Pandora offers a stiff challenge, and will keep space-faring strategists happy until Civilization: Beyond Earth breaches the event horizon later this year.
Pandora: First Contact delivers very decent spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, but it unfortunately falls short on some aspects. It needs more focus on the story, diplomacy and the endgame in general. [Jan 2014]
To all turn-based strategy, 4x lovers (such as myself), I highly recommend this game. It's the best thing out before the release of Sid Meier's: Beyond Earth.
Anyone who is wondering what this game is like, I'll give you a brief idea on what it is like by saying that it feels like Civilization V with a few major differences, such as:
1. Random tech trees for each faction - you also discover new technologies after every era you pass through, to give a sense of wonder of the future
2. Unit stacks - infinite number of units per tile; like Civilization IV's stacks of death. The game has actually balanced it so that attacking with stacks is less beneficial; bombardments hurt all units within a stack, flanking (putting units next to each other in separate tiles) gives an attack/defensive bonus.
3. Customisable units - yes, you have a unit workshop and can fit different weapons/bonuses/abilities on them. There are a lot of different chassis to research (e.g. infantry, fast-attack vehicle, tank, watercraft, and more).
4. Planet wildlife - at the beginning of the game, they are not hostile. However, the wildlife can get more and more aggressive if factions fight against them, or produce a lot of pollution. They may then become the equivalant of barbarians, or even worse (if aggressive enough, they can launch a full-scale invasion on humans, threatening everyone. It could prove to be a good tactic, for militaristic players, to annoy the local wildlife so that peaceful players are threatened with annihilation). There are multiple types of wildlife, ranging from practically harmless little xenomorph drones to gigantic aquatic monstrosities.
5. City management - it works something like this; morale (happiness) is local, rather than national. Local morale has an affect on local growth, and local growth depends on whether or not you have enough food stockpiled (food pool is national). Growth is also affected by habitual space; if you don't have enough space, migration to other cities (ones which have more habitual space) will occur. Production requires minerals (also stockpiled nationally). If you run out of minerals, production will be hindered but not stopped completely. Science is gathered normally (1 scientist = +1 science). There are buildings, natural resources and tile improvements which produce percentage increases and/or a small increase in that stat. You can also move your citizen's roles (there are four roles; farmer (food resource collector), miner (mineral resource collector), worker (city producer) and scientist (science producer)) around manually, and they will automatically go to the highest yielding tile. There are other factors as well (such as wars, pollution etc), but that's just the gist of it.
6. Alien invasion - around turn 200 (normal pace), an alien force (size depends on how difficult you set difficulty level/alien aggression level) invades the planet and the world has to rally together to fight them off. It's a nice twist and a breath of fresh air, especially if the local wildlife is almost extinct by that time or if you have been playing a peaceful up until that time.
In addition, the game's presentation is very nice (introduction video, graphics, artwork, quote voice overs), soundtrack is great, UI is intuitive and smooth, optimisation is smooth as well; never lags or crashes (runs a lot better than Civilization V). The game is, amazingly, roughly 500MB, so it's a very fast download.
What can I say which is bad about the game? Well, currently, the game has more focus on combat than Civilization. The game still needs, in my opinion, to add more content which aligns the player to a more non-combat style of gameplay (e.g. something similar to culture with wonders). There are multiple victory conditions other than conquest, such as economic and research victories, but it'd be nice to have more. There is also no indication of how far ahead you are when compared with your opponents, until the last few turns before your, or your opponent's, imminent victory, warning the player.
The good news is that the developers have pledged to add more content to Pandora: First Contact, maybe in the form of expansions, if it proves to be successful. So far I think the game has been successful, hence the Steam release (the game was released months before Steam).
For people hoping this to be the next Alpha Centauri, I wouldn't get your hopes too high. The game is good, and it is very similar to AC in some respects, but it's not exactly the same (e.g. no mind worms). Judge it for what it is. I played a lot of AC back in the day, and I thoroughly enjoy this game for what it is.
If you're still not convinced, or somewhat unsure whether or not to pay for the full price of £22 or $36, just wait for the eventual sale. I'd definitely call you a madman for not getting it then.
As a long term strategy fan I've bought the game around Christmas and played it quite extensively over the last weeks. I've to admit the game has really grown on me, not only does it seem very polished, but the devs (a small indie team) also post a lot and keep releasing updates based on player feedback.
While there are a lot of similarities to Alpha Centauri (one of my all-time favorites), it's definitely not a copy since quite a few mechanics work differently (random research tree, operations, global resource pool, etc.). What I miss the most from SMAC are the awesome secret project videos (anyone remember The Ascetic Virtues?) which brought the faction leaders to life and made it truly epic. However, considering this is an indie production I guess it's kinda expected, and at least the Pandora leaders have long background stories and dialogue.
I also had some pretty cool matches in multi-player against my brother, even on large maps with several AIs the turns go surprisingly fast compared to Civ 5 (not sure what's the reason for that). The AI seems fairly competent compared to other games (it does some flanking/hidden attacks and uses operations), but nothing special. Especially later in the game you can do some really evil things with operations (e.g. drop units and bombard cities), and I remember a funny moment where I was racing against my brother for a Leviathan kill (massive alien unit that provides a combat bonus to all your units when killed) and I snatched it away with a nuke which had recharged just in time.
Anyway, overall I'd say the game isn't as good as it could have been, but I definitely had a good time and can recommend it to other strategy fans. If the devs keep working on it, it can become one of my favorites.
Developed by a small indie-studio, Pandora: First Contact lives the spirit of classic 4x-games, namely Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. The gameplay is fluid, the mechanics well done. Though it’s not that epic and complex like Civilization, it’s fun to play. Overall it’s solid, but not a real long-time-challenging game, because there is a lack of variety concerning the six factions and the small tactical possibilities during the battles.
A solid, fresh and addictive empire builder that is well worth playing for fans of the genre. But it needs more life and dynamic events, especially towards the end.
There are a lot of neat ideas here, but none of them pan out. The game's creators clearly adore 4X strategy games in general, and Alpha Centauri specifically, is clear here, but Pandora: First Contact is not a proper tribute. I want to love Pandora, I really do, but nostalgia can't fix a game that doesn't work even at the most basic level.
Pandora Provides everything I've been waiting for in a strategy game and nothing I haven't. And for those who say it's too easy, turn the Aliens to Extreme and the AI to max diff and see if that makes a difference.
The only complaint I have is that the AI don't seem to have much personality either built into their behavior, their technology, or their landscaping. For example, when I play as the Tree Huggers (Terra) I building nothing but tress across my landscape, but because I get a Min bonus from forests it actually works amazingly. The AI doesn't seem to do that at all.
A GREAT first attempt at a game for a brand new gaming company, the foundation of their game is really great, they just need to add a lot of flavor to the mix, the aliens are really neat also, although I think we all agree that we would like more variety, maybe get an expansion out with a playable alien race or two? Maybe 10? Anyways, great game. Thank you!
It's a great game if you can't deal with SMAC's atrocious GUI and getting hyped for Civ:BE.
But it also has a great potential to be a GOTY if the game ends up having better production values, better unit distinctions, balance tweaks, and a better narrative.
I've only seen the beta version. Still, from the week I spent playing I can say it's a good game but surely nothing comparable to the first Alpha Centauri. From the design point, this game is somewhere between Alpha Centauri, Civ 4 and Civ 5. Plus, it adds a few new features: randomized research tree, shared food and minerals across all cities and slightly more realistic management of citizen. These new additions make for a bit different game but not better than AC. The combat is just about huge stacks of units moving around, and there are no significant terrain bonuses or zones of control. Units have no separate attack/defense values this all came from Civ 4 and that's what I didn't like in Civ 4. I'd still say that the game is interesting to play, but when I played Alpha Centauri again just after this game it instantly stoke me how wide the gap actually is. The graphics are dark and lifeless here: everything is a shade of black, leaders of factions feel anonymous, and the whole 2D GUI looks outdated (yet the 3D graphics are fine, though a bit too dark and lifeless just like everything else). The texts are good but too wordy. The music is dull and too relaxing. The tooltips and helpful messages are nice but I guess it's a standard nowadays. I was expecting that they'd spend a few more months on development and fixes after their beta, but it seems they just rushed it into release, so I'm not sure if any of these issues were fixed (if one can fix them anyway). I'm still happy to see a remake of my favorite game but it seems that it just isn't easy to outdo Brian Reynolds, even after 14 years. AC certainly had its own flaws (like chaotic and unbalanced gameplay after Fusion Power, techno-babble style of sci advances) but this game doesn't seem to fix these problems.
I bought this game with such hope and excitement, only to quickly relise that the replay ability is lacking, the tech tree is the most confusing thing i have ever seen and is not helpful at all, and that the game play is weak later on in game.
If you want a game like this then go buy Sid Meirs Beyond Earth, it is better in every way, encounters are interesting, game play is varied throughout and i thoroughly loved that game.
This game was so unmemorable that when beyond earth came out i completely forgot i had it. I know that a lot of time was put into this game and i hate to just slander it like this but it is just a bad game, and it is definitiy not worth any money.
Please look at reviews before you buy this game as i regret my purchase.
As a general rule, Slitherine & Matrix Games publish some of the finest (usually historically based) strategy games available. Pandora is reminiscent of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (AC) a turn-based strategy game I enjoyed many years ago. I was hopeful that Pandora would be a strong competitor to AC, particularly given that AC was released quite a long time back and the creators of Pandora had a solid concept to build from. While Pandora does look much better than AC, much is missing in game depth, documentation is weak and there are issues with game balance. While I see a foundation **** here, a lot of work will be needed to make Pandora a solid, enjoyable strategy game, much less bring it anywhere close to AC. There is a continuing effort to patch and update Pandora (which I greatly respect), and I hope in time it will be a worthy successor to AC.
SummaryPandora: First Contact is a science fiction 4X turn-based strategy game on a planetary scale, inspired by Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
In the future, factions have risen up from opportunities and ideologies independent of governments. Private corporations and religious movements have started wars over greed, ideology and power. Many have...