Light of Altair

Posted by Paul Eres Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:04:00 GMT


Light of Altair by brothers Tom and Simon de Rivaz (SaintXi) is a strategy space colonization game. In a lot of ways it’s like a simplified Civilization set in a future space-age setting, although not quite in the way that Alpha Centauri was Civilization in space. You set up colonies across several worlds and asteroids at once, gradually building up power, food, colony happiness, defense fleets, your technology level, and expanding and exploring the solar system: each chapter is largely set in a different solar system (although there are some chapters where you have to manage colonies across several solar systems at once). It’s addictive in the way that Civilization was addictive.

I particularly liked how you could zoom in and out so far: zoom in very close to a colony and see all the details, or zoom out and see the star system from afar, fluidly. I also like the designs of the different star systems, it feels like a space game: you can see asteroid belts flying by behind your planet and so on.

Although the level of polish in the game is generally very high for an indie game, there are a few typos (especially the prevalent use of it’s for its), and I felt the story was a bit uninteresting. I also apparently don’t share the developers’ tastes in music. I’d also have liked to see a multiplayer mode (that was a lot of the fun of the Civilization series). Another thing is, I couldn’t help but mentally compare the game to Alpha Centauri (one of my favorite games), and often Light of Altair would remind me of just how good that game was. But it’s still an interesting experience in its own right: you couldn’t rotate the 3D world you just colonized while watching the other planets go by in the background in Sid Meier’s game.

Currently it’s on sale on Steam for $12.

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Comments

  1. Eclipse said about 1 hour later:

    I really liked the demo, as i said.. but well… i’m sorry but didn’t buy it, only because, I HATE THAT MUSIC… how a cool looking game like this can feature such crappy “techno” tunes… :( Electonic music is ok, Downtempo is ace.. but Techno is shit :\

  2. Eclipse said about 1 hour later:

    ok maybe i’ll buy the game, disable the music, open winamp with an electronic\ambient stuff like “Boards of Canada”, “Godspeed You! Black Emperor” or something i think can fit in the game and finally play it, it looks so nice…

  3. Tim James said about 3 hours later:

    “It’s?” Seriously?

    Time for TIGSource to teach a brief lesson in at least not making glaring grammar mistakes that will make your players twitch uncontrollably.

  4. its said about 3 hours later:

    http://www.angryflower.com/itsits.gif

  5. Jukebox said about 5 hours later:

    Good review, Paul Eres. I’d be interesting in trying the game, specially if it is like Civilization, one of my favorite series as well. With regards to online playing, it was great in CIV 4 but I still remember having a lot of fun with the single player’s campaign of CIV 2 and specially 3, and so I would care for multiplayer if I have a game like that. Of course, i’d have to see first if the single player campaign in this game is comparable. I’m also curious about the music in this game, is that bad? :)

  6. Paul Eres said about 6 hours later:

    thanks jukebox – and well, download the demo to see what the music is like. it’s mostly techno.

  7. tomelin said about 7 hours later:

    To hell with multiplayer. Dont you multi-freaks have enough games that are multi-only ? Its getting to the point where its increasingly difficult to find a good single-player game, so back off OUR games, play YOUR games and leave us to our toys.

    Also, Iji had way, way worse music than this game, and everyone seemed to love it, for god knows what reason.

  8. Powerban said about 10 hours later:

    I agree with the person above… Whatever they may be saying about whales, Iji and wax.

  9. Paul Eres said about 12 hours later:

    i didn’t say multi-only, i said as an option. i’m hardly a multi-freak, the only game i play multiplayer regularly is starcraft. i think a human opponent tends to make strategy games harder, because the ai opponents aren’t very good.

  10. SaintXi said about 16 hours later:

    I am a stickler for “it’s = it is” and “its” being possessive. I will double check the text again and any offending errors will be squashed in the 1.01 patch.

    And I know music is a personal choice - so it is lucky we support Alt-Tab and have a nice turn off music option so you can easily listen to any music you like in the background :)

    Our hard mode is cruelly hard, even without a human opponent. But there is more about why this is a single player game here

  11. Paul Eres said 1 day later:

    thanks for the link, saintxi. will read it. i remember at least three “it’s” for “its” in the game, though i didn’t mark their locations.

  12. Paul Jeffries said 1 day later:

    I really enjoyed the demo - techno & all - but once I’d finished Venus I couldn’t seem to go anywhere - the shipyard says ‘left click to go to the design screen’ but left clicking does nothing. Is this a bug or just the end of the demo? Either way, I’m thinking of buying the full version (remind me of X-com’s geoscape and I’m putty in your hands) but I’d like to see what the combat is like first…

  13. Stabn said 1 day later:

    The game lost me after hearing the main menu music.

  14. Jon said 1 day later:

    Really, really cool game. Not a big fan of the music, and some of the graphics (like the ship designer) is horrible. Thinking of buying it.

  15. SaintXi said 1 day later:

    Paul Jeffries: you might want to see this FAQ for how to move on from Venus http://www.saintxi.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=189#q15

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