Title: StarDrive

Publisher:  Iceberg Interactive

Developer: Zero Sum Games

Type: Real Time Strategy (x4)

Release Date:  April 26, 2013

Release Price: 29.99 USD

Review Written by: TJ “Daggaroth” Connolly

Reviewing organization: New Eden Radio

Deceivingly complex, StarDrive is a welcome addition to the genre of Strategy games. StarDrive is heavily influenced by great science fiction such as Star Trek, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Andromeda, Stargate, Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, lost in space, Doctor Who, and many more and as an avid science fiction fan myself I was pleasantly surprised to discover some of these references and made me want to delve deeper into the game and find many more.    

Graphics

The Graphics of StarDrive are remarkably detailed and a nice mixture of art styles, those used in the weapons are surprisingly vivid and detailed and make you feel like you are right in the middle of a major space battle.  One very pleasant discovery during reviewing this game came when playing as the Humans, and starting out on the home planet of Earth, when zoomed in you can easily distinguish between the land masses and oceans and to this point in time, I have yet to come across another planet which shared that same model which leads me to believe there is a great variety in the planet models.    The Ships themselves seem very impressive and accurate based on their size and roles, although the largest ships, the titans, had the room to fit enough weaponry on them to seem like they were projecting an energy beam the size of the front of their ship against enemies which seems a bit unrealistic but hey.. It’s a science fiction game. 

Sounds

The music of StarDrive compliments the game quite nicely.  It has a good broad selection of tracks that keep you from becoming tired of the soundtrack during long gameplay and during combat the music helps increase the feel of you watching an epic fight in the depths of space.  

The effects of the weapons are simply great, they sound like weapons should: Big, loud, and powerful.  When a ship let loose a volley of energy beams it was a very satisfying experience.

Gameplay

The Gameplay at the time leading up to writing this review was flawed but enjoyable.  The ability to model and create your own ships was very rewarding and a good portion of playing the game for this review was spent creating various ship configurations and seeing how they would do against my enemies. The ship combat was fluid and quite wonderful to watch, I believe my favorite moment in reviewing this game was warping a fleet of ships I had appropriately named “Warhawks” into the path of an enemy fleet and spending the next 10 minutes watching the two fleets clash.  The planet management system was where I saw the greatest room for improvement, with the controls and the AI for governors needing some serious attention.  there were multiple bugs that had an impact on gameplay but that is not surprising from a new release that are sure to be eliminated with time and refinement. 

Replay Ability

The desire to replay StarDrive is very pronounced and healthy.  The amount of customizable aspects, from the ships to the races and various ways to play means that you can spend days if not weeks playing a single game or spend an afternoon in multiple, fast paced games or simply experimenting with a new ship type that you were inspired to create.

Overall

StarDrive is certainly a great addition to the family of Science Fiction Strategy games that are currently on the market. Its vast customizability combined with fluid and fun gameplay will make it a welcome part of any gamer’s library.

StarDrive is available on Steam at the time of this review for 29.99 $ USD

Graphics (7.5/10)

Sound (8.5/10)

Gameplay (7/10)

Replay ability (9/10)

Difficulty (8/10)

Overall (8/10)