GameRating

This weekend I went and picked up Gratuitous Space Battles. I heard about it from snooping around looking for a strategy game to waste my time on and found an indie spaceship builder, in which you design a craft from multitudes of different hulls and hundreds of different weapons, shields, armour classes and special items.

You pit your missile crammed monsters against different AI scenarios. Though it may sound easy enough to just jam the biggest, baddest looking laser beam on the planet in eight different spots on your hull, there is more to it than that. On most of the levels there are different buffs and de-buffs that can force you to remake your entire fleet again, which can be slightly annoying but is worth it to see enemy ships melt into the backdrop. For example I decided that the best plan for my fleet would be all out shields and missiles, but then a level came in which there was an EMP that meant all shields were disabled (affecting you and your enemy) thus I had to rethink my entire strategy.

Each ship has a number of stats that range from health to speed and the amount of power it produces. If you over spend power, it won’t work. There should be a phrase in life that explains that simple things (at least in games) will almost always better because it’s the familiarity that keeps you huddled over your monitor trying to decipher the code and to the perfect power/shield/monster-laser combos. This isn’t horrible because this game is BEAUTIFUL. Even on my small 13” laptop with the settings down I was blown away by the detail in the ships, I almost wanted my fleet to be destroyed just to see the beauty of my ships disintegrating in to masterfully crafted explosions.

If you beat the AI scenarios (and this is no small feat) with their many different levels and difficulties to choose, you can pit your ships against player-designed scenarios on the multiplayer section. My only criticism of this game would be that even with the wide range of levels they all feel just a little bit same-y, there are only about three backdrops in the whole game and three races from which to pick ships from. Note that several DLC packs have been released that broadens the variety slightly.