The furthest reaches of the galaxy act as the setting for this in-depth space station management sim. Worlds apart from the recent fellow management venture Two Point Museum, yet despite being far more serious in tone, this isn’t an experience void of humour. A bit of silliness is present, mostly within the achievement/trophy list, including having a citizen write a rap in your honour. Every chuckle is a welcome reprise from the doldrums of ensuring the space colony’s survival – the herculean task assigned to just yourself, with only an AI droid to assist.
After Earth is deemed inhospitable, humankind looks to the stars for salvation. You’re cast as the administrator of a colossal cylindrical space station titled the Tiqqun, and must govern the well-being of your citizens, making life-impacting choices while searching the stars for a new home, and managing construction within the space station itself. There’s an hour long (approx.) prologue to ease you into the role, along with several help pages with picture-based tutorials. This new console release relies heavily on radial wheels, which are easy enough to navigate, and dialogue text size is adjustable. While this may sound encouraging, the assumption is made that players will have familiarity with the genre, as not every element is detailed fully. This results in a small learning curve that’s initially off-putting. To illustrate how high the stakes are, it’s potentially possible to fail the prologue.
The story is thankfully engrossing from the outset, spread across six chapters lasting around 2-3 hours each – chapter restarts notwithstanding. The set-up is that you’re following the path of the other administrators before you, seeking wreckages, landing on partly colonised planets, and discovering the truth behind the space exploration company DOLOS. All the while there are new technologies to research, the most vital of all being hyperdrive tech that can propel the Tiggun into new solar systems. If the Tiggun’s hull is breached after failing to find resources for repairs, or if the citizens revolt due to poor living conditions, you’ll be presented with a Game Over. You’ll soon learn that it pays to make multiple saves.
The prologue mostly focuses on the citizens’ well-being, eventually becoming just another figurative gear in the machine. There’s a meter to show the amount of trust citizens have in you, which can have dire consequences if it dips too low. Citizens need homes and food, and later entertainment domes can be constructed. Often, they’ll make demands such as promising no crew deaths for a certain amount of time, or deactivating factories to reduce noise for a few cycles (days). Such demands are…demanding. After placing a few apartments and mess halls, you can generally turn your attention elsewhere, though. At least until another demand is made.
As there’s a heavy focus on construction, you’ll need to manage a fleet of spacecraft to gather resources. Probes can be launched into space to uncover asteroids, planets, wrecks and more to reveal caches, which are then gathered by cargo ships. Resources (iron, carbon, ice, etc) then need to be stockpiled within the space station before being refined at factories or used within maintenance and construction. Running dry of certain resources can be fatal, especially if you can no longer produce probes. Fleet management is one of the easier aspects to grasp, as it’s mostly automated aside from marking the priority of resources to collect.
Initially, only one building sector is under your control – with the potential to expand into six sectors, filling out the cylindrical drum of the Tiqqun entirely. As building space is limited, you’ll need to plan proficiently – something that, again, isn’t made apparent during the prologue. Some buildings can only be placed in certain locations, such as against the rear wall, meaning it’s often essential to demolish and shuffle facilities around. Everything must be connected with roads, while power is provided by upgradable solar panels on the ship’s exterior.
Despite appearing initially complex, IXION essentially entails flicking between three screens – the construction screen that gives an inner view of the space station with its numerous stockpiles and facilities, the detailed exterior view of the Tiggun where repairs and additional solar panels can be added, and the view of the solar system which is where the chapter’s story can be progressed by launching probes, sending out science teams, and making choices. It’s also here that you can watch the various cargo ships and mining vessels come and go – an oddly serene pursuit, accompanied by twinkling star fields and downtempo music.
The game speed can be increased and paused. As tempting as it is to play on the fastest setting, you may end up overlooking an incident and/or fail to react in good time. It’s also wise to pause occasionally while trying to figure out how to progress without too many cycles passing.
Expect a few ‘trial and error’ moments along the way, most of which entail exploring the building menus before scratching your head and consulting the help screen or the online Wiki. There’s always a list of objectives to crack on with, but the steps necessary aren’t always clear. One early mission involves sending a survey team to Jupiter – a task that would be far easier had Jupiter been present on the star map, with no explanation that said planet needs to be discovered first by firing probes into areas with high readings.
Instances like this aren’t isolated as often you’ll need to think carefully about the best way to progress the storyline. Taking resources away from construction to repair an off-world facility could have repercussions, resulting in reloading a past save. This isn’t necessarily down to poor design; more so that IXION is pretty in-depth and doesn’t pander by explaining everything step by step. Neither will it hold your hand, gladly allowing you to make mistakes.
Suffice it to say, this isn’t an entirely smooth sailing experience. There will be times when the Game Over screen will suddenly appear after trying everything in your control to regain trust or repair a hull breach, loosing progress along the way. I put in just under ten hours before penning this review, finding it very challenging to progress through later chapters. When things are going your way, though, IXION is largely compelling – it’s when everything goes wrong and damage appears irreversible that it can be a disheartening experience.
One thing it does make good on is the sci-fi setting, touching on some provoking themes, such as citizens suffering from ‘Dead Earth Sickness’ – lamenting the loss of Earth itself. Cryogenics also come into play, making it possible to gain new workers by discovering cryogenically frozen personnel at failed colonies and reviving them at the Tiggun’s lab. So, there’s definitely some neat lore to dive into and advanced tech to mess around with.
IXION is a challenging experience that feels a bit niche on consoles, yet is still recommended for anyone looking for something in-depth to learn and master. Lowering the difficulty level for this console release would have made it more palatable (even genre veterans found the PC version tough) but there’s no denying there isn’t a whole galaxy of potential here: uncharted planets to explore, vast upgrade research trees to gradually unlock, and a construction aspect that’ll test your planning skills. Leading humanity’s future is a demanding task. Who would have thought it?
Bulwark Studios’ IXION is out now on PS5 and Xbox Series. Published by Kasedo Games.