Starlink Demo

Simple gameplay ideas go a long way when it comes to indie games, because they cannot count on a large budget to dazzle the players with motion-captured animation and professional voice actors. However, creativity can turn out to be the most important element in a video game, as it was demonstrated over and over again by multiple people over the years.

Starlink is a seemingly simple strategy game at a glance, which features pretty straightforward mechanics and not much depth. However, once you start playing and understand how to take full advantage of your assets, the game turns out to be quite exciting and addictive. Not only that, but its replay value is more than decent, which means that you get your money’s worth.

The underlying idea is that you start off with a star and a rather small fleet of spaceships, which are actually just colorful blobs in the game. Your goal is to send these ships to the nearest star and conquer it, in order to set up a spaceship production facility on the said star as well. In this fashion, you can quickly expand around the galaxy and use routes to direct the flow of spaceships between stars.

The gimmick gets old if there’s nothing to stop you from rapidly expanding throughout the galaxy. Thankfully, the game provides you with the possibility to play against the AI or even challenge other people in multiplayer matches. Hence, multiple powers try to conquer the same galaxy, and the round ends whenever one of the players manages to conquer every star.

By winning matches, you are rewarded with experience, which can be used to purchase skills and abilities. These come in handy when you need some divine intervention, because they can change the pace of the game and give you a fighting chance when you have none. Obviously, these skills are pretty well balanced, so none of them are liable to ruin the game.

When it’s all said and done, Starlink is obviously not a revolutionary product, but it’s a very fun one. Thus, if you enjoy a fast-paced strategy game in which you always have to think and act fast, this may very well keep you busy for a while.