Imperium Galactum
A Strategy Game of
Space Exploration and Conquest

Game Review

reviewed by Daniel Greenberg


Designed by Paul Murray
Strategic Simulations Inc. Amw 883 Stierlin Road, Building A-200, Mountain View, CA 94043-9986
Released- May, 1985
Catalog No. 050631 Price: $39.95
Complexity: Advanced
Solitaire Suitability: Excellent
* * 1/2

Do you think you'd make a good galactic dictator? Imperium Galactum is a computer strategy game that lets you find out just how good you are at controlling a galactic empire. One to four players can play against each other or the computer in this intriguing, but cumbersome game.

The playing field is a flat star map of 50 individual star systems. From your home planet, you build an armada of warships and transport ships to send out exploring, colonizing, and fighting the rest of the galaxy. You have a number of planetary resources at your disposal, including agriculture, mines, industry, and population control. You then launch a mission of conquest on an unsuspecting galaxy.

You divide your ships into squadrons called Task Forces and send them out to explore the galaxy. As you encounter new solar systems, you determine if they have planets, see if the planets are inhabited or colonized, assess resources, and decide your tactics. You can colonize uninhabited planets. Inhabited ones need to be delicately and diplomatically negotiated with, or you can nuke 'em into the Stone Age. Enemy troops also try to colonize the galaxy, and as your empire expands, your borders begin to overlap another conquested area. Then the galactic wars begin.

Imperium Galactum is an excellent idea that went wrong somewhere along the line. The ideas are strong, the rules are well thought out, and the concept of ruling a galactic empire is certainly appealing. Unfortunately, the game is often frustrating to play. The problem is the user interface. The commands used to control the game are cumbersome, and it's often hard to determine what is going on.

The problems start at the very beginning of the game during set up. To begin play, you tell the computer whether you wish to play a saved game or start a new one, how many players there will be, and other start-up parameters. To respond, you type in numbers corresponding to your choices. But, if you use the cursor keys to try to skip over unwanted choices, the program crashes and you have to reboot. (This is true on the Commodore 64 version and may not appear in other versions.)

Once play starts, the problems mount. The game progresses in turns, with nine phases in each turn. Your choices for each turn are listed in a menu, each to be input by pressing a key. These choices often take you to sub-menus. This sounds simple, but often it isn't. The computer will often display choices that are not open to you and doesn't bother to explain why it is not functioning when you try them. It's easy to accidentally end a phase sooner than you expected by trying to exit a sub-menu and get back to a main menu.

Star travel is accomplished by moving a cursor around the star map. The cursor is controlled by the number keys 1-8, each moving the cursor in different directions. This doesn't sound bad on paper, but in the game it can be maddening. The numbers correspond to no sensible order in the game. Their use is not easy or intuitive, like a joystick, mouse, or even cursor keys. Players will find themselves constantly having to look at the directional diagram rather than at the star map during ship movement. This disruption becomes a major annoyance when your mind is on complex galactic planning. The other way to move starships is to simply enter the name of the star you wish to visit. Unfortunately, the computer gives no response to your in instructions until it determines which star the computer thinks you input. No letters, no beeps, nothing. You never know if you are spelling the name correctly or even if the computer is paying attention. Then, halfway through typing the word, it interrupts with the name it thinks you are trying to type, then asks you if its guess is correct.

In all fairness, if you stick with the game, you will get used to the cursor control system. But it must be relearned each time you want to play.

The biggest problems with Imperium Galactum are in the actual play of the game. The screen constantly displays lists of abbreviations and codes, even when it has room for the full name. This results in the player constantly having to flip through the rule book for clarification. In order to optimally control the resources at your disposal, you must remember quite a few conversions and formulas. The computer could very easily have taken the place of the scratch pads and worksheets you need to play the game, but no provision is made for it.

The game is also very bad at getting information across to the player. The player must constantly refer to the rule book to decipher the codes and figure out what is going on. When you have 30 squadrons to keep track of, every minor annoyance interferes with play.

The game is plagued with other minor problems. The program constantly accesses the disk drive, and spends a lot of time playing on its own, with the screen blacked out. The player must sit through these interludes, but a less than patient player might not find the lag time worthwhile.

The titles of each phase are important to the sequences of the game, but they are not written on the screen through the turn. Instead, they are flashed before the phase begins. If you were looking through the rule book or if your mind is wandering, you could miss them.

The rule book itself is a problem. it is poorly organized, and badly edited. For example, in the game loading explanation, it refers to the "RETURN" key. The next sentence refers to the carriage return "CR" key. Most computer users know they are the same thing, but a novice could easily be fooled by the inconsistency. Information is hard to locate and put to use.

Imperium Galactum is a very good game hidden under an impenetrable fog of bad implementation. It could have been very good, but little care went into the finished product. Avoid it unless you are a die-hard SSI fan who dreams of a galactic empire.

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© Copyright 1986 by Dana Lombardy.
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