Star Dynasties Early Access Preview and Q&A

Star Dynasties is a turn-based role-playing game when you take on the role of a ruler in a feudal space empire. Each turn, you’ll take a limited number of actions, ranging from managing diplomacy, managing your planets, open or covert warfare, or managing your personal life, and more. The happier, larger, and wealthier you and your empire are, the more actions you can take each turn. You can also reserve a limited amount of action points for the next turn which is useful when having to manage larger empires. Almost half of the game takes place between your turns, as you get notifications about what other rulers are doing, where rebellions are rising and which feasts you are invited to, and deciding on how you react to these events. Refusing an invitation to a feast may be considered disrespectful, but if your character happens to be a hopeless drunk, a mere refusal may save you from a great deal of public embarrassment. These events are the driving force of Star Dynasties.

Playing Your Role

What one has to keep in mind is that the results of your choices are almost never set in stone: they depend on your relations with other members of this populous world, the character traits (like the aforementioned Drunkard) as well as good old-fashioned luck. And yet the entire narrative of the game is slowly driven forwards with each decision you make. The story told here is not just about you, it is about your entire family. In Crusader Kings fashion, when your character inevitably passes on it is your children who take on the mantle of leading the empire, and you take direct control of their lives. Each generation has but one goal, to hold the controlling influence of the majority of the galaxy. Whether to actually move towards this goal or not is up to the player.

Spreading your influence can be achieved in multiple ways. Diplomacy is preferred, but if asking politely, cashing in favors, cleverly arranged marriages, sponsored insurrections, and assassinations prove unfruitful, taking a colony by force can be a necessary evil. Here, the amount of military you can bring depends on how far and developed the colonies under your influence are. The galactic star map creates natural bottlenecks, sometimes closing off entire empires from the military influence of the rest of the galaxy. It is refreshing to see warfare reduced to a situational possibility, as opposed to the first course of action. This is not a grand strategy game, this is a game led first and foremost by drama, by the events that unfold and the stories that are told.

Life is Not Always Easy

The game definitely pulls no punches. Before my first year of ruling was done, I found my relative Borka in trouble, their planet Lambda Scorpii being led in open revolt against them, with my other vassals joining in against my family. Incredibly, it was the rebellion that asked for my military support, not the reigning family member. Given that the odds of the rebellion succeeding in an attack was 100%, I laid down my pride and my family and chose to support the new future ruler of Lambda Scorpii. Before the battle could commence, the rebellion was suddenly called off. It was a hectic part of the year that led to only one change in the galactic theatre – I lost reputation and Borka started to grow a serious dislike against me. An issue that came back to haunt me years later when a neighbouring empire started to muscle in on my territories and Borka betrayed me by voluntarily becoming a vassal of that empire. It would take decades more until Borka would meet his demise in front of an execution squad that my character’s daughter had arranged. But when the day came, it felt right, just and deserved.

Improvements in Sight

There are a plethora of little issues to correct. There are odd descriptions here and there, unclear tooltips, balancing problems, the event screens on the world map pop up in seemingly random places on the screen, scrolling issues and more. It feels wrong to see empires rise, fall, and rise again in the short span of a between-turn event log. But credit where credit is due, so far I have seen almost nothing game-breaking. Even if the choices offered are dubious or the user interface unclear, the results of your choices have consequences and the game logic is there in the code. In some cases, a bug where your wife falls out of love with you and back in love with you between two of your turns might even be called a feature, showing how fickle the human heart can be.

The description of “Crusader Kings in space” is partly appropriate, but at the same time it feels like a disservice. While the initial concept may be similar, Star Dynasties brings along plenty of changes, updates and new ideas that it plays differently. It is finally being released to Early Access and I certainly look forward to seeing where it goes from here.

And Now, a Q&A with Pawley Games:

1) What has been the biggest focus in your development direction since landing the publishing deal with Iceberg Interactive?

I signed the publishing deal with Iceberg Interactive in November 2019. Since then I’ve worked on improving the game in many areas, so it’s hard to point to a singular focus. I’ve rewritten the UI and implemented new systems such as feasts, negotiation, and starting character customization. We’ve run two closed betas, which have kept me focused on the features players care about most. As a result I rewrote combat, added assignments, made the game easier to understand, improved the AI, and fixed many QoL issues.

2) What do you believe is the biggest hurdle yet to overcome?

The game experience needs to be better balanced. I don’t just mean that individual actions need to be balanced so that e.g. secretly defaming characters isn’t overpowered (tip: it is). The overall experience needs to be tweaked so that the procedural narrative truly feels like playing through the history of the space Lannisters. For example, right now there is a little too much backstabbing and rebellion going on in the lower echelons of your empire – it’s probably a little too chaotic.

Also, I would like to add more content. We are planning two additional systems, which will be described shortly after launch in our roadmap, and more story events.

3) With that, what do you plan to focus on during Early Access? How often do you expect to update the Early Access version?

I’m hoping that Early Access will be a great environment in which to balance the game experience, just like the closed betas were. We are planning two major updates during EA, and the final release will also be a major update. However in between those I will be updating the build more regularly with small improvements, driven by user feedback.

4) How does a player “win” a game of Star Dynasties? Are there multiple win conditions?

This is a good question! First, it’s perfectly possible to play the game as a sandbox; taking decisions for roleplaying reasons, enjoying the tale of your dynasty playing out, or coming up with personal goals for a game. However the game also has a formal win condition, which is growing your empire to a particular size (right now that’s half the galaxy – but that could be rebalanced, or made configurable)

The game doesn’t have multiple win conditions, but the challenge in growing your empire is not just militaristic. You can acquire systems through negotiation as well as conquest, and there is always a political dimension – will I be perceived as a tyrant, or can this aggression be masked in some way? Also, capturing a system is only half the battle. Holding on to it, in a galaxy of scheming nobles, is another challenge entirely.

5) What do you expect to be your main focus in Early Access?

My first goal will be to remain on track and deliver the major updates we have planned. My main focus after that will be to listen to player feedback and use it to improve the overall game experience.

6) Finally, how long do you currently plan to stay in Early Access?

We’re aiming to fully release the game in Q3 2021.

Another Perspective: Rob’s Experience

I’ve been enjoying my time with the Early Access version of Star Dynasties. The single biggest improvement I’ve noticed since my time with the closed betas is the “guided experience” that slowly introduces you to the game’s many mechanics, along with many serious quality of life improvements to the user interface. Glen has clearly dedicated a lot of time to minimizing the number of clicks an action takes in Star Dynasties and the game is better for it.

I’ve noticed many of the minor issues that Kaur has noticed, too. The main qualm I have with Star Dynasties now is that I can find myself a bit directionless at times and things are very tumultuous, as Glen mentioned in the Q&A above. For example, these were my holdings on one of my first turns in Star Dynasties:

On the very next turn, and with hardly any actions taken, these were my holdings:

Essentially, the Quinn Coalition joined my federation, doubling my size, and I had zero part to play in it. While I appreciate randomness in character-driven games like this, I want to feel like I’ve earned such dramatic additions to my empire. Instead, the Quinn Coalition offered to become my vassal for no apparent reason, and of course, I said yes.

Besides that, the game has potential in ways that most games only dream of. There’s a real chance of making Star Dynasties something special, it just needs some direction, some fine-tuning, and a bit more polish. I would really like to see character-generated missions and other objectives that could be presented to you via various character interactions. I didn’t see the sort of “please assassinate my brother-in-law” requests that I wanted to see and there were more times than not that I was creating my own objectives.

That can be fun, but some guidance and randomly presented goals would go a long way towards making this game much more replayable, and enjoyable for that matter.

But hell, it’s a one-man show at GPawley Games, and it’s incredible to see what’s been created here. I think Early Access is the perfect place to shore up the shortcomings and make Star Dynasties a dramatic genre-bending strategy game that can really suck you in.

In the long term, wouldn’t it be cool to have external threats added, too? An alien race or two that shows up halfway through the game that requires its own attention? A guy can dream, right?

Meanwhile, I’ve started a short series of “Let’s eXplore” videos of Star Dynasties, which you can find here:

We’ll be keeping a close eye on Star Dynasties as it progresses through Early Access and will report on any updates as they get released.

Until next time, folks, keep eXploring!

Kaur Quark

One of our newest authors here at eXplorminate! Did we mention that we’re always looking for more people that can contribute around these parts? If you’re interested, be sure to email us at eXplorminate@gmail.com