Lords of the Black Sun Released

Today is a joyful day for the Arkavi development team, as we conclude the Early access stage on Steam and move on to the game’s release.

On the other hand we are looking forward to the future, as Lords of the Black Sun may have reached “version 1.0” without that meaning that we think our work on the game, our first game, is done.

Indeed, despite the transition from Early Access to release, we are still very much committed to improve Lords of the Black Sun as much as possible.
As such, we are looking forward to any bug reports and suggestions you may have so we can keep on balancing the game and fix whatever issues may arise. We have not slept a lot lately but are standing by this weekend !

We also wanted to take this opportunity to thank Early Access players for the confidence shown in our team and the game’s development, and for all feedback given. We hope you are pleased with the improvements made during the past 9 months.

One of our short term goals in development is integrating German and Russian languages in the game. We will keep you updated on any other stuff too, but meanwhile have fun!

Click to expand...

We definitely do not plan on releasing the game in this state, and we also have some cool stuff to show that we haven't really spoke about yet.

Click to expand...

I am a enthusiastic player of all 4X games, sank lots of hours into the Civ Series, into GalCiv2 and also played Master of Orion 2. And if you expect something of similar quality here, I have to disappoint you:
-The Mechanics: One of the Game Defining Mechanics is how the production works. It works on a global level. Meaning each planet generates global production. If you colonize a second planet the production from the main planet will therefore sink as it's not the only "receiver" anymore. In addition you speed up the production massively with each factory you build. It's almost like reducing the time by half with each factory, which makes no sense. This way you spent a couple of turns building factories, then you design your combat ship, create a couple of them, and kill one "very hard" opponent after the other. Your hardest opponent will be pirates. Balance is completely broken and make all mechanics besides of production and military obsolete. The Global mechanics also kill the feeling of having "special planets". Each planet is just contributing a bit to the "geater good". But that doesn't feel good.
While the game features tactical combat it's not planned out well and as the AI does not focus fire on your ships it will always lose when having troops with even strength.
-The Interface: It works. But it isn't good. Instead of mouseover tooltips you have to click on stuff to get the information, right mousebutton is closing windows. The production windows are tiny, creating a minimum of overview. You also cannot re-arrange your production queue or edit your ship-designs.
-Stability: The game tends to crash after you solved a combat. Within 90 Minutes of the release version the game crashed twice.
-The Music: Is really good, but of course doesn't save the game

Considering that in terms of balancing and game mechanics I didn't see much of a change since I played one of the first alphas I'd say that the chances of getting fixes in the near future is very low. The game has some potential, but in the current state (Release Version / September 2014) I recommend to not buy this game and take a look at the Galactic Civilization 3 Beta instead.

Click to expand...