My only complaint is with the main campaign. The ability to quickly see a planet’s potential trade partners is incredibly helpful. Choosing which techs, and how best to utilize them, is wonderfully agonizing. These techs can be helpful boons, such as turning extra people exports into science or cash, or critical empire upgrades, like increasing the range of my slipways, turning water into energy (essentially a wild material that everyone wants), or being able to build on lava and ice planets. By exporting people and one other material to these free-floating labs, I begin to generate science, which can then be used to unlock new technologies that steadily unlock the longer I play, based on the alien council members I chose in the beginning. In addition to connecting planets, I can also construct my own space station buildings, the first of which is always unlocked at the start, the laboratory. Research and technology are a big part of any space-based strategy game, and Slipways is no different. As my interplanetary empire grows, I’m given tasks to accomplish from my council, such as increasing exports of a certain product, which earn bonus cash and science.

The goal is to score as many points as possible within a certain number of turns - though it’s possible to lose early if happiness levels drop and stay below around 60%. Within a handful of turns, I’ve already created a dense web of beautiful interplanetary shipping lanes. When planets are happy, they’ll automatically upgrade, producing more exports, which I can then use to support other planets. It takes multiple planets supporting each other to keep everyone happy, but it doesn’t end there. And if I really start to screw up, there’s a simple undo button for reversing decisions. To make things easier, I can test what a planet’s trade network will look like by clicking the right mouse button on any planet colonization, and even cue up multiple planets.

To trade between planets, I simply drag the left mouse button from one planet to another to create the titular slipways, and watch as the right goods are automatically imported and exported. Once built, each planet then begins at the struggling level, losing happiness unless their basic imports are fulfilled. For example, a jungle world could establish a colony and import electronics and wheat, and export people a wetland farm has robots making wheat while a, er, breeding program uses people to export biomass. To reveal these objects I’ll need to launch a probe, as easy as holding down the left mouse and button and seeing the probe’s radius, revealing asteroids, satellites, and planets.Įach discovered planet can come in a variety of flavors, including jungle, desert, arctic, earth-like, and remnant, and each kind of planet features a choice of specific colonization - but only one can ever be chosen. The result is a brilliant puzzle-strategy game that keeps me dragging interplanetary shipping lanes late into the night.Īfter selecting my starting alien council and generating a random map, I’m left staring at a black hole, surrounded by silhouetted planetary objects. Slipways reduces the potentially complicated genre of space strategy into the simple economics of supply and demand between planets.

Slipways steam game