Light of Altair Demo

Colonizing other planets is still a pretty far away dream for now, but that doesn’t mean we cannot imagine it already. Since we already have wide selection of city builders out there, including gems like Sim City and Cities: Skylines, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to expand to idea a little bit and replace a meager metropolis with an entire planet.

Light of Altair is a strategy game with city builder elements thrown into the mix, which allows you to enjoy the vastness of space and worry about the needs of your people at the same time. Although there are some real-time strategy elements in there as well, the game mostly revolves around building colonies on other planets from the Solar system from scratch and keeping them up and running.

The game features a series of missions to get you started and acquainted with the basic mechanics, although the gameplay is not as complicated as in the other city builders. There are fewer facilities you can build, a much more restrained number of research options, and a simpler interface you have to deal with. On top of all that, the planets themselves are quite small, and they can be filled relatively quickly.

When you are not tending to your colonies, you have to worry about enemies trying to conquer your empire. You can resist the invaders by fighting back with your own army, although it obviously costs a lot of money to build and sustain a fleet of spaceships. It is necessary, however, so you must fit the cost for an army into the budget as well.

The actual battles are not very entertaining and they lack the proper tactical depth to be fun, because you do not really have to do a lot in order to win. As long as you have more units, you can rest assured that victory is on your side. The graphics engine is not extraordinary either, but it looks nice enough not to attract negative attention and keep you focused on the action.

All things considered, Light of Altair may not turn into a classic of the genre, but it is fun enough for lightweight strategy fans to enjoy. Hence, if you are interested in building space colonies but you do not want to bother with the likes of Galactic Civilizations, this may very well be the answer to your needs.