Solar Vengeance

By: Derek Yu

On: June 10th, 2008

Solar Vengeance kicks it Old-School with a capital “O.” Everything from the name, to the graphics, to the website design, is decidedly from a bygone era of PC computing, and that’s fine with me. SV debuted in 1995 as a turn-based strategy game with 3 unit types – 13 years later you can command 24 types of units in real-time, against human or AI opponents, on or offline, in a number of different customizable scenarios. The game has also gone from shareware to freeware.

Like many good strategy games, the basic rules are relatively simple, but open up complex gameplay. The goal of the game is to take over the Capital StarSystems of your opponents while protecting your own. To do this, you must create StarShips and expand your empire by conquering neighboring StarSystems, which will then develop resources and allow you to create more StarShips.

In any game you can create 6 types of StarShips, chosen beforehand out of a possible 24. Each StarShip has two ratings – an Engine rating and a Primary rating – that determine how effective the ship is. For WarShips, the most basic “soldier” unit, the Primary rating is Weapons, and determines how strong the ship is. A WarShip with a higher Weapons rating will always prevail over a weaker one.

Each Scenario in SV is randomly generated based on a few set parameters like “Number of Star Systems” and “Cluster Density,” making this a fitting game to mention as we wrap up our Procedural Generation Competition. But what’s really awesome is that most of the Scenarios and AIs available with the game are developed in C# by the small, but enthusiastic, Solar Vengeance community. And as creator Dion Kurczek continues to work dedicatedly on the game, who knows what we’ll see next?

(Source: Alehkhs, via Puppy Buckets)