I admit it, I have a soft spot for indie games. Now nothing says indie gaming like two brothers who go into business together to develop titles largely by themselves. Such is the case with brothers Tom and Simon de Rivaz who founded the London based SaintXi games studio in 2008. Despite having possibly one of the ugliest company logos I have ever seen, their debut game Light of Altair is a beautiful space economic and strategy title, surprisingly so, considering the size of the team involved and the selling price.
The story for this scenario-based adventure is set in the near future where the United Earth (UE) is formed after many years of war. The United Earth then sets about colonising the solar system. Unfortunately it seems human nature gets the better of this new world order and, with the help of some greed and jealousy, the people of earth are once again splintered into factions and things quickly turn ugly. The factions in the game are loosely based on the continents of earth – Africa, America, Europe etc. During the course of the game you will get to try your hand at playing all of them although the only differences between the factions really are their logos, ship and planet colour.
IM PLAYIN looks at the RTS space colonisation indie game 'Light of Altair'
"Indie games are really increasing in popularity these days. They’re often simple to play and fun in small doses, without the need for sifting through hours of side-missions and collectables that are often unnecessarily packed in to the bigger games"
The Electronic Farmyard is thrilled introduce our new weekly article by Casper McGrew; Sound Bytes. Each week we will be taking a look at Artists, DJ's & Composers involved in the Indie Games scene. This week he takes a look at the music in Osmos, Sword of the Stars, Light of Altairr, Braid & finally Mount & Blade from Paradox Interactive.
Mike takes a look back at the Indie classic Light of Altair.
A lot of strategy games are based around military strategy or tactics, but Light of Altair tends to focus more on economic management and keeping your colonists happy. Think more “Anno” or “The Guild” rather than “Sins of a Solar Empire” or “Age of Empires’. Each mission puts you in competition with one or more differing factions, sometimes with an ally, sometimes ganged up on, with the each level successfully being more difficult than the last. The learning curve is low, making it an easy to learn, hard to master kind of game.
