Shattered Suns, developed and published by
Clear Crown Studios.
The Good:
Meaningful custom ship designs, orbiting objects add unique strategic
layer, non-linear campaign with variable objectives, skirmish games
with randomly generated maps, automated sophisticated trading and
supply model
The Not So Good: Lacks multiplayer, initially unwieldy interface, uneven presentation with no voice acting, can’t rename ship designs
What say you? It’s a bit rough around the edges, but this space RTS comes with several innovative features:
6/8MY POORLY WRITTEN INTRODUCTION
There has been a number of
excellent strategy games released this year set in space. I think it
gives developers more flexibility in creating a familiar yet innovative
environment in which to place their game world. Plus, everyone is tired
of elves, orcs, and World War II by now (at least I am). With the
ever-increasing number of strategy titles coming to the PC (especially
ones in space), newcomers must bring something new to the table, or
relegate themselves to an anonymous fate. Shattered Suns offers two
such unique components: custom ships and dynamic maps with orbiting
planets. These are two good ideas, but the impact on gameplay and
feasibility in a real-time environment are two concerns that surround
their effectiveness. How concerned should we be? Personally, I’m more
concerned about the possibility of suns shattering: that’s never a good thing.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
For
an independently developed game, Shattered Suns has some OK graphics.
While the level of quality is not quite on par with some other space RTS games,
there are some high points: the ships and planet surfaces have some
high-resolution textures that look great up close. The weapon effects
look almost out of place in their simplicity, and the charged clouds of
autoemitter weapons don’t amaze with quality. The backgrounds are
pretty generic for a space game, with an obviously 2-D texture that
could look more realistic. Panning the camera quickly results in
throwing the icons to the side of their ship: an odd effect. Shattered
Suns doesn’t have any voice acting and feature average and generally
repetitive music to fill out the presentation. There are a couple of
bright spots with the graphics, but, for the most part, Shattered Suns
is just your average strategy game in terms of graphics and sound
design.
ET AL.
After taking a while to load (but at least you
don’t need the disk in the drive), Shattered Suns gives you several
options for gameplay. The tutorial is integrated into the campaign and
covers most, but not all, of the game’s mechanics. There is a number of
minor things that are briefly touched on (if at all) in the tutorial
and not mentioned at all in the inadequate manual. Overall, Shattered
Suns has clear signs it is an independent product: it comes with two
great features but fails to successfully completely the package. The
campaign is quite lengthy: 34 missions that are not activated in a set
order. It utilizes an instant messenger interface (to compensate for
the lack of voice acting) that presents new text one sentence at a
time: very slow going. Thankfully, I discovered (not in the tutorial or
manual) that space bar will skip ahead, taking the 15-minute-long
presidential speech (and all of the corny jokes) early in the campaign
down to a much less boring time interval. Most of the missions are
combat-related, but there are others that rely on resource collection,
repairs, ship design, and diplomacy. This is more variety than you
would typically see in a real time strategy game, and some of the
missions are optional and others you can’t lose (lucky I deployed those
repair drones!). There is no autosave (boo!) and quitting mid-mission
fails your scenario, as there is no way to go from a mission straight
to the main menu. The campaign offers up enough variety to keep things
interesting, although a lot of the missions take about twice as long to
complete as I would like.
After you are done taking it to the
enemy in the campaign, you can undergo skirmish games against the AI.
Shattered Suns randomly generates a new map each time you play,
depending on the size you set. You can also customize your experience
by defining the victory and defeat conditions (which can be different)
of a time limit or complete annihilation, starting resource levels, and
resource abundance. There are no teams in skirmish play, but diplomatic
options are available. There are plans to have more scripted missions
apart from the main campaign in a future patch. Notably, Shattered Suns
lacks multiplayer, so now it’s time for the great multiplayer debate. I
like multiplayer in any game I play, but most “small” games just don’t
have the audience to justify spending development time on adding online
multiplayer. Do I want it? Yes. Is it worth doing? Maybe not. But I’ll
still mention the lack thereof.
The user interface takes some
getting used to. It’s not quite on par with other RTS games, but it
gets the job done for the most part. You are given hard numbers on most
of you ships’ parameters (shields, armor, weapons), but hull strength
is mysteriously left out, except for a green bar above your ship.
Things that are active (like mining or trading) pulsate instead of
being constantly highlighted with a special color. While Shattered Suns
clearly warns you if further research required, you are given
absolutely no indication on the progress of research: the icon just
pulsates. Do I have ten seconds or ten minutes left? It can also be
difficult to find things, as clicking on the bare mini-map puts the
camera there and not the center of the screen there, as is the case
with every other strategy game. I miss the empire tree from Sins,
as on large maps you’ll have to click back and forth a lot to see
what’s going on. Shattered Suns also doesn’t display the types of
docked ships and getting around the 3-D interface takes some practice.
One of the two big features of Shattered Suns is custom ship designs. Even a step above of Galactic Civilizations,
Shattered Suns lets you customize many components on a scale of one to
ten: engines, cargo holds, miners, builders, scanners, shields, armor,
advanced defenses, and four types of weapons. You can even customize
the weapons: power, blast radius, reload rate, and flight speed can all
be altered. Obviously, Shattered Suns gives you tons of flexibility,
but ship design, like most everything else in the game, isn’t without
problems. First, you cannot rename your ship designs. I hope you’ll
remember that “Class 1” is a miner and “Class 2” is a trader, because I
know I forget. Coupled in to the ship design is the concept of
efficiency: each additional component reduces the effectiveness of all
components; this prevents you from making “super ships” and puts the
focus on craft with narrowly defined roles, like resource collection or
military combat. A level 10 engine running at 80% efficiency is the
same as a level 8 engine running at full power, so if you are going to
spend all of that time and money on upgrades, you better make sure they
are worth it. Custom designs carry over from scenario to scenario: a
good thing so you don't have to redesign the same ship every time. If
you don’t have the requirements researched yet (the game highlights
them in red), just build it anyway and the best components you know of
will automatically be introduced. The ship design aspect of Shattered
Suns is well balanced and a neat feature that can easily be done in a
real-time environment.
The other big feature of Shattered Suns
is that everything moves: planets, moons, and space stations. While
they obviously progress much faster than they would in real life, this
adds a unique layer of strategy to the game (it says so in “The Good,”
so it must be true). The sense of scale is way off (planets and moons
are quite small compared to ships), but having to tailor your attack to
the planetary progression is a neat dynamic I’ve never seen before. It
frankly surprises me it’s taken this long for a game to do this (if I
remember correctly, Hegemonia
was the only other game to come close, and it wasn't that dramatic of a
feature). Your empire centers around space stations, rather than
colonizing planets and moons (they are simply resource supplies). Each
station has an independent level of resources and technology (another
unique feature), so resources must be shipped to friendly stations in
order to produce ships and conduct research there. Thankfully, this can
automatically be done by building a ship with a lot of cargo space and
telling it to “auto trade.” The independent nature of the stations
means, like the ships, you will have stations fill specific roles:
resource collection, ship building, et cetera.
Some of the
missions involve diplomacy, and Shattered Suns comes with some basic
trading and peace agreements. When all else fails, combat is the order
of the day: it is automatic and lacks tactical planning, as it is
simply the end result of your designs. Just pick a target and go.
Shattered Suns has an almost fast pace: shields and armor go down
quickly, but it can take quite a while to completely destroy a hull
(especially since there is no numerical indication of how many hit
points are left). This is fine (although annoying when you’ve clearly
won and it’s just a matter of waiting for the hit points to count
down), especially when you consider the low population cap: you’ll only
ever have a handful of ships (20 at the most) to deal with at a time.
This includes resource collectors, so battles will not involve a large
quantity of vessels. It should be noted that destroying the hull will
also decrease the efficiency of ship components (engines, weapons,
shields), so that’s realistic and also pretty cool. The AI is just OK:
while they serve up a decent opponent, there are definitely problems:
ships routinely run into planets and moons, and while the AI will build
stations at every available moon and planet, they are slow at getting
resource collecting (and subsequently military production) up and
running. Since all you have to play against is the AI, Shattered Suns
will keep you entertained for a while, but the computer opponents
aren’t too difficult to defeat.
IN CLOSING
Shattered Suns
takes two good ideas and runs with them, almost to the point of being a
hallmark strategy title. The game is plagued with a lack of polish that
is common among games developed by small developers. I can usually look
past these things, but only to a point. Fortunately, all of my issues
with Shattered Suns are not design related; rather, they are associated
with this being a game from a small developer and can be fixed (and
most plan to be) with time. Sometimes all of these minor issues are
enough to add up to a major headache, but the new features Shattered
Suns brings to the RTS table are quite notable and overshadow most of
the shortcomings, in my opinion (which, clearly, is all that matters).
I sure do like the unique core mechanics of Shattered Suns, though, and
innovation always scores high in my book. The ever-changing battlefield
is really neat, as the planets and moons circulate through space
(albeit a lot faster than in reality). Giving the user the ability to
design their own ships and stations is nice, and it has definite impact
on the gameplay. The lack of multiplayer is troubling, but the AI
skirmishes and non-linear campaigns should keep you busy for a while.
With the developer’s continued support of this game after release, I am
fairly confident that the full potential of the game will be realized
and all of the small issues I have identified while playing the game
will be minimized or removed. Sometimes having two great new things is
enough to stand out, and that’s the case with Shattered Suns, although
there are definitely some areas that could be enhanced.
