SPACECOM Demo

SPACECOM is a strategy game that seems to be extremely simplistic, but that will challenge each player to think fast and outside the box.

Strategy games come in all shapes and sizes, and you would think that the bigger the game, the more complex it becomes, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes you can make really complex games with just three unit types. That sounds like an improbable thing, at least until you try SPACECOM and reach some of the later levels, which are just brutal.

Games such as SPACECOM are considered strategies, but a better description would be swarming RTS. SPACECOM is not the first game that delivers a game in this genre, but we can say that it’s one of the best, by miles.

Swarming strategies are pretty straight forward. You build a massive invading force, usually around a star or a planet, and move them to another system in order to conquer it. This is true for SPACECOM as well, but there are some important differences that set it apart.

The players usually start with the control on a few systems. The ones that have shipyards can build fleets, and the players can choose what kind. There are only three types fleets, battle, invasion, and siege, each of them with precise roles.

Battleships only deal with other ships, and they can’t attack planets, invasion fleets are easily destroyed in space battles, but are ideal for occupying the planet, and finally, the siege fleet which is used to render planet unstable.

With just three types of units, players can encounter a huge number of complicated situations. They might have to join various fleets, or break them apart. Maybe it's necessary to destroy a planet that keeps falling into enemy hands, and so on. If you add to this recipe skirmish missions or multiplayer, you might understand why this is a really good game.

The only problem, at least in the demo version, seems to be the AI, which is not aggressive enough. It’s predictable, and once you figure out what it's doing on a map, it’s easy to disrupt it and he never recovers.

Even if the demo version has only a few mission, it’s still worth a go, especially if you like this kind of games.