It features seven different races in a vast struggle for galactic dominance with a mad goddess thrown into the mix. I say 'vast' because the game's developer, Pollux is an impressive 5,000 solar systems to be colonised (or conquered) and a sprawling tech tree to play with.
From what I saw of it, however, it isn't the game's scope that makes it stand out. It's the fact that its intuitive-looking map and cinematic battles might just make this a strategy game for people who don't like strategy games.
I sat down with Jonas Møller, the lead programmer and game designer (who was already engaged in a battle and couldn't seem to take his hands off the game) to have a chat and look at some of Lost Empire's features. Read on for what I found.
SPOnG: So, you've got a battle going on here already. How long does a battle take to play out?
Jonas Møller: Yeah. On the whole, it's probably more casual than other, more turn-based games. We like to call it faster-paced than the other strategy games. Everything is sort of streamlined to allow you to manage your empire, get into conflicts – do the exciting stuff and not get bogged down in numbers. That's the general idea that (runs) through all of the features.
And also - let the player make interesting choices, not the same choices every time. We wanted to encourage them to change their strategies.
SPOnG: Cool. So, what are these here. (Gestures to something on screen looking a bit like Cloud City, home of Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back).
Jonas Møller: They're space stations. You can see it hovering by the planet there. They're really powerful and big and you can have them protect your empire.
SPOnG: Do you have any interaction with individual planets?
Jonas Møller: You colonise whole systems, so you don't have anything to do with the individual planets. (The game) is so large that you don't want the player to spend too much time in each system, when you have 30, 40, 100 systems...