Normally, if a game is pitched to me as a “procedurally generated-roguelike-retro sci-fi-strategy survival game that combines XCOM with … ” I’m checked out of it pretty quick. Frankly, it’s hard to be a stand-out anything anymore when it comes to setting or intent, especially in the Kickstarter indie scene , where wildly creative projects can be found easily. So it was unusual for me to dive into Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander because, while it didn't appear overtly bad, it also didn’t seem like it was going to offer me anything I’d need to see.
After 40+ hours, I still haven’t seen all I need to see.
To be blunt, the game is magical. Maybe it’s been the steady stream of Star Trek: The Original Series I’ve been digesting lately, but I was ready to fall in love with a game described by the detestable word soup that follows “procedurally generated-roguelike-retro sci-fi-strategy survival game” these days.
Our Final, Final Frontier
The story is rote, but engaging. Think Battlestar Galactica . You are the last vestige of humanity after some sort of space monster apocalypse (known as The Chruul) and, fortunately, you’re holed up in a pretty impressive piece of technology. The Halcyon is a space station capable of creating starships, and the game is centered around your ability to create the ships and train the captains needed to defend humanity from rogue elements and rival factions. This is future space, after all, so plenty of bipedal aliens with English fluency stop by to give quests or make demands.
These alien races contribute a considerable amount of charm to the emergent narrative. There are plenty of dovetailing consequences for players to navigate. Help one faction and you could anger another. Or agree to a task you’re not powerful enough to complete, and either die trying or watch a species get obliterated (meaning they won’t be around to help during the endgame strategy). It’s hard to do justice to the subtle humor and superb writing here, but it says a lot about dialogue options and cutscenes when you genuinely feel excitement when they occur.
The game itself is a mix of base building, resource management and turn based RPG-style combat. There are three classes of captain (Engineering, Science and Tactical) and the same classes of ships. All told there are a total of 30 ships you can build, six for each class and spread across five tiers. You organize all this in fleets of three ships, each helmed by a captain. The pace of the game is simple: get stronger fleets or die. Chruul invasions increase in frequency and intensity and by the middle of the second act you’re left wondering what, exactly, you can even do in the face of such overwhelming odds.
That uncertainty, that tension, is what drives the magic of this game. Combat works like any other JRPG-style strategy with an emphasis on stacking buffs. Every captain has his/her own moveset that includes abilities that “inflict” status effects or “exploit” status effects. The strategy comes from having complementary skills in the same squad. Ships have their own combat skills too, so there’s a dizzying amount of depth to the way you organize your various fleets. There are also skills for non-space combat events that take place inside your space station (or some other locations not worth spoiling). But it’s fairly minor, and the balance leans so much more on space combat it's not worth investing too much in ground combat. If you can tell what skills do what, of course.
Deep Space Whine
See, it’s that depth that is both gift and curse in Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander . The only thing holding me back from giving it the perfect score it deserves is a startling lack of UI optimization. With so many skills and so many options and combinations you’d think there would be an easy way to see what each captain is capable of. But there isn’t. The combat moves have a unique thumbnail that you must hover the cursor over to see the pop-up explanation of what it does. Even that doesn’t spell out what certain buffs do. Want to know what ‘Engines Down’ does? It won’t tell you until it’s applied to an enemy combatant and, even then, you have to hover the cursor over the little icon to read the description.
And since you can’t compare captains side-by-side, it’s very easy to forget which specific moves are available on each captain as you look for suitable pairings. It doesn’t even differentiate between which skills are used in space combat and which are part of the ground game. Sure, you eventually figure it out, but it shouldn’t be guesswork.
Another glaring UI issue is the lack of a “Load Game” option on the pause screen. Like most roguelikes you’re going to want to reload saves aplenty and, currently, the only way to do that is to exit the game you’re in and reload the save via the main menu. Even worse, there’s currently no way to pause combat! Seriously. It’s bad enough you can’t reload a save but you can’t even exit the game during a battle. So if you’re playing on full screen and, say, accidentally send a fleet into a battle without repairing ships you need to hit ctrl-esc to go back to your desktop and force quit the application. Ugh. The devs say they’re considering adding it. Please consider harder. Please.
Replayability On The Edge Of Forever
@Halcyon6Game is so good it's making me wish I was unemployed.
— Mo Mozuch (@mo_mozuch) September 19, 2016
These headaches tarnish what is, without a doubt, one of the best games I’ve played all year. And don’t be fooled by some of the reviews out there that only log a few hours worth of time. The game unfolds in some pretty spectacular and sophisticated ways the longer you play. Take resource collection, a common sticking point among people who trash the game in Steam reviews. When you start the game you have to manually send shuttles to gather resources. It’s time consuming and kind of annoying and you’ll do a lot of clicking to gather the things you need. So, people who only logged a few hours called it a broken mechanic.
However, if you keep playing and make it to Act II, resource collection becomes automated once you defeat the first invasion fleet. See, those shuttles didn’t want to fly to your station on their own until it was safe to do so. It fits the narrative and offers players a pretty significant reward for making it through the first act. Even better, you start to think the game is going to be easy street now that you’re not schlepping dark matter around; then suddenly you realize how expensive the bigger ships are, why you need more than one fleet, etc etc. One problem is solved and two more pop up. It’s a well balanced challenge.
The later stages of the game also incorporate a diplomacy angle that has potential rewards when you make it to the final boss. You’ll have to make tough decisions on saving whole alien races and intervening in minor conflicts, too. The writing, animations, dialogue options are all superb. And the music is sublime. (Not the band, the existential ecstasy.)
It’s worth mentioning the price, too. Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander is currently $20 . And based on the Kickstarter stretch goals there is still plenty of content coming. This is a game that, if you’re at all into this genre, you will play for years. It would make my desert island video games box. It’s challenging and massive and wonderful. And if it were just a bit more organized, a bit more user friendly, it’d be that procedurally generated-roguelike-retro sci-fi-strategy survival game I always wanted.
