Grey Wolf Entertainment along with Iceberg Interactive have announced a new 4X for us closet Napoleons to drool over - Dawn of Andromeda (DoA).
This is Grey Wolf’s first announcement for their upcoming game, indeed this announcement comes with just two month notice before their April release on Steam Early Access.
Details about DoA are still very sparse however the following list of features have been announced:
• Explore, expand, exploit and exterminate in this real-time space strategy game, featuring real-time combat in a dynamic and ever-evolving galaxy.
• New factions and characters can join the fray mid-game; artefacts, ruins, anomalies and a huge variety of fascinating elements are scattered throughout the galaxy and can yield new research opportunities. Various characters such as outlaws, merchants and others roam the galaxy.
• Asymmetric gameplay. Not all races discover space travel at the same time, some may have yet to discover it, some may have already built a mighty empire, and some races may be naturally stronger than others. However if you’d rather prefer a traditional 4X experience and start an entirely symmetric game, it’s up to you.
• Pre-designed, customizable and randomly generated races, each with their unique backgrounds and traits.
• Accessible gameplay, featuring a highly-intuitive User Interface.
• Eras; unique scenarios, each with a pre-designed galaxy and background stories which you can play as one of the existing factions, each with their own victory conditions, traits, challenges and ongoing conflicts and relationships.
• Choose between researching pre-fabricated or randomly generated ship designs, or alternatively research and discover ship parts, allowing you to create your own unique ship designs from them.
• In depth diplomacy system. Create or join coalitions, make allies and enemies, but beware, each action you take can change how the rest of the galaxy will view you. Destroying an entire planet, or just praising or denouncing another race, can have a deep impact on the balance of the entire galaxy.
• Reduce micromanagement by appointing governors to your colonies and council members to your empire, all of whom can be leveled up. Each come with their own unique traits, happiness and experience.
• Multiple, customizable victory conditions, which can even be set to vary for each faction, making for unpredictable friends and foes.
As a 4X veteran I can see plenty on this list that piques my interest. I’m particularly interested by the real time combat, asymmetric gameplay, randomly generated races and ships, deep politics and varying victory conditions. All these features are not commonly seen together in the same 4X game, and they make DoA sound like the type of 4X that will be unique and exciting every time you play it.
After watching the above trailer with the sound off (I think their narrations/writing needs some work), you will notice many icons and features that are staples to the 4X genre, from food quantities to populations, to science and economy levels. Even icons that may take you to construction and empire management screens, all of these seem intuitive and well laid out. This is a vital part of any modern 4X game; plan you controls well, and make them aesthetically pleasing and obvious.
I’m not going to get fully on the hype train for DoA yet, because at this point we still don’t know all that much about the game. 4X is a genre that is has been flooded in the past by promising failures from well-meaning developers. I will say however that I have seen nothing yet to disappoint me with the direction DoA is going.
