Beyond Astra

[Martok]

I'd quite forgotten about this one, but it looks like development has come pretty far along now: 


https://www.beyondastra.com/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2669060/Beyond_Astra/

As it's a solo dev, project, one of my major fears is that he may have bitten off more than he can chew, and that the scope is simply too big for him.  Still, he has been working on the game for several years now, so perhaps he's solved/allowed for everything he's attempting to accomplish.  Of all the space 4x titles currently in development, Beyond Astra is probably the one that interests me the most. 

[Undercovergeek]

had forgotten this - back into digging around for more infos

[Martok]

D'oh!  I forgot to add the game's homepage to my original post; fixed.  Adding it here as well: 

https://www.beyondastra.com/





Perhaps also worth noting is that apparently a demo is going to be available at Steam Next Fest, October 14-21: 

https://www.beyondastra.com/news/beyond-astra-lands-on-steam/



Looks like I might be occupied that week!   

[Martok]

Beyond Astra Gameplay Insights #1 : Victory conditions

The six victory conditions form the core elements that enrich and deepen the gameplay experience.

*  Economy
*  Military
*  Diplomacy
*  Science
*  Culture
*  Religion

In Beyond Astra, your path to victory is multifaceted, and each aspect of gameplay contributes to your ultimate ambition. Prepare for an epic journey!

The part in bold & underlined (emphasis mine) makes me wonder if that means progress in multiple victory conditions contributes towards a more "general" victory condition based on points -- sort of like in Stellaris, or the Prestige victory in Galactic Civilizations IV.  Hopefully so. 

[Martok]

Heh.  The developer responded to my query in the game's Discord: 

Thank you for your question! Yes, there will be indeed a system where you can achieve victory by points. Progress towards each of the victory conditions will contribute to your overall score, and if no specific condition is met by a certain point in the game (end date), the player with the highest score will be declared the winner.

Very good.   

[Martok]

Demo is now available.  I know what I'll be playing tonight.   

[Undercovergeek]

Let us know

[Martok]

Played the demo for a couple hours last night.  It's more an intro/tutorial than a true demo, but it was still pretty fun. 


One thing I should give a heads-up on is that Beyond Astra is a real-time 4x, like Stellaris or Distant Worlds.  Sorry to disappoint the turn-based lovers out there, but best that be made clear now rather than later. 

The game is obviously (and unsurprisingly) incomplete, and there's definitely some gameplay flaws present -- which others & myself pointed out in the Discord (and the developer readily acknowledged) -- but thus far it's a solid experience overall.  I wouldn't give the game a score or anything at this point, but I will say it's certainly worth continuing to keep an eye on.  If Beyond Astra is already this good in (what is essentially) a pre-alpha state, then it should be pretty bloody amazing once it's ready for full release.    Fingers crossed! 

[Martok]

Though calling it a challenger to Stellaris is a bit much (or at least premature), this was a halfway-decent little article/overview of Beyond Astra (demo version) as it currently stands: 

Stellaris has a new challenger in ‘90s inspired space 4X game Beyond Astra 

Creating a society from scratch, you’ll define everything from species factors such as its climate needs and ability to adapt to its surroundings, to its level of consciousness and the political and cultural leanings of its civilization. From there, you’ll determine how best to branch down its three core skill trees of science, culture, and religion in order to work your way towards one of the game’s seven Civ-style victory conditions: economy, military, diplomacy, science, culture, religion, or score.

In very Spore-like fashion, every journey starts on an unknown planet, meaning you’ll have to explore your local environment before you’re ready to branch out to the stars. You can slickly zoom the camera in on planets with no loading to quickly arrange buildings and plan out your production networks, then scale out again to deal with galactic tactics. It’s a truly colossal-scale passion project featuring all the essentials of economy, military, diplomacy, and so on that you’d expect.

Every ship features fully customizable parts, allowing you to drastically alter the makeup of your fleets, and Beyond Astra’s space combat features individually rotating turrets and advanced collision management that enables real-time interception of missiles in mid-flight. The map grows and evolves as you play, featuring hundreds of ships and worlds, each of which can be visited on the fly and managed at the ground level.