After being in Steam's Early Access for 7 years, Serious Brothers' ecological civilization simulator Imagine Earth finally has a release date on Steam. It's also coming to the Xbox One "soon". In the game, players "must protect and nurture a fledgeling space colony while wrestling against the looming threat of climate change." This means alliances must be formed, warfare must be waged, and resources and energy must be traded. Technologies can also be researched, which is pretty cool.
Originally, Imagine Earth was released on Steam's Earth Access in 2014 with an update once a month on average, which is a decent release cadence. The final launch update is one of the game's biggest to date and will include a World Congress, which is "a democratic allegiance containing every faction on the planet, brought together by the threat of a climate crisis and environmental collapse." Check out the release date trailer below:
As for what the rest of the game has to offer, Earth has been destroyed by ecological collapse and it's up to the player to try and ensure that their new home doesn't meet the same fate. You'll have to keep worldwide emissions to a minimum or you'll suffer rising sea levels, freak weather events, and more nasty stuff. You're a space colony manager that explores distant planets, while building up profitable colonies and trading resources throughout space.
‘The Climate crisis is everybody’s problem,’ says developer Jens Isensee. ‘By making it a fundamental part of the game - by putting the fate of the environment in the player’s hands - we hope we can highlight these issues and discuss solutions.’
You can play this game in different ways, too: you can play through the multi-planet story campaign, a competition mode with five enemy factions, an endless mode with "endless procedurally generated challenges", and a planet editor for custom building and terraforming. There's also tower defense mechanics that you'll use to protect your colony from invading aliens, swarms of locusts, and marauding space pirates.
It's not about strictly fighting and surviving, though, as you'll be able to form alliances with other colonies and intergalactic vendors and trade shares or wage economic warfare to secure total financial dominance for your planet.
If this sounds like something you're interested in, be sure to check out the Steam page here. For more information on Imagine Earth, stay tuned and TechRaptor will keep you posted.
