I hate with all my heart the creators of IXION, aka the French Bulwark Studios (Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus). Because of them, I haven't slept much for a week... :)
This review was written thanks to a Steam key provided by the publisher, Kasedo Games.
By the way, what means IXION exactly?
Dictionary: A king who was punished by Zeus for his love for Hera by being bound on an eternally revolving wheel in Tartarus.
“Ixion on the Wheel” — Gayley, 1893:
IXION is a space station management sim that I have been waiting for since Spring 2021. When the game was announced in June 2021, I wrote "THAT'S my kind of games".
Management sim is a genre that I particularly like, and in a space fiction context, what more could you ask for? Especially after the game's creators explained that "we were quite big fans of what Frostpunk did to the genre, how they merged the narrative with the core experience. And from the beginning that was something we wanted to experiment on."
Frostpunk (2018)
IXION (2022)
A survival, city-building, management & narrative game in space: my dream. All that was needed? A successful result, of course. And I can now confirm it, after nearly forty hours of play:
It's a real (fun) journey into science fiction that awaits you.
Been to Startopia? It's the same idea, but pushed into a serious, industrial sci-fi context.
Been to Battlestar Galactica? IXION is undoubtedly the game that comes closest to the feeling of BSG. Not the starfighter battles, but the desperate flight for a future aboard a big ship that bears its age.
Been to The Expanse? The space station you control in IXION comes down to administering the Nauvoo/Behemoth/Medina Station.
Do you know Homeworld? Well, IXION is the cousin of Homeworld, the one which avoided all combat and focused on the internal mechanics of the Mothership and the harvesting of resources.
Do you know space? It's vast, dangerous and cold, and IXION understands that. The VVS Tiqqun is a tiny island of life in a vast and dangerous universe.
Do you know Frostpunk? It is therefore an assumed reference, and it shows. A few crucial decisions have a heavy impact on the misadventure.
Do you know the logistics and interlocking of complex systems? It would be better for you.
You don't know any of this? But do you know For All Mankind? If not, go watch this great show. No, it has nothing to do with it (yet?), but I like to recommend the stuff I like.
Let's set the context.
2049. DOLOS, a multinational company led by an ambitious and necessarily egocentric billionaire, has built the mobile space station VVS Tiqqun in orbit of the Earth. Its goal ? Not to take humanity to Mars, but to another system. To save our specie, of course, because it's too late for Earth. According to the guy who spent a fortune to make this pharaonic project a reality.
Cue beautiful opening cinematic.
As an administrator, you are responsible for conducting the test flight of this Stanford torus type station and testing the experimental Vohle engine. The gigantic station turns on itself, which creates artificial gravity in the ring where the future colonizers live and work.
This ring is divided into six sections, and initially you only have access to the first.
It is therefore a question of gathering resources and constructing the internal buildings and external structures to carry out the test flight. Once this is done, you go into the unknown.
Let's explore the final frontier.
Except that nothing is going to go as planned, and it's full of influences from classic sci-fi that you will find, in an appreciable balance. We will have to gather survivors, allow them to... well, survive, and hope to find a new home for humanity.
It's not going to be easy.
So Say We All
Head of Narrative Julien Audebert (in The Artbook on IXION, available on Steam):
Our goal with IXION was to start with well-established and well-known references. We wanted to digest them, integrate them into the way we work as a team. Put gameplay at the heart of the project, reduce ludonarrative dissonance, iterate on what has been seen before, in order to add a littlebrick, a variation in the immense field of space opera. IXION attempts to mix the strange with the wonderful, the technocratic with the boring, the desperate with the angry.
The well-known references are present. As I said above, IXION sometimes has airs of Battlestar Galactica, looks of Homeworld, a taste of Foundation, touches of Interstellar, and many other generally well-used references.
The sense of distress and urgency of BSG and Homeworld came back to me often, highlighted by narrative events straight out of Frostpunk. And the VVS Tiqqun suffers damage with each of its jumps, which recalls the venerable Galactica in the awesome TV show started in 2003.
Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)
Searching stability
IXION is mostly run through two distinct but strongly linked screens (and gameplays). First, there is the internal management of the Tiqqun.
To make your crew survive, you must house them, feed them and offer them care. So many buildings, which must be operated by generating electricity. But the buildings, canteens and infirmaries will not build themselves.
You need steel. Buildings require polymers, electronic parts, silica. That's what the second screen is for.
This is a view of the system where the ship is. At first, this map is devoid of the slightest element. You will have to build probes and send them everywhere (in a mechanic close to the probe mini-game of Mass Effect 2) in order to find planets, comets, and asteroids.
Then you need to send miner ships.
Then you have to build transports, which will be responsible for collecting the resources...
...which will have to be stored in dedicated places within the station. All of this can easily be managed via a spaceship-specific tab. Just prioritize the objectives of each vehicle.
It's good: you have your resources.
But once our, five, six sectors were opened on the Tiqqun, you will have to refine them in specific industries, then manage stocks and dispatch them, according to your needs, in a dedicated tab.
The tutorial is just a bunch of pages but easy to access and undertand.
Mission Human Resources
Then it is a permanent juggling, where the short-term vision is synonymous with death.
In another tab, you can manage your human resources, which are first divided into two categories: workers and non-workers. Spoiler: only workers will work in buildings that require workers to operate. Of course, they are in the minority. Here, too, we will have to juggle so that there are not too many people in one sector. While having enough workers everywhere so that the workers do not overwork. Because the risk is the strike, even the revolution!
And I can assure you that a single mistake of this kind can lead you into an abyss of two or three hours to try to find a solution in order to prevent the disappearance of humanity.
Like that time when I didn't plan the food production well enough. Insects. Yes, we do what we can. That day, 317 people died of starvation. I think of them. John, Jon, Joe, Jo, Gerard, Stanley, Joanna, Klaatu, Barada...
A third tab allows you to spend research points. It's a classic in management sim.
It will be a matter of choosing (very) well. Some technologies will improve your ships, others the refining of resources, the specificities of the probes, and why not a train going around the station in order to deliver the resources more quickly?
The Human Adventure is Just Beginning
Tiqqun is like the Galactica. Space is limited. To expand is a debt on the future. But it's also a ship that's going to pieces, and that you'll have to keep in good condition at all costs until you find a destination. This is where a third screen comes into play.
It's not used much, as repairs are usually done automatically from airlocks, but the Tiqqun's external view allows you to spend resources to improve your huge spaceship. Add solar panels to increase electricity production, for example. But it is above all an opportunity to admire the beast.
All that I have just described represents a tangle of complex systems to tame.
But IXION is more than the sum of its parts. Thanks to its story.
Admittedly, this story appears implicitly behind the Homeric logistical work that falls to you, but the objective remains at the center of the journey.
In addition, each system visited has its own visual identity, and each stage adds a game-changing mechanic. By reaching the end - well, one of the endings - you will have experienced your own awesome space journey.
Especially since IXION does not lack small narrative events, mostly revolving around your research vessels, and beautifully illustrated. Readers of sci-fi novels and film lovers will see some, not direct allusions, but well-known inspirations.
IXION is clearly a game that I was waiting for, that I was hoping for.
Proof of this are the slightly too short nights that I have experienced in recent days, because -you know- "five more minutes". But I did not expect such a long adventure. I thought I was going to live a 10-12 hour adventure like for Frostpunk, except that IXION is actually the stacking of several Frostpunks. I'm sure faster people will finish it in less than 20 hours, but it took me almost forty to see the end of the adventure. Knowing that I role-played until the end, and that I tried to save everyone, beyond the campaign objectives.
Without regrets. I loved every minute.
I may regret a few useless clicks to delete the numerous notifications, a few bugs that tainted my last chapter (but which should be patched very quickly), the fact that the ships leave the Tiqqun by the ring and not the center (tiny real science sacrifice to the gameplay), that you don't use natural phenomena linked to gravity to move around (again, tiny real science sacrifice to the gameplay), that pedestrians walk aimlessly on the side of the road and are crossed by resource transporters, that we don't see our little ships entering the hangars in the outside view...
Details.
I imagine the progression curve will be more difficult for someone who has never played a management sim, but you have to start somewhere. IXION being superb, with its industrial sci-fi art direction and its easy-to-use UI, it's not the worst place to discover this kind of game design.
Note that some reviewers had some crash issues on their recent PCs, but on my seven years old PC (and minimum configuration to run the game), nothing to report.
In reality, I just wish that Bulwark Studios will sell a DLC at 15 or 20 dollars to continue the adventure. Why not a campaign dedicated to the misadventures of another ship?
And if there is an IXION 2 someday (pretty please?), I hope real fleet management will be added. To push the rapprochement with BSG and Homeworld to the end. Because the logistical complexity would be delicious if the same mechanics included freighters, cruisers and other transport of all sizes, composing a very personal ragtag fleet.
Imagine the sacrifices, those ships that we have to abandon for lack of resources or lack of time, and the effect on the morale of the survivors...
Dreaming remains free.
Let me say: Ixion totally deserves its price. It is a difficult adventure in the infinite and empty space, where the slightest error can mean the end. Each movement of the Tiqqun, each jump, is an event.
I like to recommend on my account the stories and products I like, and so I urge you to play IXION.
Kudos to the creators. And thanks to the colonist who wrote a rap track about my decisions.
Ps: I will later publish a kind of making of IXION, as well as a short article dedicated to the ships. This amazing game deserves it.
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Reminder: you can read more articles dedicated to the making of space fiction & sci-fi (Andor, Denis Villeneuve's Dune, Foundation, Jedi Outcast, The Expanse, The Matrix, Star Trek, Attack of the Clones, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mass Effect 2, etc.) on my Patreon.
Image credits: Bulwark Studios, Kasedo Games
