Easily one of my most anticipated games this year, and I’m sure many of yours out there as well, is Warballoon Games‘ Star Command. In case you aren’t familiar, Star Command can most simply be described as Game Dev Story meets a Star Trek-like science fiction theme, though from what we’ve seen of the game thus far I’m not totally sure that does it justice. Game Dev Story was beautiful in its simplicity, but Star Command appears to take those simplistic game mechanics and add all sorts of depth on top, creating what we hope will be a deep strategy affair that’s still not too convoluted for anybody to jump in to.
We first learned of Star Command this past March, and originally the game was slated for a summertime release. However, that didn’t quite pan out, and in August we got a look at some new screenshots for the game but we haven’t really heard anything since then. Today Warballoon sent over a quick update on the status of Star Command, along with a slew of new screenshots to check out. It sounds like they are really interested in making the best possible game that they can, rather than trying to rush something out just to hit a planned release date. This latest set of screens is to demonstrate a bit of the work they’ve put into tightening up the overall user interface.
Above are a couple of shots of the crew management screens, where you’ll be able to choose what skill trees to progress through and define the roles of each of your crew members. The below screens are of the navigation interface, where you can choose what galaxies and solar systems to explore:
The following gallery how you produce tokens, the currency in the game, as well as assign your crew members to their various duties and upgrade the rooms inside of your ship:
Lots of screenshots there, so hopefully you’ve clicked through and checked them all out. I’m totally looking forward to finally getting my hands on Star Command, but it sounds like the release may still be a ways off as right now “due out next year" is about as specific as it Warballoon is getting. They do however mention that the alpha phase of the game should be wrapping up this month, and so barring any major issues during the beta phase, we might be seeing it earlier in 2012 as opposed to later. I certainly have my fingers crossed, but I’m also more than willing to wait as long as needed to make sure the final product is just right.
You can check out some discussion of Star Command in the game’s forum thread, and we’ll be keeping tabs on its progress as it inches towards a release next year.
