Before we start, I’d like to share something: I simply love turn-based tactical games. If you read the rare PC reviews I’ve written on this site such as XCOM 2, Civilization: Beyond Earth or even The Great Whale Road, you would know that i’m a sucker with a soft spot for the genre no matter what franchise or new game it is. So, almost like it was planned ahead of time, Canadian based indie developer Massive Damage Inc released their crowd-based funded game called Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander right in time for the 50th Anniversary of the Star Trek franchise. Is this turn-based space strategy game worth the low-price 20 Euro price tag? The answer is yes, but depends on what you want out of it.

After exceeding their fund goals of $30,000 (finishing the Kickstarter campaign with roughly $140000), Massive Damage went into full working mode with Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander, a game that will appeal to the Trekkies with the right spirit. Halcyon 6 makes us the commander of a Human space station right on the brink of getting invaded by an enemy race, with a complex set of strategy, ressource and time management, all painted with a charming 8-bit pixel facade. Left behind by a mysterious precursor race, your space station is in the crosshairs of space pirate clans, foreign empires and some sort of sprung from a Cthulhu legend, which have pulverized your tutorial fleet, all told mainly in a textual way, with few animated sequences setting a straight plot; with a touch of humor that thankfully doesn’t feel forced.

As soon as you start playing, you’ll realize though that this strategy title has also real-time gameplay features which can be hectic despite a pause function and turn-based battles; built on a click-intensive interface with no regards to built comfort. As you progress and start building your fleet (which can fit a maximum of 3 ships at a time), you’re ready to venture on the galaxy map from one planet to another. What’s the point you ask? Because you only gets enough resources by visiting local outputs that mine them, as well as going after tasks or missions that reward you. Nevertheless, your ressource will gradually grow as time pass in real time, but not fast enough for you to do everything, especially travelling to distant nebula which require more fuel than the usual (one of the ressources to manage).

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But all this navigation is so incredibly awkward on the map. For players like myself than usually play this genre; rather than selecting a fleet and with left – or right – click summon a destination point, a total of four mouse clicks are necessary to do such a simple action: Click once on the planet (or destination), then click on the “Send a Fleet” message dialogue, select which fleet, then again press on “Redirect Fleet” for your next trip. No big issue here, and you’ll get used to it, but I just wanted to point out at that strange process that feels more fit for a touch-based game, when it doesn’t support that on tablet based PCs.

Human’s last station, which gives the name to the game – Halcyon 6 – is its own metagame as well, which will remind you a lot of XCOM 2 (or the XCOM Enemy Unknown) own base expansion side-game, with rooms that will need to be cleared, then build specific facilities such as dark matter converter, power plants and of course training facilities to enhance your crew. Remember how your fleet is mainly 3 ships? Each one of the ships requires a certain amount of crew members, and need to be led by an officer, which you can only get more than your first 3 thanks to the Officer Academy in your space station. The station’s other rooms will also give you an array of features to unlock by paying a mix of ressources, such an extensive research tree that grants you access to more powerful tiers of ships and new technologies and weaponry for vessels and officers alike.

Missions and tasks soon enough become the only thing necessary to do to get enough resources – but also can be achieved by stupidly grinding and constantly winning combats against space pirates. Speaking of combat, that’s where the real turn-based strategy comes in, as Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander battles are close to an RPG, with up to 3 vs 3 ship combat, or 3 vs 3 troop fights (officers against aliens), which will help you level up your units. And like in XCOM, a destroyed ship or unit is one gone for good in the game. The comparisons can almost be made against Japanese RPGs, as the turn-based combat system works similar to the old Final Fantasy, even in the way of buffing your ally’s shield for a set number of turns, hit the enemy with an attack that cause hull breach negative status effects, while your final ship attack is one that exploit that same previous effect. Such combos increase the damage and are especially needed later on in the game to be able to survive, especially since a roll-of-the-dice is there, and all of this apply to both spaceship and on-ground officer combat.

The only challenge though is the ever-growing amount of tank enemies that emerge around the end of the game, and this is where the game kind of need fixing, as the difficulty balance is screwed up from once you pick something higher than the “normal” third level of difficulty and above. After finishing my first playthrough of the game, I replayed the campaign from the 4th level, and there was a massive leap in terms of opponent count and power from the third one. Hopefully a patch will address this, but it doesn’t stop you from enjoying a game run that will last 10-15 hours depending on your skills.

While the goal of the game is always the same no matter how many playthrough you will play – killing the main invading alien race mothership – Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander actual campaign is different every time, with a random set of task, missions and battles to fight. You can also like with Civilization win thanks to alternative victory conditions, such as thanks to diplomacy but sadly it’s not as deep as it is with Firaxis’ title.

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander was reviewed using an PC downloadable copy of the game provided by Massage Damage Inc. The game was tested on a PC running Windows 10 Pro, with a 4GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960 fitted on a 5th Generation Intel i7 4720HQ 3.2Ghz CPU and topped with 16GB of RAM, as well as on a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for Touch Screen controls. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.