I’m not going to lie. I love Beyond Sol, I’ve loved it since I reviewed it and gave it a high score of 9.5. when it first came out mid-October. When I reviewed it, there was only one map size available and only up to 16 city-states allowed. The newest update is blowing galaxies up with a huge expansion to maps and available city-states.
In Expansion 1.0.5 of Beyond Sol, size matters. You’ll not only have access to new small and large maps (outside the default ‘medium’ setting), but also a huge setting, which supplies a universe with 3 times as many hex spaces as the medium maps. To fill out this universe, Praxia Entertainment upped the amount of available city-states in a game to a bustling 32 max. Clearly its a number that would make things cramped and dysfunctional in small or medium games, but in large or huge maps, it fills out the galaxy nicely.
In addition to these new map options, you can shift the behaviors of your A.I. adversaries to make the game a little more interesting with a new, easy difficulty slider. You can make any of your singular enemies powder puffs or egomaniacal monopolies easily with this slider. Make the game easy and relaxing, hard as hell, or mix up your enemies and make the game a mixed bag of monster nations and soft-hearted colonies.
Beyond Sol is one of my favorite games of 2015. I would recommend it to anyone who has interest in real-time strategy combined with solid city-management sim aspects. You can find it on Steam.
