Positech announces
Gratuitous Space Battles, a science-fiction
strategy/management/simulation game. The
Gratuitous Space Battles
Website is online with screenshots and a gameplay trailer, and here's word
on the game:
GSB is the next game from UK developer 'Positech Games'. It's
a strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base
building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of
science-fiction games : The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with
tons of laser beams and things going 'zap!', 'ka-boom!' and 'ka-pow!'. In GSB
you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets,
give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from
battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways).
Gratuitous Space Battles aims to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into
space games. The game is for everyone who has watched big space armadas battle
it out on TV and thought to themselves 'I could have done a much better job as
admiral'. This is not a game of real-time arcade twitch reflexes. GSB is about
what ships you design, and what you tell them to do. Your individual ship
commanders have total autonomy during the chaotic battle that unfolds. This is
not a tactical game, it is a strategic one. These gratuitous space battles are
not won by plucky heroes with perfect teeth, but by the geeky starship builders
who know exactly what ratio of plasma-cannons to engines each ship in the fleet
will need.