By Kieron Gillen on February 12th, 2010 at 12:30 pm.
This is just great. Galcon won the 2009 IGF Mobile Game Design award, and Galcon Fusion is a PC (and other, similar to PC-but-not-PC formats) version of it. It’s also interestingly timed. Neptune’s Pride and Galcon Fusion are basically the same game – based around conquering planets to maximise ship production and manouvering those ships. Except that Neptune’s Pride plays across a time-scale of weeks and Galcon Fusion plays in a time-scale of about a minute. Putting aside the obvious improvements, Galcon Fusion has a 80s graphics mode AND a colour-blindness mode to avoid the obvious problems. Get the demo from here or buy for 9 dollars (going up to 10 next week) here. Also on Steam, before you ask. Footage follows!
This is just really neat and compulsive, and I plan to play a whole load more later. You should give it a shot.
Haven’t got the time to check it out today, but is there much of a difference between this, the mobile version and the previously released flash version?
http://www.galcon.com/flash/play.php
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I remember when PA wrote about this and I didn’t really get what was going on but I just tried the FLASH version (in work) and that’s a great little time waster. Gonna have to check out the demo at home.
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“is there much of a difference between this, the mobile version and the previously released flash version?”
I don’t know, but what I do know is that while the flash version got annoyingly impossible on one of the later levels, the PC version has a bunch of different difficulty settings and the AI seems to actually behave itself according to what you’ve selected. So if the mobile version is like the PC version, the AI will have been greatly improved.
Also: you can change a fleet’s destination mid-flight now.
Otherwise, it’s just a more-polished version of the original. Nothing wrong with that: Eufloria is way better than Dyson, World of Goo is better than Tower of Goo, et cetera. The flash version of Galcon made me ragequit, but I might get the PC version based on the demo.
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Sounds good to me, especially redirecting troops!
If I had an iPhone I would have purchased Galcon in an instant, should really do the same on PC. Besides, the Galcon-like that Alec posted about recently (Civilization Wars) got me interested in playing again.
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Quite irritating that the installer does not allow you to choose the install directory.
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I’m not sure how this is any different from Phage Wars, TBH.
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or Eufloria (aka Dyson) !
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and other, similar to PC-but-not-PC formats
Hey, linux users have feelings too :)
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It’s a great game, but at that price I think I’ll stick with Galcon Labs on the iPhone for 59p.
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I played the original Galcon to death a few years back (it was a PC game long before it was released on the iPhone). This looks like more of the same, but I’m still tempted to buy…
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Bugger that, where do I get the ASCII version shown at the start of that video?!
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Press F10, it’s written in BIG letters before you start a first map…
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Like almost every flash game (including canabalt) I played it for about 10 minutes before getting bored and moving on to another tab.
There seems to be something about browser games that means they can’t hold my attention. It often comes down to the fact that they have a very basic mechanic that’s just repeated over and over again.
Indie games, on the other hand, I love. It’s a mystery.
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I never played the iPhone version of Galcon, but I found its PC version very good. I am almost purchasing.
I don think it costs too much. US$ 8,99 is a good price for a game like this, I think.
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i played the steam demo for about 45 mins and was having a good time… slowly racking up the difficulty setting until it got too hard, and the AI is just plain boring in a game like this.. could be fun with a lot of players, but i think it only supports 4?
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Missing a multiplayer demo is really a downfall for Galcon Fusion. It supports, I think, up to at least 10 players. That gets pretty frantic in the early stages as people clash over the initial planets.
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