Slipways

released on Jun 03, 2021

Turn desolate planets into a vast trade empire. Hatch plans. Research game-breaking technologies. Still be done in time for lunch. Enjoy the endless possibilities of a space grand strategy game in 60 minutes flat. Slipways takes the space grand strategy genre and condenses the best parts of it down by throwing away all the micromanagement and the steep learning curve. The result is a game in which you can finish a run quickly, but still have a deep experience full of important decisions. Forget about tedious micromanagement and spending time waiting for ships to build. In Slipways, every action you take has immediate consequences, and every choice you make is of paramount importance. Your planets govern themselves while you focus on making the right decisions to get them what they need. You'll waste none of your precious time on busywork - a single run takes 40-60 minutes and they are all filled with the good stuff.


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This was my "play while listening to a podcast" game of 2023. Simple, satisfying, good to have on the background.

Very relaxing stoned solo puzzle game.

Really loved this 3x! Planning planets and routes around imports and exports was so addicting!

This is a fairly solid, decently balanced space trading sim. You plan out slipways between planets such that they share resources to grow your empire. On "Regular" difficulty it's fairly difficult to lose but still maintains some tension through the early years of a session. There's some good variation with the races and the researches that you can do. A pretty fun, casual game that you can play for a couple of hours at a time

I see some criticisms of it being "too random" and I disagree to some extent because I haven't played much of the higher difficulties. For the most part, that IS the challenge. You have resource deficiencies early on because of it but there are ways especially in the late game to make up for this though they are expensive. When you solve problems with your planets by building overly complex routes that somehow end in you making up for not having minerals by sending it from another planet that you fed with people by growing and sending grain from somewhere else fed by robots that are built in a forgeworld mined by the people on the deficient planet, you feel a wave of satisfaction. The key is building what you need without thinking and hopelessly trying to solve every deficiency early on. You can let some aspects fester for a bit for rewards a few years down the line

The last few updates added a lot of QoL changes so the game is pretty solid right now. Lot of excellent improvements on pinning, overlays for helping you find planets etc. It's a really solid, fun, casual time!

4X has always been a genre I want to like, want to get into. More often than not, though, I find myself floundering due to complex interactions that I cannot decipher. Slipways takes at least some of those four X's and boils them down into a really snappy and engaging puzzle. Reminds me of the pace of a 4X boardgame, which I enjoy a lot more than the overwhelming mechanical glut of 4X videogames.

I really enjoyed my first couple runs. The "imports X, exports Y" model is intriguingly simple but gives rise to a lot of complexity, and when it's at its best the experience of finding a clever new five-way trade route is marvelous.

As I started more runs, though, I started to get frustrated. Trade route after trade route couldn't be completed successfully, or relied on rolling just the right set of planets on the next scan or risking shortages. The constant resource dance of time versus money versus visibility versus construction became stressful and exhausting. Runs became either trivial with access to a powerful technology or nigh-impossible with an entire sector devoid of a particular resource.

Even in good runs, the decision paralysis quickly became overwhelming. I would spend ten minutes desperately searching my planets again and again, trying to find the absolute perfect new trade route. To a degree my perfectionism is my own burden to bear, but this game exacerbates it in a way that most do not.