Str: Pax Solaris [by NBSD]

Game: Pax Solaris
Release: June 20, 2003
Genre: Strategy
Developer: Niels Bauer Software Design
System Requirements: Pentium™ 100mhz, Windows™ 9x, 2000, ME, XP
Price: $19.95


“Pax Solaris” is a game of interstellar conquest developed by Niels Bauer Software Design, who you may recognize as the company behind the numbingly simple yet addictive “Smugglers 2”. With Pax Solaris the developer has taken their ability to create quickly accessible games and produced an abstract strategy game in which the player assumes control of an army of space ships in an attempt to claim ownership of all the stars in the galaxy.

In case you’re wondering what “abstract strategy” is, consider chess. Chess is a game of conquest designed to teach strategic thinking but rather than inundate the player with rules about morale, developing technologies or managing troop formations they are instead given a simplified set of rules and a number of abstract pieces to represent their armies. In Pax Solaris your fleet is represented by a color, which is applied to all stars you conquer, and some numbers. The numbers represent your ships (fresh ships vs. damaged ships) but could just as easily represent the number of gummy bears in your coat pocket as the game would translate just as well to any other setting as it does to sci-fi - hence, the “abstract” classification.

You never see your ships and you never watch any combat occur. Instead you watch the numbers as they travel from star to star. The general idea is to quickly overwhelm unoccupied or poorly defended stars (with a low number of defending ships) and then consolidate your forces to take on larger armies and at the same time the enemy AI players are doing the same. Throw into the mix the fact that you must always have an open path or “supply line” through which your ships can travel and that some stars will offer bonuses in repair, construction, movement, defense or attack and you realize that despite it’s simple presentation the strategy involved in Pax Solaris is quite deep.

The true genius of the game lies in the simple interface. Quite literally, if you can draw a line with your mouse then you can play Pax Solaris. Arrows between the stars display troop movement paths and you can change these paths and thus the flow of your armies simply by clicking the mouse button and drawing a course from star to star. This makes it very easy for a newbie gamer to dive in quickly. Plus the included tutorial, which concludes by letting the player defeat a small map, is more than enough to get you started on your way to galactic supremacy.

Graphics: 6
The interface is very clean and well designed and it’s clear that quite a bit of attention was put into making the presentation as simple and professional as possible. The in-game star field graphics are colorful and pleasing to the eye.

The downside to the slick presentation is that aside from a faint twinkling of the background stars the entire play area is almost completely static. The developers had to walk a fine line here and I realize too much “flash” would have been worse than none at all. At the same time I can’t think of any reason why the play area and interface couldn’t have had some animation and more interactivity added to them.

Sound: 2
How unfortunate! There are virtually no sound effects in Pax Solaris except for a single button click and no music. While this is great for people who like to play Win Amp in the background it also means there is no ambience and nothing to immerse you deeper into the game. Much like the graphics, a little extra effort in the sound department (even just a few ambient “space” sounds) would have gone a long way.

Game play: 8
It really comes down to the game play and Pax Solaris is strategy in its purest form. No tech-tree, no building bases and no resource management – this game is about conquest and out-thinking your opponent in real-time. Most impressively, there is no barrier between the interface and the player! I’ve seen (and even made) some truly awful strategy interfaces in my time and the brilliantly simple control in Pax Solaris is extremely refreshing. .

At the easy settings a beginner can build up their confidence and beat the AI on the smaller maps but things become much more challenging at higher difficult settings or in multiplayer. Everyone develops their own favorite strategies (I like the old “isolate and destroy” method) and when you pit 2 humans against each other this game really shines. No matter the map size I found games rarely take longer than 20 minutes and most of the time less than that. You won’t have to worry about long, drawn out stalemates.

Options: 6
Interface options are almost non-existent. The graphics are locked at one resolution but you can play full screen or windowed - of course, windowed is better. Where the player does luck out is in the amount maps they can play and the extremely easy to use map editor. I would like to have seen a matching service either in-game or on the company website to help find people to play in multiplayer.

On the downside, Pax Solaris suffers from the same shortcoming that most shareware titles of late have in that there is no guidance for the player and no point in playing beyond getting your quick strategy fix. By adding a story mode the developers could have given some real life to the universe and immersed players as opposed to simply providing a game board, some rules and saying “go have fun!” Also it would have been nothing to add different modes beyond “total conquest”. What about “capture and hold”?

Note to all developers: unlimited maps don’t necessarily translate into unlimited replay value.

Concept: 8
I love abstract strategy games! The elimination of all the extra fluff and the concentration strictly on troop movement and supply lines makes Pax Solaris simple and yet deep enough that a strategy game veteran and a novice could play against each other on an equal footing and both have fun. I hope to see more from this genre in the future.

Fun: 8
This is chess for the 21st century! Your ability to think strategically and a few moves ahead in the game is more important than being able to navigate a tech-tree or mine resources. Games are fast and don’t take up much of your time, making Pax Solaris a great “coffee break” game for people who love strategy but don’t always have time for a full-on war game.

Overall: 7
Pax Solaris is a fun, accessible strategy game that could have easily scored higher had a bit more time been given into developing the presentation of the game. Strategy gamers don’t usually buy into a lot of flash in their games and if you are among that camp then you can be assured that if graphics and sound weren’t a consideration I would have given Pax Solaris an even higher score. The AI enemies are sufficiently challenging, especially at higher difficulty settings but multiplayer is what you really want to try and to that end I hope the developer is able to build some sort of community through their bulletin board or website.

Despite shortcomings in the presentation I have no hesitation in recommending Pax Solaris to anyone who loves a good strategy game and I have a feeling that it will remain on my hard drive for a long time to come!

Added: January 9th 2004
Reviewer: Kyle Nau
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