It’s hard not to dream when we look out into the cosmos. The wonder of endless space and planets that have never been visited before. Billionaires gearing up for colonies and others selling tickets to space have bring it to the palm of our hands every night. Imagine Earth, by developer and publisher Serious Bros., takes you to the depths of the Universe where you can build your dream society in the stars.
When Imagine Earth booted up, the first thing I noticed was the number of ways to play this game. Campaigns for a story, multiplayer to compete online, and a custom game mode where you get to build a planet on your own and try to beat out other titans of industry colonizing the planet. I’m not used to seeing this many ways to play in a society building game (especially a multiplayer mode) much less all being so well executed. All of them share the excellent city building gameplay that encompasses natural resource production, city planning, trade, innovation, and defense of your territory from other players. The added competition brings an element of world domination I didn’t expect, but really helped Imagine Earth stand out from similar games.
Every city starts with a city center that is deployed to the surface of the planet and this establishes the initial bounds of your colony. Natural resources are scattered randomly throughout each of the planets with a variety of biomes that present their own unique challenges to the establishment and growth of your colony. It was hard not to be impressed by the amount of detail baked into every part of the game. Each of the playable characters in the game comes with enhanced attributes and industry specialties to help jumpstart the economy. There were even options to build a sustainable clean society from one based on fossil fuels and other polluting natural resources. There are even carbon emissions from the early stage economy pollution that causes climate change until you move towards a clean energy based economy.
I could really go on and on about the amount of detail in this game, but I’m going to cut myself off to keep my praise from getting too effusive. However, I just have to call our how stunning the graphics are throughout the game. The planets look fantastic from space and that art style trickles all the way down to the dense housing units and biomass power plants built around every city center. I can’t imagine the amount of time that went into packing all these details into this game, but the culmination of all of them really sets Imagine Earth apart from crowded competition in this genre.
There was a lot that I loved about Imagine Earth, but some of the game mechanics missed the mark. The biggest being the inability to claim more than 1 space of land at a time even when it is not occupied by another player. This can make early land expansion tedious and sets up every city to reach population capacity quickly. This is not an issue that couldn’t be fixed with more game time but it was a little frustrating in the short time I had with the game.
It’s easy to love a game about space. They all bring a magical subject to the palm of your hands, but not many of them execute on the details like Imagine Earth does. It’s easy to tell someone cared about this game while it was being developed and it is definitely worth adding to your Xbox One library.
7.8/10
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Xbox Review
My first console was the original Playstation and I would play Twisted Metal every now and then but games didn't hook me until I played the original Halo at my friend's house. As soon as I picked up that controller, I knew I needed an Xbox and I had to have that game. Since those early Halo days, I've branched out and played any game I could find with a great story and memorable characters but Master Chief is still my favorite. @thenotoriousTGT on Twitter
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