Galaxy

From the Database of Home of the Underdogs

GAME DESIGNER:Tom Cleaver & Jay Wilt
GAME DEVELOPER:Avalon Hill
GAME PUBLISHER:Freeware
Copyright 1993, Jay Wilt

Galaxy is a superb fan-made remake of a classic Avalon Hill game of the same name, designed by Tom Cleaver and released for the Commodore Business
Machine (CBM) 8000 in 1981. In this simpler precursor to SSGs classic Reach for The Stars, you vie against computer players for control of the galaxy in traditional turn-based style. Victory goes to the empire with the most planets at the end of either a preset or random number of turns. The game uses a simple character based screen, requires all the strategy of chess, and just a little luck.

Each player starts with a home world and a number of ships. Each world has resources to produce a number of ships per turn. Once a fleet of ships is launched, it goes in to hyper space and can not be recalled there is no communication until it reaches its destination. The gameplay is fun, albeit quite primitive compared to Reach for the Stars and subsequent 4X games. Well worth a look, though, especially as one of the true pioneers of the genre. Jay Wilts remake is very faithful to the original, thanks to the fact that the game actually shipped with the source codes, which allows Jay to port it from language to language, from machine to machine until the present day. Highly recommended!