Stars! Game Review

Stars! doesn’t have motion video, sound effects or animation and it’s just a little bit too large to fit comfortably onto a floppy disc, but it’s not some late ‘80s throwback - the latest version, 2.5, has just hit the internet and it’s one of the most addictive galactic conquest games around.

While it lacks some of the multimedia glamour of games like Microprose’s Master of Orion or Virgin’s Ascendancy, it does have a lot going for it. It’s a Windows game, so it uses standard controls and has an extensive help file. Unlike most Windows games, though, you don’t need a CD-ROM or a Pentium to run it - it even runs at just-bearable speed on the 20MHz 486sx with 4Mb of RAM I’ve got at home.

If you’ve played galactic empire building games in the past, the basic outline of Stars! will be familiar. You need to build up your population, mine resources and research new technologies to build bigger and better starships to send colonists to populate the galaxy and crush your enemies. The beauty of Stars! is in the level of customisability it has and the number of different interesting options it offers. Most similar games involve mining for resources, for example, but if you’re bored of ordinary mining Stars! lets you use giant orbital strip miners to pillage uninhabited planets, and instead of using cargo ships to transport minerals you can use "mass drivers" to fling minerals between the planets - you can even use them to attack enemy planets with man-made meteors. In most games you get several races with special powers - in Stars! you can "design" your own race with its own strengths and weaknesses. In many similar games, you can get easily bored after a while with shuffling your units to and fro - in Stars!, after a little study, you can automate things so your computer will take care of the boring administration while you concentrate on crushing your opponent.

Most importantly it was designed from the start to be played between up to 16 human players - either across a network, using email or by alternating turns on the same machine. If you are on the internet you shouldn’t have any trouble finding opponents, either - there are at least 15 web pages around which allow you to register that you want a game.

Of course it’s not without its problems. Its sheer depth and complexity mean you’ll have to spend several hours playing against the computer and losing before you get a feel for how long research takes, how fast warp 8 is or how well defences protect you against the enemy’s Annihilator bombs (there’s a thorough tutorial available). Although you can give quite sophisticated instructions to your battle fleets before combat, you can’t control them during battle and the combat display is rather uninspiring to watch.

Of course, you don’t need to take my word for it - you can download a free, fully-functional version which is less customisable and only lets you build ten of the 26 available tech levels. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.