When you mention city builders, the last thing that comes to mind is building a colony on a massive space station designed to act as an ark for humanity. But then again, that’s when games are at their best, when they challenge the norm and create something truly unique.
Don’t get me wrong, other games have premised the city building in space genre, but IXION takes it to the next level, making it one of the most interesting city builders to be released this year.
IXION is set on a The Tiqqun a colossal space station close to earth, with the aim of looking for a new planet to inhabit. Having the goal of looking for a new planet gives the players much more sense of purpose when compared to most other city builders.
While the Tiqqun does start in our solar system, the game really expands when players are able to power up the space stations engine, called the VOHLE drive and move on to other solar systems.
When you first start building on Tiqqun, space is fairly limited, but before long players are able to open up new sectors within the ship, expanding their space, but also creating new challenges along the way.
Each sector is independent of each other, meaning you need to not only export and import goods between sectors, but also plan your workforce accordingly too, splitting them out between up to six sectors.
Speaking of workforce, this is another area that makes IXION interesting. While in most games people are able to, well, make new workers, IXION tackles the issues with waiting for a baby to grow up as not being a viable means of expanding your population.
Instead, players must explore and save workers from cryo-freezers, making people one of the most valuable resources in the game. Which considering how expansive space is, makes sense for it to be such a challenge.
While managing multiple layers, from inside the space station to out in space, IXION gives players the perfect balance of colony management and sci-fi story telling, which helps keep the game interesting as you progress.
IXION doesn’t take long to get players out in space, exploring and completing missions on different planets. Science ships can be sent out to recover data, and even salvage resources, giving you even more balls to juggle.
Progressing through IXION is much more challenging than your average city builder, but as you move through each chapter of the game, it gives you a real sense of achievement, as well as purpose.
