Okay, that title sucks, but oh well. So this is actually a post about I game I rediscovered recently that I wanted to point out to people. The game is called Star Chamber and can be found at www.starchamber.net, where they have a playable demo available for download. The game itself is interesting. The best I can do is say that its a strategy/galaxy building/collectable card game. It has gotten several great reviews, including a 5 out of 5 stars from Computer Games Magazine, which they link to on the site. I had played the demo when it first came out, but they have since then partnered with Matrix Games and so I decided to try it again.

I downloaded the demo and it was much the same as I remember it, but it looked and played a hell of a lot better. The graphics are nice, and the interface is easy to use. The goal of the game is to achieve victory through either a military, cultural or political mechanism. However, it is entirely possible for opposing players to reach victory conditions at the same time, so they have a ranking system to the victories where military beats cultural and cultural beats political. There are several races to choose from, each with their own combination of “tech” available to them. I’ll get back to the tech in a minute. Operating out of your home system, you build fleets of ships and citizens to conquer and populate planets. In order to control a planet, its not enough just to have ships there, you have to have a citizen on the planet. This adds an interesting layer of play, because one can wrest control of a planet away from an opposing player simply by showing up with a one ship fleet carrying more of your citizens than they have at the planet presently. There are three ways to reassert your influence: bring in more citizens, increase the present citizen’s influence through cards, or send a fleet of bombers to bomb the living hell out of the planet and kill the enemy citizens. Citizens are vitally important to the game, since ships alone can’t control planets. The other place where citizens rule supreme is the Star Chamber. In multiplayer games, there is a galactic voting session that takes place every six turns. There are three voting categories, each one playing a part in the three types of victory. It’s too involved to discuss here, but the demo has a great tutorial on it and it adds another dimension to the game since winning votes gives some great perks.

Back to tech, which is what allows you to play cards. So the cards in this game, while not essential to playing add yet another aspect to this game. Could you win without cards? Probably, but it would be very very hard. Cards give you everything from free ships to increased production to extra votes in the Star Chamber. Each card requires a number of tech points to play, which you gain at a set schedule during the game or you can obtain by controlling artifact worlds. The cards are the collectable part of the game, with starter decks as part of your initial purchase. Additionally, you can buy booster packs at the online store and the game client has a card trading option for you to trade with other players. Like many CCG’s there are rare cards out there to be found. You can also win special cards during tournaments.

While the game does have several single player campaigns, its at heart a multiplayer online game. They have tournaments regularly as part of the community, which have a variety of entry rules to them so that even new players can be competitive. There are fixed deck tournaments where everyone uses the same deck of cards so it really tests player ability rather than being somewhere for Mega-mega Card Boy to wail on people. They also have the option that for $9.99 a month, you can become what is known as a Council Member. This gives you extra perks, such as 10% off at the online store as well as 5 free booster packs or 10 event passes a month. From what I’ve seen, it is definately worth while to become a Council Member if you are going to play this game on a regular basis.

So I recommend people giving it a try and letting me know what you think.