Overview
Voidborne is a turn based space strategy game that combines the pacing of XCOM with the strategic depth and scope of Civilization. The goal is to build a legacy for your people, through trade, combat, negotiation and colonization. Games take 30-90 minutes to complete and continue within the same universe from where the previous match left off.
Features
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Persistent world
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A massive, fully 3-D map
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Fast paced
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Original game mechanics
Persistent World
Instead of starting each new game on an empty map, players can choose to continue in the same universe as the descendants of the civilizations from their previous match(s). Worlds you’ve settled, alliances you’ve forged, and specializations you’ve pushed your faction toward all follow you and set the stage for the next chapter in your world’s history.
This persistence mechanic not only makes the world engaging and immersive, but it also serves a mechanical purpose. Since each new game has a different set of start conditions, no two games of Voidborne are ever alike. In one game you might have a politically peaceful environment that encourages trade and cooperation. In the next, you might find yourself having to band together to face down a powerful artificial intelligence that was created at the peak of your civilization’s golden age. This permutation driven variety leads to nearly infinite replayability.
Massive 3-D Map
Fast Paced Strategy
In most Civ-style games, players take direct control of every unit and city in their empire. As a result, throughout the game the number of actions per turn steadily increases. This leads to an early game with lots of waiting and skipped turns and an endgame that becomes glacially slow.
In Voidborne, players instead control capital ships which they use to traverse and manage their holdings. This has the advantage of keeping the number of actions per turn consistent throughout the game, but still allows players to grow their empire as much as they want. This faster pacing also means that it is possible for players to complete a game of Voidborne in 30-90 minutes.
Original Game Mechanics
Politics, economics, and science are all handled via a unique colony interaction mechanic inspired by deck building games like Dominion. Each solar system is populated with a random set of natural resource cards. At the start of each turn, the cards in play spawn a hand for visiting players. Players can expend actions to play those cards. Cards provide immediate effects such as a temporary defensive bonus, victory points, or local price fluctuations. Cards can also provide lasting effects such as unlocking new cards for future hands, generating an income, or providing movement range boosts to ships moving through the given system.
For example, systems with the primitive natives card will give players the option to enslave or make peaceful contact with the natives. Playing the enslave card provides a permanent ability to play one “construction” card per turn in this system without expending an action point.
However, it also adds the possibility of drawing a slave revolt opportunity into your hand. If the slave revolt opportunity is drawn and you don’t play it to deal with the revolt it will automatically disable one of your cards and will add more negative possibilities to your deck.