Apollo4x

Apollo4x
N/A
Metacritic
38
Steam
21.75
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$1.99
Release date
5 May 2015
Steam reviews score
Total
38 (36 votes)

Apollo4x is a casual-to-difficult space trading tycoon game, where success is measured in earnings from how efficient your trade routes are in transporting supplies to demands on your planets. Combat is card based, and uses a unique system never before seen.

Show detailed description

Apollo4x system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows XP
  • Processor: 2.0 Ghz
  • Memory: 2048 MB RAM
  • Graphics: DirectX Compatible
  • DirectX: Version 9.0
  • Storage: 200 MB available space
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Obey the Fist!
Obey the Fist!

Apollo4x is yet another cash grab from serial shovelware pushers, Volens Nolens Games/Enoops. Taking a break from their usual MO of dumping asset flips onto Steam, they found someone else's attempt at making some kind of 4X Master of Orion ripoff (with an emphasis on trade) hybridised with a card battler... sounds weird, but I guess such a concept could work, if it was made by someone competent instead of an asset flip scammer.

Digital Entertainment/Volens Nolens Games/Enoops have shown a repeat pattern of unethically dumping other people's work onto Steam as a cheap, nasty cash grab, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. Here's some examples so you can see for yourself:

I'm not sure who they stole the game off or whether anyone got paid at all, but I am sure this is a terrible game. Obtuse design decisions riddle the game like cancer. Trade goods aren't consistent as RNG resets everything every turn, so you need to basically start your trading configuration from scratch every turn. The UI is a dog's breakfast, and the dog has Parkinsons. It's garbage, so it's understandable the actual developer for this trash never published it, leaving it up to Enoops/Volens Nolens to grab it and publish it anyway, for a few roubles worth of Steam gamer money, I guess.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

Apollo4x has the almost comically optimistic (if it wasn't so sad) price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.

The Gaming Nugget
The Gaming Nugget

this is a great game kind of hard great if you want a challenge

Saracen26
Saracen26

This is very much a 1st Impressions review and will be edited if necessary as playtime increases.

So... You have an interest in Space 4X? You like the many Space Trading Games? You enjoy games like Magic: The Gathering? You actually crave games that make you think?

If you have answered yes to one, or even all of the above. You owe yourself to give Apollo4X a purchase. Yes, I am saying that right away. Why? Because all the aforementioned is in this game and then some! But now, you are probably thinking..

"Oh great, another game genre mashup that just will not work!... I'll Pass!"

Hold on... Not only are each of these elements solid in their own right. But in Apollo4X, they come together to make a super solid, unique and rather innovative title that shouldn't be overlooked. As a 4X game, you will not do something, then mash the turn button waiting for something to do. Each turn has strategical depth. You must meet colonial demands, purchase resources, build up colonies, prepare and plan for trading.

Trade is not an option in this game. It is one of Apollo4X's core mechanics. If you do not trade, you will go bankrupt, and you will lose the game. No population building leading to masses of taxes here. You have to be strategically aggressive in your interplanetary business, as the more you expand, the greater the upkeep. Colonists Empire-wide will also make demands. Ignore their demands, you suffer loss of approval rating and if that hits 0, you will also lose the game.

If that wasn't enough, there's the Alien Centaur threat to deal with. They are aiming to take over the whole galaxy, and most importantly, take you out by capturing your home planet of Apollo. Whilst their are no space battles in the game, land battles are played out as a card game. This game has a fantastic strategic complexity as battles are not one on one. Each card will affect several others in a deck. So what you select, and the tactics you choose in how to play them matters. So even when you are outnumbered and outgunned, it is still possible (But not easy) to win a battle.

So after some 1st impressions. What are the pros and cons?

PROS

- Starting the game, maps are not final. Feel at disadvantage? Just don't like the map? Throw it out until you find something you like.

- This game has depth from the start to the end. You will not be hammering the 'End Turn' Button. Gameplay is engaging and there's always plenty to do. Strategy is key, you will have to think! A strategy that works in one game, might not work in another.

- A genre mashup that actually works. There's no 4X like it. Apollo4X is truly a unique and innovative game that pulls you in!

- One more Turn Syndrome? You bet! The game is fun and totally engaging.

- A welcome 2D galaxy option for those who require it.

- Many options before starting a game can potentially serve up lots of replay value!

- Your purchase will be helping to save rescued dogs... Good bang for your buck in both game and charity.

CONS (Can also be positives for some, including myself)

- Although not a disavantage by my standards. This game takes the old school approach. There is no tutorial mode. You will have to read the manual. Understand, and pay attention to what every section of the UI does. The learning curve will be steep at first.

- Maps can get busy fast, and initial confusion might arise. There's a lot of information to react to every turn. Turns are not quick, and neither is mid-late game trading and combat. You will not finish a single game in just a few hours.

- No storyline or campaign. Just the old school way to play. If you're looking for 100's of random events, and a story to follow. You will not find it here.

- A few very small issues here and there which will be tightened up with a bit more community feedback.

TL;DR? - An innovative 4X game that dares to be different from the normal formula, and as first impressions go, it suceeds! If you are looking to buy something different, buy this game!

OBG☆WYATT
OBG☆WYATT

Yet another game that I bought, played for 10 minutes and gave up on. WHEN WILL THE PUBLISHERS STOP ASSUMING PEOPEL UNDERSTAND THE GAME AND PROVIDE USEFUL TUTORIALS??? If you have not played this kind of game before do not try and start with this one.

djones
djones

Basically, it is impossible to figure out how to play this game. No explanation of how corporations work or how they relate to the planet $ values which also aren't explained. No useful tooltips. No in-steam manual and the link to the manual on the company website is dead.

Might be a good game I guess just no way to find out.

Waysted
Waysted

This game is a new kind of 4x. My first run beating the game it crashed 0 times! Pretty good for a Steam game these days. If you are into 4x games and dont mind card based battles buy this. Make sure to watch the video and read the manual.

9/10

~ Vortex
~ Vortex

Apollo4x is a very unique attempt at a 4x game, that focuses on building and optimizing an economic system. The problem is that it's not even a 4x, more like a 3x. It lacks exploration...

Without any fog of war, you can see everything about each planet at turn 1. Disappointing...

Lets talk about the combat system, its basically an uninteresting card game. It goes painfully slow and you can't really skip it.

Managing your trade routes and shits can be fun for a while, but the whole experience is underwhelming once you understand how the game works. Possibilities are too limited, you either are doing it right or not. You can't just play your own way, and try something different in a next game. You are going to learn how to play and then realise that it's always going to be the same, more or less, each game. Add to that the fact that there's only one race for you to ''choose'' from..humanity.

I have 6hrs of playtime on Apollo4x and I would not say that I regret purchasing it, but I am not going to play anytime soon. Not when Gal Civ3 and StarDrive 2 are around... I say buy it if you are still curious about it but otherwise that's a Not Recommended.

oldeguy
oldeguy

iIt just isn't what I expected when I purchased the game. The failing is the card-based combat system. it takes the fun out of the game. I refunded it.

unknown.notregistered
unknown.notreg…

An interesting Puzzel Game is what I read a couple times on it.

In fact, it is interesting. But to me there is just too many polints against it I just can't let go.

First of is the strategy; once you figure out the "puzzel" in how to play the game well, it largely devolves into doing one key strategy to gain profits and resources to further expand and conquer better than the AI. That's only half the puzzel - the other half is figuring out its somewhat complicated card mini-game it substitutes for combat phases. It does have some itneresting promise, but its back into the solution formula - once you figure it out, that is what you do.

4x (or maybe 3x here? no real exploration in this one) style games often hail to high standards on having options on how to do things. This game has a very rigid set of how to play. It is interesting, it does have promise - but to me, its just not in the right category.

That is what irks me the most. Its not very flexible on its approach, its a one-off goal to expand and exploit with an over-arching goal to exterminate (or win by other means before your own demise) and that to me is a bit misleading still. There really is only one or two good ways to solve this puzzel game, and very little deviation to it.

It just feels shallow I guess, I was expecting more - or perhaps a bit more leeway on how to get around the annoying card combat. That's almost another game entirely and needs quite a bit to figure out on its own.

Pat
Pat

Sure, some aspects of the game don't change, like the way you trade and make money. But there are many options to make the game harder and when you do you have to be smart about how you use your resources and favors. I like the art work too... it's kind of old school and different. I used to be heavily biased toward "positive" reviewed games, but I've learned to take a good look at a "mixed" review games because those are the ones that often dare to be a little different. Unfortunately some people just want the same formula over and over again and freak out when a game isn't the same old thing they are used to.

-- scippie --
-- scippie --

This review has been completely changed AFTER the reply from the dev.

DON'T BUY! REALLY! DON'T BUY!
Not only is this game bad, the developer is a scammer too.
He used friendship and even offered free content (which never appeared) just to make me get past the 2 hours refund limit.

I really made lots of efforts in trying to get this game to become good (hence the 17 hours). I did lots of bug reports and the dev made it look like he really liked it while he was actually waiting for me to shut up after I got past the 2 hour refund limit. When I posted topics with the title: "game becomes unplayable after...", he asked me to change the title as it was bad publicity... After some time he just banned me from the forum because I was trying to help the game to become good. Luckily, the Steam support investigated it and found nothing wrong in my posts. Even after his so called "big update", I again tried to do a good test run of the game so that I could write a correct review. It still fails and becomes unplayable after some time (game usually just hangs at some point, no way to proceed).

I haven't been able to change this review for a very long time (I was banned here too) but now it seems to work again, so here it is.

KajZ
KajZ

The game suffers from a few design decisions which I found personally very frustrating. I have not logged a lot of play time, however I have watched a few tutorial videos and have learned that this is not a gap in my understanding of rules/controls, but is in fact how the game was designed to be played.

Fundamentally what bothers me about the game is the fact that you are not building consistent trade that develops and grows over time. Instead every turn the resources demanded by planets and the prices are re-rolled, and all your convoys from last turn are removed, and you basically have to plan things from scratch. This is enjoyable for a few turns but quickly becomes tedious, especially with larger empires. It is frustrating to invest five minutes thinking through an excellent trade route, only to have it removed the next turn (and with no way to recreate it). Not only that, but it removes an element of long term strategy from the game as I do not expand based on optimizing my current trade network, but instead expansion is best done through a simple greedy algorithm (grab the best, nearest planet every time), since the world will compleltely change next turn.

I would accept the fact that you basically start each turn from scratch trade-wise if the controls of the game made it very easy to set up new trade (and the only difficulty being thinking through and optimizing things - aka the fun part!). Instead everything from the camera control (the game would honestly be better if they scrapped the whole planetary system thing and replaced it with a board game style system with no third axis of rotation to mess the view up), to the ui/menus (no way to see what the second resource a corporation wants to trade is - you can only see the resource it wants that turn, you need to zoom in to see text after clicking on a planet, and the tooltips are awful), to setting up trade (watch a tutorial: even the devs have trouble clicking back, and trade, and travel, and figuring out what the hell is going on). The single most frustrating aspect is the system of fleets, which mean that if you are creating a very large trade route, and you have almost finished it, but the last planet you want to visit doesn't have enough fleets (or fuel or whatever) to visit, then you need to undo the ENTIRE trade route, then add fleet to the planet, then redo the entire trade route (being able to add fleet while making a trade route would help here). It feels as though the game was only tested on tiny three planet systems, and the devs didn't bother to see how controls work with larger systems.

My two main issues compound to make the game unplayable for me. While I would personally enjoy creating long term strategies over the turn-by-turn optimiziation the game instead asks for, I understand how this system can also be fun and challenging, and was willing to give it a shot. However with the aweful controls, having to re-think everything turn-by-turn makes the game too frustrating and slow to be playable.

Kodiak
Kodiak

I was looking forward to this based on the reviews and write up, but I've given it a fair shot and this really isn't a good game.

Camera controls are all over the place
Tutorial is useless
No real point.

TDuke
TDuke

I only recomend this game to 4x space genre super fans. The game attempts to use very different mechanics than is usual. It does not quite work and can get boring after you work out what the hell is going on. I like it because it is fresh and very different to the other games in my collection. Get it on sale. Expect maybe 8 hours of gamplay before you put it down.

aultridia
aultridia

I bought the game over Christmas. It is... not good. In my first 2 incomplete play throughs (both stopped due to game-breaking bugs), I found huge UI issues, multiple serious bugs/performance issues, and a smattering of typos & basic english mistakes. On top of that, the basic gameplay loop is just kind of boring. In general I'm a huge fan of board games and indie games, but this not a good example of either. It needs a large amount of rework and polish before I'd consider it ready for a general release.

becephalus
becephalus

OK little game. The interface is a little difficult to use, and I am not sure the mechanics quite hang together in a fun way. Also seemed very easy on standard.

The constraints on the zoom and view angles were pretty frustrating at times and it was hard to gather information easily.

Creative mechanics thiough. Personally I think I would have enjoyed a trading game more where the routes were persistent, and this also would have ameliorated some of the interface and view problems. It is not good to make players keep interacting with the weaker elements of your game again and again.

Trevein
Trevein

1) UI is a mess, camera is horribly broken
2) Trade routes have to be founded each turn from scratch - no long-term development. And it's a pain in the ass, because of (1).

Guess if you like to rethink your trading each turn it's an ok game, but if you prefer to build and develop - it's not a game you want.

Hade
Hade

It looked interesting until I tried to play it...
No tutorial and it deperately needs one. The game is very frustrting to say the least. The UI is utter crap. The zooming is inverted and can't be changed. You can't scroll left or right, but must click on a planet to center the map.

Game crashed first two times I tried to play it. On my third attempt, I managed to get to the setup screen before it crashed again.
Finally was able to get into the game, then you must colonize 3 planets, and then WHAT?????

I got as far as trying to setup a trade route. But since there is no tutorial, you have no idea what you're doing.

How do you actually make any money from trade??
How does upgrading a planet affect anything???
What should I upgrade on a planet?
What's the difference between the various corporations?
How do I know which coporation to assign to which planet?
How do you gain favors so you can do stuff?
How do I make money from trade routes (they're always negative)?
Why do I have to reset my trade routes every turn?
How the hell do you play this game?

There's just too many unanswered questions to to actually enjoy anything about this game.

Only thing I got from this game was a headache. The best part about it was deleting it.

Don't waste your money on this utter trash.

Insatiable
Insatiable

While an intriguing break from standard 4X space games, this game lacks the guidance and sophistication that are needed to truly break new ground. There is no tutorial and the interface gives very little guidance as to what buttons do what and how resources interrelate. Even the manual (which is a separate download under "User's Guide") only gives descriptions of buttons, not how they work together.

Crys3125
Crys3125

This is almost a great game. Unfortunately, the interface is terrible - nothing quite works the way you'd expect, nothing is simple or quick. Which is fine, since you have NO IDEA what to do anyway. You're sortuv left to figure it all out on your own; the tips are absolutely useless. The writing is almost good, but there were occasional spelling or grammar errors that totally ruined it for me. And on top of everything, the core navigation through the planets is awkward and you can easily spin your perspective and be unable to find your home base. Time consuming and annoying, which makes the actual planning less enjoyable. I love trade games, but this one is too difficult to learn (and not because it's challenging!) and to just plain use. Needs another 8 months in development IMO, and some serious work on functionality.

That being said, it's fairly pretty and there are some fun little paragraphs of story that I enjoyed. The core trading concept, once you figure it out, is fun enough. It's not a BAD game, it's just awkward and poorly designed. Such a shame! I was really hoping for more.

Khalthehunted332
Khalthehunted332

THIS HAS POTENTIAL!! PLEASE FIX THE BUGS AND MAKE IT BETTER!!