from rather than a list. It certainly isn’t a 4x game mode.
^^ sorry, my bad, was replying to spacelizard above.
This is not a game you will be spending hours with, but for a bargain price (I paid EUR 3.24) you get a nice game that you can play whenever you have 5 mins of free time. Should have for a sci-fi fan.
Besides spaceship construction is always cool :)
I could never get into this game. No matter how much I tried, I just can’t enjoy it :(
Have to admit, I also had a lot of trouble getting into this game although I played a much earlier version of it. The deal breaker for me was that I simply couldn’t stand how there was no control over my ships in tactical combat.
I understand that its supposed to focus on design, but I find that its much more fun to be a space admiral than a bloody production engineer.
Now that tactical control is implemented and the game is so cheap, I think I’m going to give it another try. The price is certainly right.
Space Empires IV and V is 75% cheaper on steam untill the 4th of march also, also gemini wars, stellar impact have good discounts, i was browsing the steam specials today and found this. just a heads up for people that might be interested.
Thanks, I’ll update the sales.