Star ruler is a great game for the galactic emperor. The game plays as a 4X, but runs in real time. My favorite part of the game is that it does not rely on warp lanes or wormholes for travel but rather you can travel anywhere yourself (Although I think the systems are too close together and should be spread out a bit more). There are probably some balance issues and the research tree could have been expanded a little more. A few things needed to be explained a bit better (such as a component being limited to only one linked system), however, gameplay for the most part is quite fun. The current version (1.2.12) should be the final version as the developers have stated that they are working on the next project, but it seems quite stable so now is a great time to jump in!

The graphics leave more to be desired compared to newer titles but the gameplay is nice and similar to Sins of a Solar Empire if not better in some aspects. Unlike any other similar game, Star Ruler lets you build truly massive fleets, hauling enemy worlds to your own using special engines and even a create giant death star.

Another highlight is that players can take part in designing their ships to the smallest details such as were to place different modules.

In the end, this is a difficult game and the tutorial is not very helpful. The interface could be better as well.

A decent real-time space strategy, it can be learned through trial and error quite fast although the tutorial didn't cover all of the functions and neither did the in-game manual. Ship design is rather fun and complex enough. Planets can be assigned governors that handle the building/demolishing and renovating of all building reasonably well but there is room for improvement IMO. My game was unstable with multi-core usage on - turning it off helped and FPS was still good. Some things I didn't get to work as I wanted in ship AI design for example, couldn't get a mining ship with mining laser to mine anything with the 'use miner' command, and some other problems. Enemy AI is reasonably challenging but I didn't notice difference in skill level clearly, I lost to easiest AI and beat hardest AI several times. Maybe it's just me.

An interesting take on the space sim. As like others you start off small and you need to expand, research,meet aliens and if need be kill aliens.

The game is very configable you can set out how many stars the more there are the longer the game etc.

Graphics are good but the 3d view takes some getting used to. Music is nice and sound effects are ok.

If you like your Master of Orion or Swords of the stars you should check this out.

Very deep game that is immense in scale. Indie developer that really supports their product and continues to improve. It's very playable and enjoyable at this point. If your a fan of the other 4x space games your love this right off the bat. Be prepared though for a very deep game that requires loads of work on your part....but in the end it's very rewarding.

This game has a great potential. The scope is just epic: A 4x real time space game - something similar to Sins of a Solar Empire - with ships fighting each other, gun fires and explosion all around and your processor capacity is the limit of the game, you can literally play in a galaxy with 9.999.999.999 stars in it, if you have the machine for it. The problem is that the game still have a feeling of unfinished in it. The UI is quite simple, with numbers displaying the information you should know and no shiny buttons or nice interface animations. Just numbers and names.

You customize everything in game, basically. Before starting, you choose a race pic, advantages and disadvantages, ship sprites, race color and such, there are no predesigned race to beggin with.

The Galaxy is, pretty much a group of stars surrounding a massive one - the center of the galaxy - and each star system has its planets. So you begin the game with only your home world and, by building scouts, you explore your surrounding stars and eventually colonize them. The problem is that, after a while, the game becames just a "spawn colony ship" party. You just keep building them and sending to all your neighbooring systems to colonize until you have an empire of enourmous proportion. No worries with managemant, though, the AI will set governors for you and they will build everything in your colonies for you. Build a gigantic galactic empire never was so easy. The problem comes with the AI. At least in the version I played, the other empires just wants you as a resource gatherer. They keep sending you outrageous trade agreements asking for luxury goods and offering little to nothing in return. Poor you if you refuse. Start refusing too many agreements and you got a war in your hands. The AI behaves in a way that no civilization should and it's quite annoying if you're seeking for a more peaceful game to explore the tech tree and build nice ships without having someone sending marauders to plunder your colonies.

The tech tree is quite simple too. You got a bunch of linear fields of research like physics, propulsion, energy, biology and such. To unlock techs, ships components and buildings you have to invest in these fields, gaining level in each of them.

The most epic feature of Star Ruler, however, in my opinion, is the ship scale. You can build ships at any scale you want. Want a Death Star size ship? No problem!

Death Star too small? What about a ship the size of a freaking star system? Your industry and imagination is the limit, a feature that pleases megalomaniacs and Sith Lords alike.

As a final note: The price of the game is worth it. Buy it and expirience a good 4x game. Don't expect to be a life epic, though and expect some frustration with the AI and simplistic diplomacy.

Far and away the best application of research I've seen in a Space RTS. Exceedingly compelling, and while it looks head-crushingly unfriendly at first, it's surprising how quickly you pick up on the nuances.

Plus, ships larger than galaxies.

Somewhat fun... I REALLY wanted to like this game. I really believe in the attitude of the developers and to produce this game no matter what, BUT it's just not playable. I have the latest patches and a decent PC and I haven't been able to play it for more than perhaps an hour before a game breaking crash. It also gets repetitive repetitive repetitive with simply using the same formula to colonize as many planets as possible, etc. Also, very hard to control some of the smaller ships due to being difficult to click on them, etc. Again, I REALLY wanted to love this game, but it just isn't worth ANY amount of money because you just can't play it without repeated crashes...

The game looks great and is stable with the latest patch. The issues I have is that normally within half an hour of game time the entire universe has declared war on you. I like a more leisurly pace where I can research and build up a bit without having to go capitol ship crazy asap. Its kind of like Starcraft in how it comes at you quick. Also the ship design is a bit odd and takes some getting used to. Trying to balance out power and thrust numbers are not real clear. I recently bought this game and have not been playing it forever like some others. I'm getting used to it and am liking it I just have to figure out how to slow it all down a bit so I can strategy and not click click click click click lol ; )

How people can rate this 4 and 5 stars is a mystery, fanboys from the forums must be the only explanation.

The pure FACTS, for any gamer or 4x fan, is that this game is barely a game, it is very incomplete, not just in the sense that it has bugs like all games do on release, but that it actually doesnt even barely have any gameplay features in place.

You spam colony ships to colonize every rock you can find, you spam military ships to attack or defend. There is barely any real gameplay strategy or tactics here, in a nutshell it is the game Eufloria but in 3d.

You can talk about how its an indie dev, or how it will be patched and expanded for free for months to come. Thats all fine.

But when judging this game one must judge it for value for money, and what it is right now.

The sad truth is, its barely worth calling a game, its barely worth more than 2 out of 5 stars.

The Game itself is nice eventhough a bit incomplete.

However when I research Stuff there is point where everything costs so much all the ore of a planet is drained immediatly.

From this point onwards it is a Royal Pain in the ...

if you got to wait for about 2 Hours for one building on a new colony to be finished.

Crashes became extremly rare since 1.0.04 Patch

Meaning anorher Issue solved.

Looking forward to the Games dev.

I was one of the beta testers. I think that Star Ruler will ultimately be a fantastic game, but right now because the developers ran out of money it is incomplete. The developers are committed to finishing it and polishing it, once the economics are worked out a bit. We all have to eat, after all.

A very cool game. The only reason I am not giving it 5 stars because it still lacks some of the polish I would wish for the game. Although I find it already very immersive and fun.

If you played Sins of a Solar Empire and felt that it lacked "something" and was not deep enough then this game will certainly satisfy you.

This game has a lot potential.

Note: I read that it is two developers that created the gem of a game. Also when looking at the patches/hotfixes already released I am pretty sure the game will blow us away soon.

Fun enough in it's current state, showing potential to be great. Sadly lacking in many of the control and visibility features seen in games more polished at release, but here too work is put in to improve :)

A promising game, as has been said, but buyers should be aware that, while playable, it is only 70% complete. The lack of any sort of manual, particularly when the tutorial is completely inedequate to substitute for one, is inexcusable no matter how 'indie' the title might be. It seems the devs had no choice regarding the early release, and development continues but at present there are better 4X games to play.

Star Ruler is an excelent 4x RTS. It has its ups and downs like most games, but this one has lots undeveloped potential. It is currently only being released in it's current state because the indy as indy gets dev team (a 2 man team for the most part) ran out of funds to continue their work, thus the current game is not as fleshed out as their original goals were. They have stated many times that if the game sells and allows them to continue their work, they will patch in all the features the originally planned for and continue the developement process.

The research is unique and nonstandard to the genre. You are required to blind research breakthroughs to get other technologies, along with the standard upgrading of current techs.

One of the most attractive parts of this game is the ship design. Although visually, there is no difference other than the laser/bullet fired by weapons, there is highly robust customization of sub-sytems. Also included in this customization is scale. this scale allows you build ships the size of planets and stars. This is one of the most inovative sections of this game. There are many other aspects to ship customization not specifically addressed.

Diplomacy in it's current form is lacking. It has all the standard bits there, but its simply has a stale feeling. The other guy is a name on a list not a avatar or atleast a blown up national flag. Also you need to watch out how you make peace. Making peace with out setting a timer make you at peace with them till the end of the game. The devs have expressed intentions to expand this section (as well as most other sections).

Combat is influeneced by research so getting new techs will be important. Personally I think overall interface is a bit clunky, but fleets and control groups will help you manage your forces better. The newtonian physcics makes things interestest as two ships flying towards eachother might from across the galaxy might fly right by eachother by an entire solar system requiring both to execute uturn maneuvers.

Overall the game has alot to offer and with the intentional high modability of the game that should expand from more than just the post release patches.

For an independent release, this game is very well made and so far has been highly enjoyable. However, it is important to note that, at release (Aug 21, 2010), the game is very unpolished. The developers openly admit on their website that they were forced to release an unfinished product in order to have the funds to complete their work.

That said, I found it worth the price, as is, and believe that it will be a bargain once they are able to get some polish applied.

From the description this game should have all the elements to make it a good replacement for master of orion 3. Unfortunately the interface is very difficult to use, it's almost impossible to keep track of your ships, resources are difficult to move between worlds, and in most cases getting to a new level of research usually doesn't give you anything but the chance to make your buildings work slightly better, which is about as enjoyable as watching grass grow...overall not worth the money.

This WILL be a good game. It is not quite there yet. To start off, the tutorial is solid, but unfortunately lacking. While the major points of empire management, ship building, and camera movement are explained, there are many things that remain a mystery. As either a cop-out, or a cure-all, the last page of the tutorial offers a link to the still infantile wiki.

The scope of this game is truly grand, and truly beautiful. Ships soar, planets orbit, engines and lasers flash brilliantly... but it feels like a lot of theatrics for a little story. When a game is started, you are given the choice of how many star systems will be in your universe, which is a very cool feature. That is just about it in the creativity department. As the game begins, you are stuck on a random planet in a random star system, with no race, no history, and no guidance. Another possible hitch for more casual 4x gamers is the grand scale and speed of this game. Time scalability isn't included in the release download, and a few minutes can mean the difference between a successful empire and an end game screen.

As I said when I started this review, Star Ruler WILL be a good game. The developers have left the game entirely to the modding community to be upgraded. The devs are active on the forums, and have answered a lot of questions, and taken a lot of ideas for updates.

For all of the rough spots this game has, it has the potential to become a true classic in its own right; sitting as a trophy alongside Galactic Civilizations II, Master of Orion, and Sword of the Stars. Trust your instincts, if you want to blaze a trail into the frontier of 4x RTS history, buy this game.

StarRuler is an Independently developed game (Indie!) that has immense promise because of its very extensive modding support and the suport pledged (legal obligation now, I suspect) by its developers.

The producers have always been honest about the probability of a less than perfect release because of financial constraints which is the form that the game is in now.

It is entirely playable and while there are a few bugs and inconvences it's nothing major.

Rather including that which is (still) missing and in the pipeline at this moment promises to take the Space Strategy ladder up a notch (maybe two notches even).

On another note the music done by Artem Bank is marvelous!

The average price of 25.00 USD was chosen by Blind Mind Studios to reflect both the fact that the game would be imperfect at release and because of the, in their opinion, major ovepricing happening on the games markret of today as well as in the past.

Graphics: 7.3

Sound: 8.0

Gameplay: 6.9

Moddability: 9.5

Potential: 9.0

Customer Support: 9.2

I personally consider this game an investment as well as a fun time and am in anticipation of major additions in the future. (as obligated by Blind Mind Studios)

Many hot keys do not work, items that say they do a certain task do NOT do them. Some menus seem to not be finished. This game looks like the "wait for the next patch" disease. No manual of any kind, no in game help. One icon gets put on your desktop for the game and that's it. Nothing more, no link to the developers web site, nothing. Although in the tutorial it gives this link to the developer http://starruler.blind-mind.com.

Now what does work looks promising. The 3D environment works very nice. The graphics are pretty good at full setting. There are a lot of hot key combination's and it would be nice if they were tool tipped at the location to be used so you do not have to rely on your memory.

After playing Distant Worlds, Sword Of The Stars, and many more space titles, this title needs more work and in my opinion should not have been released this soon. It's not finished.

An excellent game, especially for those who enjoy realism. The only problem I have is that moving ship formations tends to turn into something resembling pinball with all the ships trying to retroburn and getting in each others way.

The game is very fun, and at least complex on the surface- however it will crash every so often right now so save a lot.