In Pandora, production is not tile-based but job-based. The most glaring difference is perhaps the way the game’s economy works, in particular how the production system works. Why? Because it does many things differently from MicroProse’s and Firaxis’ 4X titles. And now I play Pandora: First Contact and find it quite distinct and enjoyable in its own way. I also played a lot of SMAC back in the day. I played all Civilization games to death. Basically, Pandora uses the same theme and many concepts from SMAC.Īnd now you may be thinking: “So, but if it plays similar to Civ and SMAC, why should I play Pandora?”. The Human venture into a recently discovered Earth-like exoplanet, the different factions with their distinct ideologies, the hostile alien flora and fauna, the planetary terraforming (not as complex but more on that later), the sense of mystery, the exploration of an alien world, the struggle and the conflict. So, you’ll find a host of borrowed concepts from SMAC in Pandora. Of course, Pandora: First Contact also plays very similar to Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, a title the devs say to have been “inspired by” when developing their own 4X game. Proxy did well in borrowing some of the best stuff from Civilization 4 and Civilization 5, the most glaring things being the hexagon-styled map, the slick and intuitive user interface, the in-game encyclopedia and the military stacks. And, that is not a bad thing, but the contrary.
The reason for this familiarity is that Pandora looks and plays similar to the Civilization game series, the eternal reference for planetary 4X games. Perhaps the first thing veteran 4X gamers will notice about Pandora is how familiar it all feels. Well, Proxy Studios, a small indie game developer, saw this opportunity, this market gap, and the result was Pandora: First Contact. But, almost 15 years since its release there hasn’t been any new sci-fi turn-based 4X game set on a planetary scale. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is commonly accepted as one of the best strategy games ever made.
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