By Kieron Gillen on January 14th, 2010 at 12:55 pm.
I haven’t played this yet – though I’ve just signed up – but this beta interests me in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s by a new developer founded by ex-Irrationalite (i.e. Freedom Force, Swat, Bioshock, etc) Jay Kyburz with fellow Irrationalites. It seems I like writing “Irrationalites”. Secondly, it may be the closest thing I’ve seen to what I wished for at the end of my Travian piece back in the day – diplomacy-heavy, low-maintenance, smaller-player-numbers strategy game you can slide into your day. Neptune’s Pride is a online-only space-empire game. It’s been in development for 4 months, but is already is functional and in open Beta. There’s a video below which shows the basics, but you’d be better going to look around the site.
So yeah. Very much my kind of thing and could be very interesting. It strikes me if I was doing the Unknown Pleasures again this year, this may have been on it. More news on when my game fills up and I actually start.
Micropayments, eh?
I’ll be Gringleflognar the Lesser, awaiting more players…
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I joined a game some days back, but everyone else in the game got switched to AI because of inactivity, so I guess I’m playing alone. Not that I even know what to do.
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Well, it appears to have filled up now. Lets see how this thing works.
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I totally wouldn’t want to be that poor yellow bastard in the middle.
Oh wait.
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Which is another design flaw. This sort of game should have a wraparound galaxy.
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All your base are belong to us. To me I mean. Game seems like my cup of beer.
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Login using your Google identity?
Sold!
I am such a whore for Google.
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SO… you spend, let’s say, five minutes making your first set of moves. And then wait a day for much to happen. Then another five minutes of play. And wait another day.
I can see that by the end game it’ll be more interesting. But… the early steps are going to be tedious and the diplomacy is just so much wank until you know what your opponent’s position is. Diplomacy will count for naught until 7 players have 1 evil overlord to mass against.
It’s not exactly Farmville.
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Welllll, I jumped in and sent all my neighbors “zoning maps” to let them know where I considered our borders were, on official stationary. One of them even sent me a snow globe with a dolphin in it that plays a Sting song.
I am currently digesting it.
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Anyone up for doing some kinda RPSers game? random internet strategy people scare me.
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That’d be fun. Is there any way of making a private game?
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I’m assuming you can make premium games private. But I’m also assuming you have to pay for those.
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That 5th species type at the top looks like Admiral Ackbar got dried out while yelling, “IT’S A TARP!!1″
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Gaahhh…. so sluggish, totally unplayable for me. Shame as i think I’d like this sort of thing. Being a beta, I should probably report back on any bugs, but not sure where I’d do that?
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I’ve joined as Xen Space Monkey, now lets see if I can work out the interface….
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This looks horribly reminiscent of some other free online browser based thinger I used to play a couple of years ago.
I’ll see if this works at work – if it passes the Filter of Bannination then I’ll join a game and give it an bash.
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Joined a pending newb game as my old MOO2 ID — Cvntyfvx Maximvs
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Those avatars are neat.
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/agree. at first glance I thought this would have an under-water ocean depths setting.
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Maybe I’m a spelling nazi, but I can’t help it: the first thing I see when I visit the site is “intrduction.” Yeesh.
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The second thing is the lack of apostrophe in “Neptunes.” Then I visit the company’s website just long enough to notice “a independant” and I decide perhaps this game isn’t for me.
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Well, yeah, he should have hired an editor, obviously. But let’s give him the benefit of a doubt and assume that English isn’t his native tongue.
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I’m in a pending game right now. Hopefully there will be enough dedicated players for a decent lengthy game.
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Wow… me and a friend have spent an hour debating possible strategies for our current game. I love the simplicity of it all: minimal research, one unit type, one resource, it really forces you to focus on broad strategy.
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I’m in your game, good to know that you have a friend :P
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Er, in the game, that is.
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Hmmm… Moss… Ok, you’re the purple guy on the bottom. If you want, we could team up and trade some tech. Sound good?
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Yeah, sounds alright to me.
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I’m in game and it looks like it’ll be fun. Of course we won’t really know for a week or two.
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Currently on game 66, let’s see how this goes; seems the game will be VERY slow, though.
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I’m going to keep a play diary on mein blog, since this looks like it’s gonna be a long game ¬_¬
Of course it’s all going to be lies, damn lies and links to porn sites, but isn’t that what blogs are for?
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Not enough links to porn sites, imo
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Hmm, my starting position is probably the weakest in terms of number of available stars before I run into conflict. Guess I’d better try to play everyone against each other, then.
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I’m also liking what I’m seeing.
I was long looking for a VGA Planets-like game since long ago, and this seems it. Reminds me a little to a pseudo-german/euro boardgame version of risk, in Space.
What I don’t really like is that I think that if you are out one day or two… You probably are going to miss everything what’s happening. Events are a little bit “insufficient”.
Do you know another game like this but turn-based?
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Somehow I missed this post. Odd. Glad I caught it though.
Like – the music and simplified interface, as well as the art style. The star map reminds me of LE:I.
When I’m not getting ready for bed I must try this.
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We’ve had two players from our game become AI controlled due to inactivity, which is ominous. No idea yet whether they’ll turtle or go all kill crazy.
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One of our players dropped into AI almost immediately. Currently, he has nine stars, while the next lowest player has 15. Turtle it appears to be.
I spend way to much time just staring at the map, mulling over my plans and trying to deduce everyone else’s. The agonizingly slow pace just adds to the suspense.
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Okay, playing this game is much more terrifying than a bunch of circles and lines really has any right to be…
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I approve of this game.
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It turns out that some AI players turtle, and some go kill crazy… and it had to be in my face, didn’t it. Piffle.
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Apologies to the guys I was playing against as Gringleflognar – my BB went down for a month, so I went AI. Utterly disappointing, since I had many, many plans for that game.
Who won?
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Great dear god the servers are down! Seriously, am I the only one losing my shit AI controlled home worlds must be conquered and plus 3 to science must be obtained! Son of a bitch I love this game and I curse google’s name until it is fixed! Somebody better get in there and FIX IT, I don’t know who’s to blame for this regularly scheduled maintenance but someone will pay.
Patheticly,
Gojgo
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It is back, bless you google for your relatively timely maintenance which did not result in any of my plans being crushed by unknowable forces.
See you about the galaxy.
Gojgo
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