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Caspian: 5
Swimming with 3D polish from an ex-AAA game developer, Light of Altair is a nicely put together “Sim City” style game, where the objective is the timely construction and management of various planetary bases, the core of which is juggling space and time to get certain numbers to rise to required values. There’s a slightly uncomfortable mish-mash of hand drawn 2D and polished 3D and simplistic GUI interface which spoils the overall style, and the music is shockingly bad Europop which mercifully can be turned off using one of the comprehensive options settings.Light of Altair is a good first effort, but suffers from a common problem with games of this genre in that games are very lengthy, and it may not be apparent where you’re going wrong for quite some time – due in part to the fairly unclear interface and deep complexity – by which time you’ve probably already failed the mission but are unaware of the fact for ten minutes. Unfortunately this lack of reward for hard effort and steep learning turned me off wanting to play again.

Kayla: 3
For some reason when I downloaded Light of Altair, I expected more of an action game. Instead, I was surprised to see it was nearer to the Civilization series, where you’re expected to create a colony and ensure that everything runs smoothly. You’re placed on one of many spherical, 3-D planets, and thrown into the mix with little idea as to what is going on, how to maneuver, what the icons even mean, or even what in the world you’re supposed to be doing. I figured parts out on my own as I ambled through it, but other things still remain a mystery. Mostly I just clicked aimlessly, hoping one click would be the right click. As a result, I failed my mission. Miserably. The lack of a decent tutorial made the game far more frustrating than it needed to be. The music and sound definitely need to be revamped. The game, set in our universe, had a singular techno song to listen, and that was it. Few sound effects were in the game itself, leaving nothing to distract from the rave in space. Compared to other games, the graphics weren’t up to par. In fact, they were lacking. I got the feeling that there could have been a battle, somewhere, but repetitiously losing because I couldn’t figure out how to increase my monthly trade earnings soon led me to give up hope of ever figuring out the vague plot. Light of Altair is better off being passed over.

Mike: 7
On the plus side, I ended up playing the demo a lot longer than I intended, but I kept waiting for the gameplay and strategy to click and make a lot of sense. It never quite came together for me. It reminds me a lot of Ninja Bee’s Outpost Kaloki, but with deeper strategy. Everything about the game is slick: presentation, graphics, and sound. My biggest complaint is that the tutorial didn’t teach me enough to not have to be sprung out of debt or use the speed up ability. Maybe I’m just a strategy buffoon. If you’re more proficient or into strategy, the game will probably click for you.

Sam: 8
Light of Altair is a space colony building game. You have to build colonies and balance power, food, and happiness requirements while building up your industry and mining so you can build fleets of ships to conquer other planets, and build colonies there. The display can be a little crowded when you have ten different colonies on one planet and a rival faction has ten of their own, and it can be hard to tell one colony apart from another. But the developers did a good job of keeping almost all the necessary information at your fingertips: there aren’t any menus to click through, no micromanagement, no sliders to move around, just placing buildings and building fleets, and any information you need is on the main screen. The demo only gives a taste of the combat portion – it requires a fully built up planet with tons of fuel to even think about building a ship. Once built, fleets are moved by the player from planet to planet, and combat is resolved automatically – the player can watch the battle from a birds-eye view, but not participate or move around individual units. So there’s not really a focus on battle tactics, just on building and managing your colony so it can crank out more ships. All together, I enjoyed it, the demo only scratched the surface, there’s a good game here. Most likely not a lot of replay value since there’s only a campaign mode at the moment, but the developers have been discussing patching in a sandbox mode. The music is generic techno and a little grinding after a while, but the graphics are top notch, the planets are fun just to look at. Absolutely worth trying if you’re even slightly a fan of management games.

Average: 5.75

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