Many moons ago, I missed my chance to join a weekly Twilight Imperium play session. Missed my chance, or dodged a bullet? Twilight Imperium is an infamously complicated and backstabby boardgame, the kind of baroque strategy space opera that can swallow up entire days and expose any number of terrible character flaws along the way.
Thank goodness there’s now a PC version in the works for Steam, which will at least remove the need to set up the pieces and remember what they do. Here’s a trailer.
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It’s being adapted by Red Square Games, the Kraków, Poland-based creators of SlavicPunk: Oldtimer. If you’ve never come across Twilight Imperium before, the gist is that the galactic emperor has popped their clogs and 17 factions are vying to claim the throne.
“Will you dominate through raw military might, control the Galactic Council with persuasive politics, or outmaneuver rivals with secret objectives and clever deals?” asks the Steam page. Me, I’ll be pledging fealty immediately to whoever has possession of planet Crisp Bowl.
The Steam version is based on the boardgame’s fourth edition, and will feature animated 3D tactical space battles. But the better news, I think, is that there will be interactive tutorials and tooltips. Even better, it also supports singleplayer. I don’t envy anybody developing AI leaders for a game like this. The multiplayer features include online matchmaking, hotseat, and asynchronous play.
There’s no release date yet. If you can’t wait – and your index fingers and eyeballs are up to the strain – you can play Twilight Imperium in Tabletop Simulator. Back in 2015, Paul Dean interviewed a bunch of tabletop game creators about how they feel about TTS and its copyright-infringing mods.
