If there is one game genre, I adore it is city building, thank SimCity on the Super Nintendo for starting that love and over the years, there have been countless games that have attempted their own take on the SimCity formula, with varying degrees of success. Now it is time for IXION to have their shot, but there is one massive difference, this one is set in space and that brings a host of challenges along with it. Thanks to Gamescom, I was able to spend some time with Kasedo Games and developer Bulwark Studios, to see the game in action and spoilers, I liked what I saw.

If you have seen the E3 trailer for the game, you will know that the moon gets destroyed when a new engine, aboard the Tiqqun is ignited for the first time, well the game starts off with you getting the station ready for that test firing. The station is built, you don’t have to worry about that, but what you do need to do is bring together the facilities and equipment that it needs to support the folks that are going to live and work there. This means you need to build a place for them to sleep, eat, seek medical aid if needed and so on, but like other game in the strategy genre, yes strategy, everything requires resources to build and you are in space, so you can’t just mine some random ore deposit to obtain them, or can you.

The demo that I got to see had us attempting to build up the basics, in order to get things moving along, but building was only one aspect of what was going on, because this is in space, so there are other conditions to consider. Materials are one aspect, but power is another, if you run out of power, and have no backups, you could kill off everyone on the station, the same can occur if the hull integrity falls to low, that happens and its hello space. So, while the city building aspects might be familiar to anyone who has played any game in that genre, there are so many other layers to consider that it feels more like city building plus. It was explained to me that the hull integrity is something that you need to really watch, not only does it slowly go down over time, there are lots of things in space after all, but when you jump around the galaxy, the hull will take more damage, so you have to watch it.

While that was being explained, I got to see more of the sector being built in and while things were moving on, there was a pause in action, when a message from the company that owns the station popped up. These events can be ignored, but there are pros and cons for each direction, for example, one of the earlier calls, was for a medical facility and while opting not to build it, meant we could have diverted resources to something else, the long-term impact, meant that if any of the workers were injured, then it would take them longer to recover, if they did. Even constructing a supply bin, where you can store materials, requires consideration, building a lot of them, may give you plenty of space to store things, but at the cost of available space to build more critical elements. The risk/reward aspect isn’t something that IXION developed but given the limited space in which you can build in each sector and the requirement on obtaining more resources to build, the implementation here, could be one of the best I have seen.

Throughout the course of the demo that I got to see there were a lot of elements that were introduced, the one that astounded me was the galactic map, because as the game progresses, you'll start to explore the Galaxy and beyond. Exploration isn't just you going from point A to point B, you don't know how big the Galaxy is or what is out there, so you'll have to send out ships to ensure that you have a safe path in which to navigate through. The ships will also be used to scout planets, to find resources, which will in turn allow you to build new equipment on the ship, which is where this strategy elements are coming into play. Of course, getting to that point requires the prologue to complete which is firing up the engine and testing its abilities, if you've seen the trailer from E3 then you know that doesn't go well; instead of the ship moving throughout the Galaxy it ends up moving through time, but I won't say anymore on that.

Even firing up the engine is not going to be a straightforward process, as when you being that it will take time and while it does, all power generation will be diverted to that process. But this is not a game where things run off wishes and dreams, it is a space station and if you divert power, from critical systems, then bad things can happen. This means that you need to prepare for each jump, first be ensuring the hull integrity is high enough, else you may no survive the jump and secondly, have enough batteries on hand, to be able to run your station from, while the engine is charging. That may sound simple, but when you have to actively scout planets, build facilities, take care of your people, complete objectives assigned to you and ensure that the ship won’t break up, it seems like a lot, but that challenge might be just what people are wanting.

As city building games are my genre of choice, I am always a little weary of somebody trying to change something that hasn't been broken for a while, but so far IXION is doing everything right for me. I get the full complexity of a city builder, along with the resource management of an RTS and if that wasn't enough galactic exploration, how old is will fare when the game is fully released it's too soon to tell, but I have a feeling this is going to be a game that many will want to play

The game is in development for PC and expecting to release sometime in 2022.