Monday 06 Jul 2009

I admit it, I have a soft spot for indie games. Now nothing says indie gaming like two brothers who go into business together to develop titles largely by themselves. Such is the case with brothers Tom and Simon de Rivaz who founded the London based SaintXi games studio in 2008. Despite having possibly one of the ugliest company logos I have ever seen, their debut game Light of Altair is a beautiful space economic and strategy title, surprisingly so, considering the size of the team involved and the selling price.

The story for this scenario-based adventure is set in the near future where the United Earth (UE) is formed after many years of war. The United Earth then sets about colonising the solar system. Unfortunately it seems human nature gets the better of this new world order and, with the help of some greed and jealousy, the people of earth are once again splintered into factions and things quickly turn ugly. The factions in the game are loosely based on the continents of earth – Africa, America, Europe etc. During the course of the game you will get to try your hand at playing all of them although the only differences between the factions really are their logos, ship and planet colour.

Initially the game focuses mostly on colonising new planets, while teaching the player to build up a strong planetary economy. Colonising consists of landing a colony hub onto a planet and then placing various types of structures in the building range around this hub. Structures include power stations, factories, entertainment facilities and farms, with the latter allowing your colony to grow in population size and as a result granting you an expanded build radius. Planets vary in size and most can support multiple colonies. Some planets are rich in minerals and can yield great wealth and fuel for your fleet, while others offer wide open spaces and hospitable atmospheres for building truly massive colonies which eventually develop into cites. Most buildings require energy to function but building power stations and heavy industry cause unhappiness which in turn must be alleviated by building entertainment structures. While this system works very well I was a little disappointed that the distances between structures does not affect the severity of these negative influences - this means that if you build a heavy industry next to a colony hub it will have exactly the same negative effect on the colony’s happiness than if you had built it say on the other side of the planet!

Don’t you just love the smell of heavy industry in the morning? Neither do your colonists.

Once you have overcome the super-sensitive nostrils of your colonists and built your first research centre, many new technologies become available for you to set your scientists to work on such as new colony buildings, spaceship abilities and weapons upgrades. Research is pretty simple in the game, just click on a technology and after a fixed amount of time it is discovered. I would have liked a bit more complexity in the research model maybe with a more defined tech-tree or at least the speed of your discoveries being dependent on the number of research centres you have constructed.

As the game progresses you will be allowed to build spaceships. Initially only a few weapon types and hull designs will be available to you but obviously more are unlockable through research as the game progresses. Each hull type has various weapon and module slots that the player is able to fill with the parts that he (or she) has researched. One can then create a prototype of this new craft and it is ready for mass production in your war factories. Unfortunately you cannot customise the look of your ships Galactic Civilizations 2 style, so there won’t be any pink polka-dot battle cruisers with chrome bumpers but rather you will have to make do with the stock standard ‘grey’ look. However, the outfitting interface is easy to use and you will still have loads of fun experimenting with different module and weapons combinations.

No chrome bumpers, but it does appear that there is a module to launch small brown dogs out of a red box.

There are various types of weapons and counter measures available for each, for example a shield module is a great defence against beam weapons and an E.C.M. system will protect against missile weapons. The different factions in the game favour different weapon types so outfitting your ships to deal effectively with them is key. Unfortunately only one design is allowed at a time per hull type and if you alter this design then ALL the ships of this type are altered in your fleet. This is frustrating later in the game where you will face more than one faction simultaneously and you will have to re-fit your ships constantly depending on who attacks you or vice versa.

The main link between colonising and your fleet is fuel. The more fuel you generate from the mining operations on your colonies, the greater size fleet you can support. Spaceships can be built on any planet with a shipyard. Shipyards will also automatically repair any damaged ship that enters the orbit of their planet. You will also use your fleet to capture enemy planets by force and this consists of entering the rival planet’s orbit and defeating any defences protecting it. Once this is done the colonies on the planet below will slowly bow to your superior might and will be converted to your cause. In most missions you will have three fleet “group” markers that allow you to have up to three attack fleets, as well as a defence slot for each planet that contains a shipyard. However, I found that having three fleets was not needed at all to win any of the scenarios and in fact it was always easier in every mission to combine all your ships into one fleet and attack with this.

The space battles themselves were my favourite part of the game. While you have absolutely no control over the battle once it’s started, just seeing your ships pound the enemy into Swiss-cheese with gauss cannons while their beam weapons are absorbed by your strategically deployed shields was most satisfying. Also I was surprised at how useful the smaller craft were in these battles. In many space combat games building the biggest ship you can, with the biggest guns, will result in victory. In Light of Altair massive slow-firing weapons will waste precious time firing individually on each small fighter, giving your other ships an opportunity to rip it to shreds.

My money is on the orange fleet.

The game is rounded off nicely with an up-beat dancy soundtrack which is never too overpowering, and good sound effects. It would have also been a nice addition if the faction leaders in the game were voice acted as constantly reading mission orders did become a bit tiring. Lastly the game lacks any sort of skirmish or multiplayer modes and with only the campaign missions on offer the game does suffer in the replayability department.

Overall though I am very impressed with this title considering the price and I look forward to the next two titles in this series. Now, about that company logo…

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Contributor:	Brad

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