“What if putting your empire into decline was a fun mechanic?” – developing Stellaris
There are many games on my hard drive, but only one that allows me to lead a race of aristocratic, psychic plant monsters on a crusade across the galaxy with my pet space dragon at the head of a grand armada. Stellaris, which turns three years old today, is unique in more ways than I can list.
It marries Paradox Development Studio’s signature grand strategy shenanigans and real-time-with-pause combat to classic space-based 4X trappings - those that have been drifting through the black since the Master of Orion days. All of that is then sprinkled with enough sci-fi tropes to get you hunting down dog-eared copies of Iain Banks’ and Isaac Asimov’s finest works between campaigns.
The other big feather in its cap, however, is that Stellaris was the first major, original game series launched by the studio since 2004’s Crusader Kings - if you don’t count one-offs like Sengoku and March of the Eagles. And it was the first of the studio’s library to deal not with humanity’s past - as all its historical titles do - but with the potential future of humanity. Hence Stellaris was left to find its own way out among the stars, much more so than, say, Hearts of Iron 4, or even the newly-minted Imperator: Rome. And there was a fair bit of stumbling around in hyperspace to get the experience to where it is today.
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