When I wrote up the first announcement of Sid Meier’s Starships last month, we had no pricing details and the only release information we had was “Later This Year!” Now we have details: the game is coming to Mac, PC and iPad on March 12th for $15! Over at Pocket Tactics there is a new preview with loads of details!
Aside from release date and price, the biggest question was how the game would integrate with ‘Beyond Earth’, the recently released game in the Sid Meier’s Civilization franchise. That was addressed over at the official Civilization site this week:
Both the Starships and Beyond Earth teams have been interested in the idea of having two separate games able to pass information between them, and what that might mean for players. This is our first experiment with this cross-game connectivity. We’re handling this through my2K. If you log into your my2K account within Starships or Beyond Earth, then we will be able to establish a connection between the two games. If you don’t already have a my2K account, you’ll need to create one. For now, this system works for Beyond Earth and Starships, but may extend to future titles as well. The first time you log into your my2K account from Beyond Earth, you will get an exclusive map: the Glacier planet. The my2K system has been used on other 2K titles previously, including Firaxis’ Haunted Hollow.
Shacknews also had a good preview, saying:
Judging from my experience with the demo, Starships is shaping up to be an excellent hybridization between Beyond Earth’s empire building, some of XCOM’s tactical combat, and an emphasis on spaceship construction that makes the game completely unique. It’ll be interesting to see how well other aspects like city building and diplomacy fit in, since so much emphasis is put on ship-to-ship combat. We’ll find out soon enough, since Starships is expected to release later this year for PC and iOS, with cross-connectivity features between it and Beyond Earth.
Here is the Sid Meier’s Starships video preview:
The folks at Pocket Tactics got a good look at the game :
You have one (and only one) pawn on this board: your fleet of starships, which you dispatch around the galaxy, taking on missions to earn the loyalty of these planets. Prove yourself a steadfast and noble ally to the people of Pavonis 58 by killing some pirates or putting down a rebellion and they’ll join your empire, growing your borders and granting you more resources.
Sid Meier’s Starships is shaping up to be one of the top strategy releases this year, acting as both an expansion to the ‘Beyond Earth’ and the deepest Civilization game ever released on mobile with the iPad version! Are you as excited as I am?
Here again is the official launch trailer:
