The Viceroy

I don't know how I never saw this game. It's amazing. Tending stellar territories with strange expensive technologies to build an exotic and difficult to understand future is something I enjoy very much.

Another fine piece of work from this sadly extinct company. Has a very boardgame-like feeling, as buildings/projects/cures are set like "cards" over the "tile" they improve; and with all the advantages of the computer making all the myriad calculations for you. Random territories ensure high replay value, despite the limited set of challenges, as not only them are drawn at random, but also previous beneficial buildings and projects, unrelated to the challenge. That affects the way you must min/max (min/maxing is too a key aspect of After the Empire, which happens in the far future of the civilization used as background for The Viceroy). Add to that a very rich setting, a decadent eons-old great Empire and several factions trying to get the most of the disasters or rebuild a crumbling society. In fact, golden material for a scifi pen-and-paper RPG campaign. And beware, this is no military strategy game... combat is rather simple, although ship designing is not that unconsquential; careful watch of how the Rebellion crafts theirs, and counter them, can make a difference. It has a disappointing aspect, and is the lack of modding capabilities.

I recommend this game for those who like slower paced thinking puzzles. Digging through all of the minutiae of the game, it really is a series of puzzles, with your own style and choice of solution influencing how the game progresses. Its fun. Its engrossing and entertaining and challenging, and pushes you to think about minor costs and their long term upkeep later down the line. This is a game that is deeply involved in financial understanding and motion, and teaches you at your own pace, as you discover WHY things don't go exactly the way you expect. This game has a sliding scale of difficulty that pairs with your interest. As a low investment game it is a hard civil development that doesn't punish for failure, but doesn't coddle you. As a high investment game, it functions as a perfect clockwork of civil development that every string pulled creates a ripple of success upon success.

If you expect something like a 4X or combat-heavy strategy game, you'll be disappointed. This is quite an interesting simulation where you set trends for the populations in a cluster of star systems. I would personally have preferred that your actions were even more subtle and long-term oriented, instead of being somewhere in the middle. Overall, I think it's a good game that I do recommend if you are looking for a strategy simulation. It feels very much like an indie game, and it is a bit rough around the edges, but I've enjoyed it so far. What could have been better: - The UI. This is the biggest problem I have with the game. No hotkeys, no way to scroll between planets/systems, no filtering system to find your industrial districts and so on. There's a lot of clicks in just one territory, and a lot of searching for that district that had X. - Combat. They way it is, I'd actually prefer a full simulation. The way it works now, you need to have ~4:1 advantage to be fairly certain you'll win, and a ~6:1 advantage to be fairly certain to not suffer any casualties. And you can do it manually, which lets you set up your forces and see them scatter and die alone. Really, there is no po…

Although I very much like the concept behind this game, the game itself is both overly complicated, and very simplistic. First, the complexity: There are lots and lots of different numbers, and the game is very bad at teaching you what they mean. The tutorial is in the form of a voice over that explains a few things about each screen the first time you open it. Everything else, it expects you to go to the in-game university to learn about. I have never done this, as it appears that it can only be used in-between games, when there are no longer any good cues about what's important to learn about right now. The result is, after playing several games, doing well in a couple and doing terribly in a few, I still have very little idea what's going on at any given time. Nor can I really tell what actions will make things better and what actions will make things worse. As for the game's simplistic nature: at the start of each game, you are granted control over a territory with various problems. The cure to each problem is the same: research a specific technology, and then go to the affected area and build "cure: [problem name]." All there is to the game is "wait for money to come in" "b…

good