IXION combines city building, survival elements and exploration, into a thrilling space opera as you explore the stars. Propelled onwards through a perilous journey, you are the Administrator of the Tiqqun space station, charged with finding a new home for humanity.
Keeping the station sound and flying will require a deft hand and strategic thinking, as you are constantly pulled between maintaining hull integrity, bringing in new resources and managing power consumption.
What choices will you make when confronted with impending disaster? What will you discover out there in the dark?
I've been playing this game with an oddly familiar name and finished all the chapters, it's..pretty competent and despite some warts, it definitely has the production values/narrative to scratch the Frostpunk-in-space itch. It's engineered to constantly keep you on your toes in no_relax_allowed_mode (with sequences of scripted events) and the Tetris-shaped sectors behave like clumsy babies all the time, but for me, that's also the beauty of it because the game forces you to plan things beforehand and to always be prepared for the worst case scenario
Although it does get on the repetitive grind-y side and the main loop comes with some questionable decisions, it's never really as unfair as the Gabefolks claim in my opinion. Once the basic needs are covered (there are plenty of resources available), the adverse storms/drone attacks are avoided by moving around, the extra-stability buildings are up and the upgrades are installed (absolutely vital ), then all the permanent -1 factors eventually even out and the exploration can go on without problems. Props to the soundtrack as well, limited but unique and fitting. An addicting 7,5/10 surprise in my space book.
I just played through this one 7.5/10, It could have been higher but they dropped the ball in a few ways. I picked this up near release and dropped it due to bugs and poor balancing, so this is several patches and rebalancing years later.
Pro's:
- The games aesthetic, music, the in-game events, in-engine cutscenes. The reason for doing anything in the game and story is really good. It typically doesn't take me long to start skimming through dialog if it's not interesting enough, they did a good job with it here.
- The balance on the now "normal" difficulty is pretty good, not a cakewalk but not restarting every 20 mins either.
- The endgame decisions and consequences were pretty good.
Con's:
- It launched poorly.
- There are still 2 almost save-game bricking research decisions in the game they could have easily fixed by working into the tutorial or just changing the numbers.
- I wasted a lot of time trying to understand why a ship in sector 2 can't load my colonists from sector 3.. Any in-game notification explaining they need to be moved would fix this.
- "An accident has occurred on the Tiqqun", it's not a big deal but that audio cue gets annoying.
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), then all the permanent -1 factors eventually even out and the exploration can go on without problems. Props to the soundtrack as well, limited but unique and fitting. An addicting 7,5/10 surprise in my space book.
