I bought Stars! from Electronics Boutique several months ago. It was quite expensive, at £2.99 (ahem) but was the best £2.99 I’ve ever spent. Seriously.

I wasn’t expecting much from it. I picked it up because it was cheap and looked OK It was published by XPlosiv, so I figured that it would be at the lower end of even budget quality, and when I opened up the box I thought I was right.

No manual, no registration card, not even a pamphlet advertising other XPlosiv games, just a CD in a jewel case! Great...

So, I stuck the CD in and installed the game. Then the fun began...

Please enter a registration code.

*****WHAT????*****

There wasn’t one on the box. There wasn’t one on the CD. There wasn’t one in the help file. There wasn’t a PDF manual at all. Great.

I went to the XPlosiv web site and looked around. No mention of missing codes there. I emailed them for help and waited a week. No answer. In the end I did something that I wouldn’t recommend. I went to a Warez site and got a code. Still, I felt guilty. I’d paid for the software but I could still get into trouble if I used it as it was intended - for multi player. I searched around the net and found a very active Stars! community, including a newsgroup (more on that later.) I asked about my problem in there and was given XPlosiv’s telephone number - apparently it’s a common problem and they were surprised I hadn’t received an answer. Perhaps, as usual, my email got lost in the ether.

So, armed with a legitimate serial code I began to enjoy the game.

When you first start it up you’re greeted with a rather plain but confusing interface full of information. Stars! is a multi-player enabled turn based strategy and resource management game. Unlike many games of it’s type it gives you access to all the information you could ever want on the same screen - this can be quite scary at first but you appreciate it once you get into the game!

Of course, you have to learn how to use it first! There is a tutorial game, and I played through that first. It took me about an hour to do but by the end of it I was quite proficient in the game - enough to actually use the interface even if I was just proficient at loosing!

I decided to look in the help file and find out more about the game. The premise is actually quite interesting:

“Somewhere out on the edge of the Universe, two great races (the Sznip, a race of crustaceans, and the Fermis, a race of nuclear plasmatoids) have destroyed themselves and the chance for all remaining sentient races to evolve and expand into (nearly) infinite space. Once upon a time there was a Theory that said the Universe was made up of interconnected bubbles of space/time. The Sznip and the Fermi War proved it. The detonation that destroyed both these super races also caused these bubbles of real space to pop (actually a simultaneous replacement of real space with null). All the bubbles but one. This bubble of space/time, your bubble, is all that remains. And it's small (too small) and full (too full) of sentient species, each on the verge of colonising other planets and traveling between the stars. Each race hungry to control the little bit that's left.

There's bound to be trouble.” (quoted from the help file, as it says it better than I ever could.)

The element found in the weapons of the Sznips and Fermis doesn’t exist in the bubble that you’re in, so you can’t destroy the universe in the game, but you can build ships, colonise planets and fight your neighbours. Occasionally you may come across artifacts left behind by those races which will help you with your research, or encounter transdimensional beings who will trade knowledge for minerals. The aim of the game is to mak e your race strongest, most advanced, whatever. You can do this by crushing your enemy through war, or extend you hand in an offer of peace whilst you’re researching away in the background to win without them noticing. It’s up to you.

That’s an over-view of the game any way!

After reading the help file, which is quite brief, I decided to play a simple game against computer opponents to get a good feel for the game.

I soon found that I enjoyed it. The interface is pretty good - you control fleets of ships by selecting them and setting waypoints, giving orders for what they do at each one. You have ‘build ques’ at each planet that you have colonised where you set the number of mines, factories, etc to be built. The map showing your space takes up most of the screen, the remainder shows the mineral concentrations of the planets selected, the status of any fleets in orbit, their instructions, and the remaining construction orders of the planet. Everything can be controlled with the mouse, or there are shortcut keys if you wish to use them.

You can change the map display so that it shows planets with their size differing to represent suitability for your race, mineral concentration or population, or you can have those numbers displayed beside the planet. You can also have it display your allies in a different colour to your enemies.

The interface is very efficient once you learn to use it, and, if you set pre-programmed production ques for each planet, and organise your fleets well, it should only take you a minute or so per turn, even when you have the maximum number of ships and lots of planets.

I won my first game (on easy) and decided to move on to harder levels and start customising my race and the game. This is where the power comes out. You can customise almost anything. With races you can select major attributes, such as hyper expansion (doubled growth rate) or inner str ength (good at mine laying) and then personalise the race - say they have cheap engines for their space ships but they are unreliable, or they aren’t interested in remote mining so they only get the basic ships of that type. You can select the range of gravity, temperature and radiation that is suitable for them to live in, alter the costs of science research for each field and specify the number of people needed to run mines and factories.

Race design is critical, and I had a lot of fun finding out what makes a good race!

The victory conditions are quite varied and you can specify most of them yourself, for example you have to own a set number of planets or have reached tech level 22 in three of the science fields. You can set the number of years that have to have passed before a winner is declared, and the number of victory conditions that need to be met.

So, that’s how the game works. Playing against the computer gets boring after a while though - the computer players aren't that exciting as opponents, and don’t do the whole diplomacy thing, so there’s a whole element of the game missing.

The multi player options are very good though. You can play multi player by any file transfer method - FTP, email, network, direct cable connection, floppy disk in the post, or, even opening the data file, copying it by hand and typing it in to notepad on the other computer (NOT recommended as the files are pretty big but I did try it to see if it would work!).

If you don’t have an Internet connection or you want to play with a friend who happens to be in the same room (you mean you talk to people face to face instead of using email???) then you can actually start multiple instances of Stars! and play on the same computer. The minimum spec for Stars! is a Pentium 90 but I managed to get it running on a 486 DX 75 portable with a 640x480 display. Not the ideal playing environment but I did manage to play the game well enough by collapsing some of the information panels when they weren’t needed.

To play a multi-player game on the same computer you need an instance of Stars! running for each player, plus an extra one known as the host. Even on my low-spec portable I managed to get enough stable instances running at an acceptable speed for a two player game. I did manage to get eight running once as a test but it was too slow when generating turns to be useable. On a modern day PC you should be able to get a 16 player game going without trouble!

That’s part of the reason I like this game - it will run on anything capable of running Windows 3.11 let alone 95! The file transfer methods available let almost anyone play too.

Another reason I like this game is that the designers appear to have a sense of humour. The enemy ships have some cute names, like the ‘crunchy critter’ and the images you can have for your races are also amusing - one of them is a rubber duck. On another level, the planets also have ‘interesting’ names. From ‘Snots’ and ‘90210’ through to ‘W*nker’. The planets that are almost swear words may put some people off letting children play the game, although I think that it shouldn’t be a problem - this is a hard game that teaches a lot of mathematical skill, and perhaps even hacking or programming if they get into it enough!

You can still have computer players in a multi player game if you wish, and usually its worth it just to flesh the game out a little. They get beaten easily enough when all the humans gang up on them anyway!

Speaking of humans ganging up on people, now is a good time to talk about the Stars! community. Stars! was created by a company called Mare Crisium, who are very good with their fans. The next version of Stars! called Stars! Supernova Genesis, may be out late this year or early next year - it depends on if they can find a publisher for it or if they have to self publish it.

They have been very good with keeping their fans informed, and there is a forum ran by Mare Crisium for discussion of both Supernova Genesis and the current version of Stars!. There are also a number of sites which host multi-player games, and the Stars! news group, rec.games.computer.stars. These are good places to lurk and pick up tips, but I would be careful about posting. There is a lot of elitism in the Stars! playing community.

Sometimes you come across a game targeted at new members which lets you learn how to play, but most hosts don’t want to have to have new members messing up their game and getting in the way, so they have brought in a policy of wanting to see a game file which shows that player having a set number of planets or resources by a certain year. If you can’t do that, you can’t play.

The newsgroup, too has an attitude that all newbies are thick, that they think they are better players than they are because they’ve played the computer players and won, and that they shouldn’t be allowed to join in their games because they will ruin them.

It isn’t so bad now - last time I checked they were busy discussing when Supernova Genesis was due out, but it still isn’t a welcoming place.

I am making a big thing about this problem because the multi player function is a huge part of the game, and if new users don’t feel welcome, and I know I didn’t at first, then surely that’s a problem? I didn’t think I was a great player, I still don’t, but I love the game, and, once you can get past the snobbery there is a great community of loyal players out there. The message boards are thriving, there are regular games, both of standard Stars! and slight variations such as ‘capture the flag’. This game will keep you entertained for ages, *once you can break into the community*

Some people get really into the game. Under the hood it is mostly mathematics so some people work out the best population values for their races using calculus. Others have written add - ons for the game that help you record important pieces of information. There is also a known ‘bug’ that means you can create colonists out of thin air using a memory editor.

This game doesn’t look like much when you first load it up, no fancy graphics, or sound for that matter, but it’s challenging, intriguing and addictive. If you can get past the snobbery most of the players are nice, if a little obsessed, and the programmers actually care about the users. Considering the cost £2.99 if you can still find a copy, I’d say it is well worth buying, if you have the time to play! I'll close with a quote from the Stars! drinking game that shows how good & stable this game is: 'If you've ever had stars! crash, take two Drinks. You must be shocked.'