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Lost Empire: Immortals. How does that sound for an awe inspiring title? It suggests scope, power and depth in a scale unseen before. Acting like Civilization, but in space, Lost Empire: Immortals grants you the control of a race of beings, with advanced technological achievements with one aim; expand and conquer. From one planet to a thousand planets, the premise is simple; create a dominant empire which rules the galaxy. You can achieve this in various ways ranging from economic to domination, to conquest or scientific. Lost Empire definitely has the intensity but does it make the transition to lightspeed or is it left floating as space junk?
The game makes its entrance in an understated manner. It outlines the story in a (skippable) intro movie. It’s the usual Science Fiction narrative thread about a fallen race, a galactic war and the fight for rebuilding and survival. It’s hardly Star Wars but it’s competent and well constructed. It makes sense and it gets the job done, bringing you into the game and giving you a purpose for your empire management. Following that is a simple menu screen that grants you the usual Options, Single Player, Multiplayer and Credits selection. If you’re new to the genre (turned based strategy) and its sub-section 4x then there’s a helpful tutorial which leads you through the basics. It lasts about 15 minutes and explains roughly what the menus do and how ship movement occurs. For specifics, sadly you’re kept in the dark unless you search it out which is achieved by playing and learning. It’s a steep learning curve and most likely will put off some people, but allow it the time and your patience and you’ll be deeply rewarded with a solid game.  It’s got every ‘empire-management’ tick box ticked. It’s got a detailed and multi-layered technology tree, it’s got huge galaxies reaching the value of 5,000 planets, and it offers complete customization when it concerns ship construction and design. Each aspect it managed via a menu, which is easy to use and easy to access the required information. There’s a menu for everything in the game, so expect much clicking. You can see overviews of your planets, your leaders (who can be set to precise roles to generate more income), your economy, space battles and much more. It’s text heavy, with no attempt to hide away the inner workings. It’s time consuming, but that’s the way the genre is. Fans will rejoice, new players will cringe. There are six races to choose from, each with their own advantages. The only recognizable, overused race would be humans, while the rest are unique to the game and range from the humanoid Megalanians to the monstrous Horde. Once you’ve picked a race, picked a galaxy then the fun begins. You’re greeted by your capital planet, a scout ship and a colony ship. The game pretty much leaves it there and lets you weave your own play experience and stories. Pollux Gamelabs (the developers) give you the tools and leave it up to you to forge your empire in space. Movement is conducted with a right click and selection, the left. Each star is colonisable and you’ll slowly expand you empire, generating more resources (which are credits, food, minerals and science points). Planets are nameable, customizable and defendable. The more you have, the more powerful you are. As you expand, you’ll come across other races, some minor, some major. They’re request tribute, offer you missions or just generally get in your way. The AI does its job and on Medium or above, offers a decent challenge. Each race you meet starts off peaceful, but more often than not, enough inappropriate action and you’ll find yourself at war. Then it’s up to you to design you ships, (down to weapons, engines, communications) and construct fleets. Combat is undertaken Civilization style, where the game uses odds, fleet strength and abilities to work out the winner. There’s a nice option to watch past battles in 3D, but you’ll most likely have enough on your hands. Even a veteran to the genre will find that there’s plenty to do each turn and even if you wish to participate in the bare minimum, you’ll be kept busy. Anyone expecting fast paced combat and immense graphics will be disappointed, but realistically a game like Lost Empire: Immortals has too much overall scope to actual have such features.  For a first effort (as it’s the developer’s debut game), it’s astonishing. They’ve crammed in everything you’d expect and more. Everything you want is available to utilize. It’s only bad point is that it’s too much. We don’t have the time to get into the game’s insides without feeling overwhelmed. Fans of 4x Turn Based Strategy will no doubt get months out of it, and that’s why its score is; Score: 8/10
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