In Ecclesiastes, the Bible says, “Where There’s Life, There’s Hope.” Ixion replies, “Then let there be neither.” Ixion is a game that hates you. I don’t mean that it's hard; well, it is, but this game wants to cause you as much anguish as possible, and I’m mostly okay with it. That, or I am suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. In Ixion, you are responsible for a colonization effort in deep space. The planets you find are frozen, burning, corrosive, toxic or otherwise awful in various esoteric ways. Think of it as a combination of Sim City, Secrets and a realistic simulation of the Donner Party.

Release Date: Dec 7th, 2022
Developer: Bulwark Studios
Publisher: Kasedo Games
Platform: PC (reviewed) Price: $34.99

Tons of spinning metal, All alone in the night.

Normally, I like to poke fun at a games' story, largely for my own amusement, but I am not doing this with Ixion from Bulwark Studios. That’s because this game actually has a useful story so I will avoid giving much away because it’s important to the game. It's not the best story ever I’ve ever seen, and it's often not very subtle. I will say it bears some resemblance to James Cameron’s Alien universe, with clichéd gritty sci-fi characters and nasty corporate bosses. Because your boss is a douchebag, and has their own agenda, you must keep an eye on the story or things will catch you by surprise. There are real consequences for all your building and exploring, or your failure to build and explore, or heck anything you do or don’t do.

Okay, the usual clichéd mega-corporation DOLOS A.E.C. leads efforts to find a new home for humanity. And somehow, its prototype space habitat, the Tiqqun, and its population is cast adrift. Think of it as trying to make it cross country in your brother-in-law's 1978 AMC Gremlin, which just got out of the shop, but it’s still a ‘78 Gremlin – and you, Administrator, must keep this flaming dumpster rolling even though Erik seems to have scampered off with your last bottle of Jamison.

The graphics and sound are good and provide a lot of atmosphere, trust me, you need all of that you can get. The cutscenes and overall art and sound design are also very well done. It's so well done that I felt compelled to play this one on a full-sized monitor with headphones rather than my usual laptop. This caused issues with she-who-must-be-obeyed, who wanted to use the desk, which is more proof the game hates me. On the downside, you have to play the entire campaign every game, no skipping for you. The crew is dumber than snake mittens and it's very difficult to “manage” projects. By that, I mean you have to do things one at a time, you can't really control the order in which your imbecilic army performs tasks. Each system you reach brings new challenges, but you are mostly doing the same thing over and over. Explore planets, collect resources, build a space station, thaw your colonists, and get to work. As you progress, your equipment starts to wear out, needing more and more support to keep working. You won't win this game; the idea is simply to not die.

Fire in sector 3, congratulations you have more than three problems.

Forget the Sim City you remember where you tried to build beautiful cities with everything just so. Your people need food right this minute. This causes a cascade failure, where one problem causes another, and you are fighting to keep the situation from getting out of hand. Ixion does not do this in the same way as similar games. It's more of an inexorable process, like being overtaken by a glacier. You do not have enough food because you do not have enough people to make it. So, you revive some colonists, but you do not have housing because you have built out the usable portion of the habitat. So, you open up another section and hull integrity is dropping because Geordi reversed the polarity to keep the doors from going “weeeeet” which causes the flux capacitor to burn out, so you have to move the recycler to another location, but the coffee machine is already there, and you need that, and this sort of thing goes on until you die and let out a primal scream of rage and pain which set the dog to barking, the children to flight and your wife spills her hot chocolate on the cat.

Another issue is simple information. I need this to build that, but I do not have the research to do it. How much material will I need to build it? Apparently, that is classified even though plans exist. You also need a freaking supply depot for EVERYTHING, they cannot be split, and you cannot do anything without one and this, along with the difficulty of seemingly simple tasks like moving things from one section to another, can get quite tedious.

Bottom line, Ixion is a difficult but engaging simulation of life in the great black soul sucking darkness of space. It’s not for casual gamers, but fans of the genre will appreciate it.

The Good

Good Premise
Good Execution
Challenging

The Bad

Lack of guidance
The crew is dumber than snake mittens
Can be tedious

Ixion Review (PC)