Pax Nova takes on multiple layers of future 4X strategy soon
Intergalactic planetary, planetary, intergalactic
The sheer audacity of Greywolf's Pax Nova is impressive - not content with tackling Civilization-scale 4X strategy as shown above, it stretches out to spacefaring scale as well. Just announced and looking like a hybrid of several major 4X strategy games smushed into a shared hex-and-turn-based format, Pax Nova enters early access "soon" and is to be published by Iceberg Interactive. You can check out its teasingly brief debut trailer below.
A multi-layered strategy game like this is a delicate balancing act, and a tightrope that I hope Greywolf are up to walking. This isn't their first game in the genre - the also-Iceberg-published Dawn Of Andromeda slipped under RPS's radar, but it was received well enough as a decent 'seven out of ten' kinda game. While Dawn Of Andromeda took a pausable real-time approach to the genre, Pax Nova has a more traditional turn-based framework, although I'm curious whether infantry combat and interstellar travel happen on the same time-scale.
Interestingly, rather than have the universe packed with playable alien races, Pax Nova only has three (well, two, if you don't count humans as being alien enough), albeit split between fifteen factions. From the looks of the screenshots, communication with alien races requires specific research, although I'm hoping that some day a game will give us the option of attempting to hash out basic treaties though flailing inter-species mime. Greywolf do claim that new diplomatic options will be revealed through both research and events discovered out in the void, which is neat.
The current plan is for Pax Nova to make its early access debut almost fully formed, with only two or three months of public testing to be done before it officially launches. Greywolf claim the early access version will be feature complete, with new quests and factions to be finished over the remaining few months, along with localisation work and balancing. The price will increase when the game is finished.
There's no fixed date for Pax Nova's early access debut, but you can wishlist it here on Steam to be notified when it goes live. The studio's earlier Dawn Of Andromeda is currently 75% off on Steam, bringing it down to £5.74/€6.99/$7.49.