Lords of the Black Sun Impressions

"Quite Early Access"

It's actually taken me quite awhile to get this impressions written, but finally here I go as I've been playing this multiple times for the past few weeks. Now Lords of the Black Sun actually is the new name which originally was Star Lords. Now this really isn't a massive change, it was just given a new name while it continued to develop which makes sense. Now apparently it's in beta currently, but I find the project to be a really barebones early access project as in base you can play it fine. Though there are issues and many missing features as multiplayer is to come and I hopefully imagine many sections will be overhauled. To start off I'll go over some annoyances in the title, first off would be the naming likes to duplicate itself for some sort of reason and that I find it really hard even with the tutorial to quickly grasp the gameplay. I easily understand it's turn based, it's just all the interesting complexities are well hidden in various menus. That's where I turn to some very interesting features as you are able to design your own style of ships, name various things like planets to make it more personal (damn double letter glitch thing) and the ability to control deepened things about your personal empire. Everything from your domestic policies from which my people didn't want nor like free health care for some reason and I'm baffled to trade routes or other distinct things that would go on I imagine in a space ecosystem. To start off you're given a fair selection of races which all have a brief past from which they got to this point and you begin with a home planet from which you are to spread out in the world clusters in order to colonize and increase your sphere of influence. There are a good number of planets per say solar system, but it seems like this should be increased to a more natural number of planets and also maybe more distinction within them. It will just create more variety and awe as you guide your ships through them. Now movement is fairly system in the game so that's fine and actually controlling building within the empire is also as simple. Everything is done in a turn based style from which I'm sure many PC gamers have gotten used to over the years and all turns are handled in months. Those hyper drives sure don't move that quick in my opinion if it takes a month to fly about, anyways. Black Sun does of course have a tech tree with three distinct layers of movement; Economic, Military and Science which could use more explaining of what the branches do for benefit along with more of where they're headed for. Combat itself does happen, which has an interesting effect seeing the many ships engage one another and the various modules mix up how the battle will turn out. I think I got a quick point across for Lords of the Black Sun, it feels really Early Access at this point and will write more in the future as it develops on the program.

Lords of the Black Sun Steam Early Access Page

Impressions Made on PC during Steam Early Access