Alone In The Dark: Planetary Annihilation's Single-Player

Annihilating planets with other people - orbited by warm smiles and booming laughter - is all well and good, but sometimes you want to be alone while decimating armies and grinding celestial bodies into stardust. It's a good time to think, to take stock of your life and what it would be like to have it destroyed by space ships. That's what single-player is for, but for quite some time Planetary Annihilation didn't really have it. TODAY, though, that all changes.

Developer Uber Entertainment announced that Galactic War, as it's known, is now available, explaining it as follows:

"In Galactic War, you’ll be placed in control of a reawakened Commander with access to a limited tech tree. As you explore and battle across the galaxy’s procedurally generated systems, you’ll collect random technology and find perks that boost your manufacturing and fighting capabilities."

"We designed Galactic War to be replayable, and for every playthrough to feel different. We also want you to decide the scale and intensity: each of Galactic War’s sizes change how many systems are in the galaxy and introduce different loadouts. And the pressure’s on. Annihilation is final."

So it doesn't have the pre-written plot of an old-school RTS single-player campaign, but hopefully there'll be some FTL-style joy to be found in the randomness and dripping dread of permadeath.

This, of course, is only the first iteration of Galactic War, so expect updates in the near future. For now though, the foundation at least seems interesting. And now that I mention a space game and the word "foundation," I just want a game of Asimov's Foundation series - or at least set in that universe. But you know, done the right way. If it's an EA shooter then heads will roll and also were we talking about a different videogame earlier? I forget.