Stellaris has a new challenger in ‘90s inspired space 4X game Beyond Astra

Inspired by ‘90s strategy classics, new space 4X game Beyond Astra lets you create a civilization from scratch and lead it across the stars.

With space 4X champion Stellaris now eight years old, you might be hankering for a new way to conquer the stars. Rivaling challengers such as Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is newcomer Beyond Astra. Inspired by the likes of Civilization, Spore, and Star Wars Empire at War, and built by a solo developer at Nebule Games, this beautiful new strategy game offers an impressive level of depth and is set to arrive in 2025, but you can try it out right now thanks to a free Steam demo.

Along with the above names, the Beyond Astra developer cites Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, one of the best space-based 4X games ever, as a key inspiration. Also among its influences are other ‘90s classics such as Master of Orion and Imperium Galactica, along with the city building of the Caesar and Pharaoh games. The result is something that feels very akin to those genre icons, but with smart, modern design and a bold, vibrant art style.

Creating a society from scratch, you’ll define everything from species factors such as its climate needs and ability to adapt to its surroundings, to its level of consciousness and the political and cultural leanings of its civilization. From there, you’ll determine how best to branch down its three core skill trees of science, culture, and religion in order to work your way towards one of the game’s seven Civ-style victory conditions: economy, military, diplomacy, science, culture, religion, or score.

In very Spore-like fashion, every journey starts on an unknown planet, meaning you’ll have to explore your local environment before you’re ready to branch out to the stars. You can slickly zoom the camera in on planets with no loading to quickly arrange buildings and plan out your production networks, then scale out again to deal with galactic tactics. It’s a truly colossal-scale passion project featuring all the essentials of economy, military, diplomacy, and so on that you’d expect.

Every ship features fully customizable parts, allowing you to drastically alter the makeup of your fleets, and Beyond Astra’s space combat features individually rotating turrets and advanced collision management that enables real-time interception of missiles in mid-flight. The map grows and evolves as you play, featuring hundreds of ships and worlds, each of which can be visited on the fly and managed at the ground level.

The Beyond Astra demo is out now on Steam, with the full game set to release in 2025. A Kickstarter for the project is planned to launch on Monday October 14. You can head to the Steam page now to download the demo and check it out for yourself.

For plenty more ways to explore the great beyond, we’ve rounded up the best space games on PC right now. Alternatively, the best grand strategy games let you dig even deeper into the nitty-gritty of running a civilization.

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