Game Check: Ixion – Challenging Space Trip – News

Game Check: Ixion - Challenging Space Trip - News

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In the building game ixion you go with the space station Tiqqun on the search for a new home. In order to offer your traveling population as safe an existence as possible, you expand the Tiqqun on the way, produce food, create resources and set up new branches of production. Along the way, the passengers demand that you make groundbreaking decisions about life on the Tiqqun – the effects of which are often unpredictable. A lot of survival baggage, which Ixion sometimes messes with. But it rewards the patient with many small joys of play.

On your journey through space, you often actively influence how the little stories develop.

An arduous journey

Ixion is basically a survival builder game with several tricky systems. To keep the Tiqqun from breaking, you need enough alloy to repair the hull every cycle – that’s what the rounds are called in Ixion. Your settlers demand housing, food and working conditions without overtime and overtime. If you do not guarantee this, there will be homelessness, hunger, and more accidents and, in the worst case, deaths. Which in turn reduces confidence in your leadership skills. If that falls too low, rebellion ensues.

Another difficulty is the limited building space on the Tiqqun. This is divided into six sectors, of which only one is active at the start of the game. To open other sectors you need various materials and workers who then migrate there. In addition to the constant adjustment of the supply logistics, the hull wear per round also increases with each opened sector. However, there is no alternative to expanding the Tiqqun, because you are constantly researching more efficient technologies and other types of buildings that require space.

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In Ixion you play as a space station manager on three levels: In the interior view you plan and expand your station, this is where life takes place. You commission the construction of solar systems or other major projects in the exterior view. The third level is the strategic planetary system map. On this you explore the current solar system, use probes to track down resources and determine the mining routines for your fleet. Incidentally, you will also find story-relevant missions and optional tasks here.

You need research points to discover new technologies and buildings and to improve the existing ones.

Beautifully staged science fiction

I will not reveal why you are steering the Tiqqun through space. It shouldn’t remain a secret that I rate the type of narration as successful. There are some chic cutscenes, new tasks or goals are sent to you in fully voiced messages – in contrast to the rest of the game, however, only in English. The content of the story missions, optional side quests and events on the Tiqqun are presented in text boxes, but they convey the sci-fi setting very well.

The soundtrack can also be heard: I think the mentioned speakers, the soundtrack and the complete background noise on the Tiqqun are great. Ixion also convinces me optically. The buildings on the inside are clearly distinguishable and nicely detailed.

You search for resources and quests on the strategic star map. You also coordinate the tasks of your mining, transport and research ships here.

Too template-like, long-winded and difficult?

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So far so good. However, Ixion plagues me with some difficulties. The balancing of needs systems (supply situation, resource and population management) keeps me busy. And I have the impression that this is a very pedantic, error-prone system. One that, once out of step, is irreparable. I could usually only correct downward spirals by loading an old save. I therefore advise regular saving at “tipping points” – this also helps against inexplicable events, aka bugs.

Regular idle phases in the gameplay, which in my opinion you can rarely influence, became annoying. So resources are limited. However, I don’t know which ones I need for quest chains. If I discover a relevant quest late and have already used the necessary material for other projects, the flow of the game breaks down completely while I have to scrape everything together from measly sources and bring it to the destination.

In addition, Ixion intentionally makes my life difficult with many mechanics and random events. The lack of resources is a reliable companion, some of my citizens’ demands cannot be met, construction projects and expansion into new sectors require preliminary work, such as expanding the power grid. “Learning by trial and error” is often the order of the day.

In sector 3, the fusion station is already converting ice to water. Perfect for adding cornfields to my food production.

Conclusion

I spent 20 hours on the Tiqqun for this game check, but canceled the first attempt after eight hours. I’m currently in the second run at the beginning of the third chapter: I look at three pulsating sectors with satisfaction, my performance makes the population happy (at least temporarily). Up to this point, however, I also loaded savegames several times, corrected my build order and humbly decided on smaller solutions.

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Ixion is a lot of fun for me despite the sometimes sluggish gameplay, a lot of bad planning and some frustrating events. Keeping the Tiqqun growing despite the lack of space and resources, placating my crew and keeping the logistics running is a challenging proposition. And it’s exciting to elicit their stories from the systems with my slowly growing space fleet on the star chart. Ixion also really grabs me with its atmosphere, the way it tells its story, its looks and soundscape.

  • Building game for PC
  • single player
  • For advanced and professionals
  • Price: 34.99 euros
  • In one sentence: science fiction building game with crisp survival elements.

Reference-www.gamersglobal.de