Endless Space

Strategy-loving gamers who go in with proper expectations will likely find Endless Space a minor delight. It isn't as polished and accessible as bigger-budgeted entries in the genre, but it still offers a satisfyingly multifaceted and relentlessly challenging experience. It provides a broad range of parameter-altering options that will ensure no two games play out the same way. The delicate process of growing an empire one star system and one technology at a time is an intellectual pleasure. And the game's fledgling sci-fi mythology, which includes everything from cloned races to ancient robotic civilizations, is tantalizing stuff. 

There are some problems that need to be ironed out via game updates. Diplomacy is a little underdeveloped at the moment (options to work out deals with hostile races are limited), and deciphering the effects of choices made during the game's space battles can be tricky (players pre-select tactics for short, long, and medium range prior to combat, but without a clear picture of what these tactics will accomplish). Hopefully these problems will prove merely growing pains, because Endless Space is a delightful new entry in the woefully underrepresented genre of turn-based tactics games.