Review: Auralux: Constellations

[admin]

One of the appealing aspects of old Atari and Commodore games is in the way they portray space.

http://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/re ... ellations/

[EICJoe]

Generally we'll be moving away from Free-to-Play again after this (bar exceptions or experiments), and this was one of the last commissioned. Glad to see there is SOME good out there in the freemium world.

[SleepingGiant]

I've had fun with this game. To me there is a huge difference between games that offer a few levels for free then charge for additional levels, versus those FTP games that sell "bags of gems" to speed up timers or have pay to win game mechanics. I hope you continue to include reviews of the former type, like this game, and continue with the plan to skip the latter.

[CarlRJ]

To me there is a huge difference between games that offer a few levels for free then charge for additional levels, versus those FTP games that sell "bags of gems" to speed up timers or have pay to win game mechanics.

Very much this. Games that are "free to download and play the first level(s), then pay for additional levels or expansions" I have no problem with whatsoever - it's much like the shareware games (Doom and such) of old. (I also have no problems with "you can buy a different colored hat for your player", that is more like a donation because you enjoy the game, while not affecting actual gameplay.) This is an understandable response by developers to the situation that users have been conditioned that games "shouldn't cost anything" up-front.

It's the games that are "pay for consumable things and/or to bypass arbitrary timers that are here... to collect cash from the user" that I (and I'm guessing many others) have considerable disdain towards. (Skinner box cash extraction device.)

Feel free to keep reviewing games of the "pay to unlock more levels/expansions" (or hats) type.

As far as the game being reviewed here goes, I kept thinking, while reading the review, "this sounds like it borrows an awful lot from that game that I like but haven't played in a while"... yeah, I went and looked - the game I was remembering was, indeed, Auralux. Duh. Had fun with it, this sequel ought to be entertaining.

[Wulf_der_Sturm]

I agree w/ the previous posters. I think most of us here have always been fine with reviews of interesting "pay for more content or levels" games.

I'd prefer that this site continue to avoid "pay to win" or "pay to make timers run faster" game reviews.

Keep up the good work Joe, and appreciate what you've been doing to reach out to the audience.

[anto]

To me there is a huge difference between games that offer a few levels for free then charge for additional levels, versus those FTP games that sell "bags of gems" to speed up timers or have pay to win game mechanics. I hope you continue to include reviews of the former type, like this game, and continue with the plan to skip the latter.

That mimics my feeling as well, well said!

[Mr. E]

Does the game also offer anything new with regards to the mechanics? From what I could gather from the review, these are exactly the same as the earlier installment.

While I enjoyed the first Auralux, I even took out my wallet for some of the maps, once you understood the AI, it all became a bit boring. The AI would always follow the planets in a nice sequence, capturing one after the other. The player could just travel to a planet on the other side of the map, capture a planet, and start building up an army there.

Has this (or any of the earlier features) changed? Yes, I know, I could check it out myself, it's just something I feel missing from the review.

[lithiumproject]

Having only briefly checked out the original, the core mechanics are the same. As far as I can tell, the environmental features that occur within each constellation are new (but I could be wrong).

If you played the original, there isn't going too be much here you haven't seen in the original, but the first pack of levels are free at least to give you a taster.

[mintsauce]

Subterfuge in Space then?

[GwaR]

Yeah, I'm not very impressed with this review Mark. You obviously had not done your homework coming into this game and this is obviously the first time you've played a game in this sub-genre. Yes, AURALUX is a fun game and it's core mechanics are solid. HOWEVER, those core mechanics are EXACTLY the same as the first game and EXACTLY the same as the game from which it borrowed (read: stole) the mechanics in the first place = Galcon Fusion.

Galcon Fusion released originally in 2010 and has had several follow up games released since then. The Galcon games all include the same core mechanics which are fun and simple, but with some various tweaks to later installments that try to spice things up a bit. The latest version, Galcon 2, released in December 2014 and includes pretty much every feature (and then some) that AURALUX: Constellations replicated two years later.

I love this sub-genre and have played pretty much every game ever released within it that I can get my hands on. I'm currently playing and enjoying Auralux: Constellations. HOWEVER, it's a pretty derivative knock-off that brings absolutely zero new to the genre.

So, 5 stars for a knock-off simply because you've never bothered to play any of the installments that preceded Auralux: Constellation's release? Pretty weak Mark. I expect better from this site.