T w e n t y S i d e d

I picked up Sins of a Solar Empire on Sunday. I’d been holding off until I had more time to play it, but then my friend Bogan showed up with it this weekend and taunted me. A purchase ensued.

Not having the time to invest in the game properly until the weekend, I decided to just run through the tutorials. The most important thing that I learned was that under no circumstances should I ever be allowed to run a galactic empire. It’s harder than it sounds, and the consequences for failure are rather dire. During the tutorial I was taught a few short lessons about some buttons. Apparently there are buttons, and they need to be pressed sometimes. There were some other details in there about economies and spaceships, but they eluded me once the tutorial had run its course. I’m still pretty sure about the button thing, though.

Thus graduated from the Sins education system as a functional illiterate, I assumed absolute power over a fledgling empire and began my first game.

I built a small collection of spaceships, which were sent to an adjacent planet where they were murdered by space pirates. I built a trade center which sat idle, since I didn’t have anyone with which to trade. I built a series of scout ships and sent them to auto-explore, after which I never heard from them again. I built a capital ship and subsequently misplaced it. I pushed some other buttons related to the running of my main planet, none of which seemed to have any real effect except to deplete my coffers. Then I found some ships I didn’t remember building, flying around my world. They didn’t respond to my commands, and it wasn’t until just before they began bombing the place that I realized why.

A half hour into the game I was running an inept empire whose only accomplishments were staggering financial and military losses. I felt like I was playing Soviets in Space. My empire wasn’t so much mismanaged as sabotaged by my bumbling button-pushing. I quit the game before some sort of space-Khrushchev showed up with my resignation pistol.

I will say that Sins of a Solar Empire provided an absolutely gorgeous environment in which to lead my people into ruin and anguish. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sins of a Solar Empire:
The Part-Time Commander”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.