Apollo4x
Tutorial Video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGlawbFW1LY
53 minute long tour of the game.
We just shipped it!
The manual is MUCH updated now, so if you downloaded it before, do it again. It's new as of 6pm May 5th. Much better detail.
Tutorial video will be up tomorrow hopefully. Already building a wish-list of things we'll try to patch in with an update once we've had a moment to recover.
If you have any troubles, I started a bug report thread in the group. It has instructions on what to do to help us troubleshoot with you.
I'm going to start a thread in the group for posting pictures of your dogs. I've had people send me pics of their rescues and stories about them already and we love that stuff. Gets us right in the feels. So look for that in the forum.
Release TODAY!
Manual is now available!
http://apollo4x.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Apollo4X-Guide.pdf
We STRONGLY encourage you to take a glance at the manual. There are some tooltips in the game but the tutorial is in this PDF. Not only will you avoid being bewildered by our game, but you'll also know if it's the game for you. I cover every aspect of what you do in Apollo4X in this guide - plus some strategy tips you don't want to miss.
Wow, this is exciting!
Joe, Jim, Zach, and Mike made this game together, and a week from now we're going to share it with you. It's been a wild ride getting to this point. Flipping the switch to transition from "our game" to "your game" for the first time feels pretty profound.
Is this the 4X game for you? Keep reading to find out...
We're finishing up the manual and should have it linked on the page tomorrow. We strongly encourage you to download it and look it over, because it's a walkthrough of how to play the game and you'll have a very good idea of what the Apollo4X experience is - because it is NOT your usual 4X genre game.
We love MOO2, Space Empires, Pandora, and all those games built on the Civilization model that Sid Mier perfected. However, there's room for a whole different type of game than that - because frankly that genre is packed with great games so there was no gap for us to fill there. But there is a burning need for something "else", that can appeal to players who like managing an economy, solving a constantly changing business efficiency puzzle, and those who think card combat mechanics are interesting.
One problem we find with the 4X genre is that you spend a lot of time waiting. You have build queues that take 50 turns to produce a reward, and you might click "next turn" dozens of times before you get to do something meaningful. Apollo4X was founded on making every single turn interesting and meaningful, and active. You don't just create a trade route and get residual income without interacting with it again -- you have to look at the import and exports of your colonies every turn and decide the best way to profit from buying and selling goods. Every turn. Then you take that money and invest in philanthopy, meddle in politics, or raise a private army.
We also thought it was important to have a variety of ways to succeed or fail. As an interplanetary trade mogul, you have a lot of money and a lot of influence - and how you employ that empowerment can unite the homeworld governments, build an interplanetary Internet, amass a stockpile of resources or a grand army with which to eliminate the enemies homeworlds. Being a bit of an economic simulation, you can also get overburdened by the economy and bankrupted, tossed out by angry citizens or overrun by the aliens if you gamble too hard.
Finally, about difficulty. We wanted to make the game accessible to casual players and youngsters, but able to scale up in difficulty so nobody could say it's too easy for their tastes. To do this, we've allowed you to alter the difficulty of economics, combat, politics, and social approval mechanics individually to tailor the game to be challenging in the ways you want it to be. Or, if you want a sandbox where you can test out everything and have unlimited resources, there's a checkbox for that too. Additionally, if you like 3D galaxy maps or prefer a traditional flat map, we gave you those options as well. We kept all the business and economic stuff very abstract, because we want the game to be fast and fun, without feeling like Economics class, but all that supply and demand dynamic is going on, without being tedious about it.
The game is inspired historically by the East India company, but we put it in space because spaceships are way more fun than sail boats. Plus, there's no historical context for space dragon hordes that want to eat your colonists. However, the real history of the East India company is pretty fascinating - so we encourage you to look it up on Wikipedia or get a good book on it. Just like playing Apollo4X, you might learn a little economic and business theory while you're having a fun time.