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Space Colony

Firefly are the guys who did Stronghold, which was nothing like their upcoming Space Colony, a game literally light years away in terms of subject matter and tone. Whereas the Stronghold castle building games were historical and earnest, Space Colony looks like one of those whimsical trifles that you might actually get your girlfriend to play with you.

Firefly's basic pitch is that it's Stronghold meets The Sims in outer space, which sounds pretty goofy, but it bears out. Like Stronghold, Space Colony is about working through a set of production chains to go from raw materials to more lucrative processed goods. But whereas this was stuff like cheese and crossbows in Stronghold, in Space Colony, you're making outer spacey sci-fi doo dads from out spacey sci-fi resources. As you make money, you can buy better components for your colony. Eventually, tourists will come visit and you can bilk them for money and build attractions to bring in more tourists.

Space shuttling

Let's grow crops?

Bright light

But then there's The Sims element laid over this. Space Colony has a cast of about twenty characters, each with unique predilections for entertainment, interaction, and work. At E3, Firefly was showing off a spunky redheaded girl, a Norwegian biker, and a middle-aged barfly. Characters have needs like hunger and social interaction, measured with familiar satisfaction bars that fill up as the needs are met. But it's not necessarily a matter of building a generic entertainment item, a generic feeding item, and a generic sleeping area. The characters can be picky. For instance, the biker really liked the zero-G pod, but it made the barfly nauseated. Some characters like each other and spending time together will satisfy their social interaction need and maybe even result in a relationship. But characters who don't like each other are just made unhappier when they're together. Part of the game is figuring out who likes what and how you can make your space colonists happy.

Characters earn skill badges that determine what kind of machinery they can operate, which in turn determines what resources you can harvest and what goods you can produce. The happier your character, the long he, she, or it will work. There are aliens that will attack your base, so at some point, you should built defensive turrets and robot commandoes to beat them back. "People like defending stuff," says Firefly's Simon Bradbury as a variety of lasers take out advancing swarms of alien bugs. However, if that's not your bag, you can choose a peaceful fork in the campaign.

Unlike The Sims, Space Colony uses intelligible sound bites as characters comment on situations and talk to teach other. With twenty characters, there's potential for an enormous number of permutations, which requires a lot of recording. "The most voiceover work of any game ever," Bradbury guesses. But it's all part of making what he describes as a builder with an emphasis on people instead of buildings.