20,000 Lightyears Into Space

I've been playing 20,000 Lightyears Into Space since before I started writing this blog, so it mildly surprises me that I haven't wrote about it.

Screenshot of 20,000 Lightyears Into Space.

You play as the captain of an extra-terrestrial colonial expedition from Victorian-era England. You've landed on a world that is suitable for powering your steam-based technology. On the menu screen, there's a letter from your friend. He mentions that he's detected evidence of an alien civilization on this planet. That's all the background you're given. That's all the story you get in this game. There just doesn't need to be more.

This is a real-time strategy game of sorts. You don't build an army and march towards an enemy base. The objective is to gather steam and upgrade your city to a specific level. You build outward from your city, using nodes and pipes to gather and transfer steam to your city. If you run low on steam (due to network destruction or upgrading too fast), you lose.

There are obstacles. Aliens will attack your structures for a season. (I'm assuming that these aliens have a breeding season?) The planet is seismically active, so there will be earthquakes, and afterwards, there will be storms. (I assume there's a breeding season for storms.)

It's a cool little game that I play while watching Youtube. It's free. Have fun!

Since you've made it this far, you might be interested in reading:

Fallout Shelter
Fallout Shelter first came out on iOS and Android ahead of the Fallout 4 release. Naturally, I checked it out, and I later played it on Steam. I noticed that radiation reduced the maximum health of dwellers, instead of being a separate stat. I didn't know that Fallout 4 would work that way, too. I've heard that Fallout Shelter is better than Fallout 76. Granted, this is a time waster kind of game with microtransactions, but it actually works!
Yobi's Basic Spelling Tricks
Yobi's Basic Spelling Tricks is a spelling game that came with my family's old Compaq 486 back in the 90s. I'm not sure what prompted me to dig this up. I suspect that seeing a blog that's trying to list every videogame that features Moai jarred my memory, but this isn't listed there (despite Moai being in this game). (I'd like to submit this game there, but I can't find any way to do that outside of Twitter.) After about 3 minutes of searching, I found this game and fired up Twentieth Century.
Ashes of the Singularity
It's the future, and the singularity has happened. Artificial intelligences exist, and humanity roams the stars (some of them, at least). A few have transferred their consciousnesses into computers to join the AIs. Did you think that would change humanity's fundamental territorial nature?
Grey Goo
Grey Goo is a real time strategy game that sneaked out in 2015 from Petroglyph. I hadn't heard of them, so I looked those guys up. Former Westwood Studios people that needed somewhere to go after EA shut them down, so they founded Petroglyph. I haven't played any of the Red Alert series, so I can't tell if this is a spiritual successor.
Darksiders 2
Do you remember Darksiders? I remember having a lot of fun playing Darksiders. What about Darksiders 2? I have that one. In fact, it's been on my "I want to play this for Halloween" list for years. I've recently played through and finished it. I know that it's nowhere near October, and I'm way behind on everything, but better late than never, right? I know it's been a while since I've done one of these, so let's blow off the dust, and see what I remember from the original.
Halo Wars 2
When I heard that Halo Wars got a sequel, I wondered who wanted it. The first one didn't set the world on fire, and it wasn't sophisticated enough to get a sizeable cult following. Since Ensemble shut down, Microsoft chose Creative Assembly, the people behind the Total War series, to create this. By and large, Halo Wars 2 received the same mediocre welcome. It wasn't until Halo Infinite that anyone realized that this was meant to be a prequel of sorts.