
From Redwall to Moss, fantasy scenarios about adorable mice are a safe bet when it comes to intriguing an audience.

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near Pripyat, Ukraine exploded. In the weeks, months and years that followed, some 600,000 civil and military personnel were brought in to contain the catastrophe — the Chernobyl liquidators. Estimates put the number of immediate deaths around 50, but several thousand liquidators are thought to have later died in the aftermath.

When it comes to sci-fi settings that stretch beyond the stars, it feels like the stories too often land on a spectrum between Star Trek‘s pristine bureaucracy of benevolent space colonialism and the mythopoetic swashbuckling of benevolent space colonialism in Star Wars. Star Dynasties, the latest grand strategy from Iceberg Interactive and Pawley Games, tries to have it both ways by using a galaxy-shaping disaster as the excuse to dive headfirst into the administrivia of intergalactic feudalism, texturing its space colonialism with a tangled web of shadows and political intrigue.

Red Solstice was a high-quality squad-based mouselook shooter set on Mars, in which the player controlled marines attempting to survive a monster apocalypse. They had to explore a fallen colony while teaming up with AI marines to battle zombies and mutants while securing technology and making good their escape. In addition to a stellar solo mode, it allowed up to four players to team up online in campaign or skirmish modes together. In developing Red Solstice 2, the developers have really dug in on the multiplayer aspect, refining the hybrid shooter/RTS.

Nadir has made a bold gambit with its title. It literally means ‘the lowest point’ and by calling it this, the developers are serving review writers countless pun opportunities on a silver platter. Luckily, now that I’ve had a glimpse of its promising content with a demo that shows off the combat system, I think it may actually be fairly safe.