Twilight Imperium, a board game so beloved that it's been played for almost three decades, will get a digital release on Steam. The announcement caused cries of joy to ring out across the tabletop community, my own included. While Twilight Imperium is considered one of the most elegant, thematic, and downright impressive strategy games around, many hobbyists struggle to bring it to their table.
Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition is an enormously complex strategy board game, and a game with the full six players is expected to take eight hours. That play time is enough to deter anyone from playing one of the best board games ever made.
Games on this scale often come with a steep price tag to match, and Twilight Imperium is no different. It can sell for as much as $190, rivaling the ultra-expensive likes of Gloomhaven and Frosthaven (both of which, incidentally, have digital versions to make play more affordable).
Scheduling and budgeting become more tyrannical with every passing year, and their rule over my life means that I still haven't managed to play Twilight Imperium, even after a decade of gaming. But, oh, how I long to. The Steam edition, releasing at an undisclosed date, might finally help me get a gang together to play.
My hopes are higher than an imperial spacecraft, but there's one factor that could bring them crashing to Earth. Twilight Imperium Digital is being developed by Red Square Games, a Polish company that creates new board games as well as videogames.
Red Square Games' published board games (Windmill Valley, Quartermaster General WW2, Knarr) are well-regarded. However, its two digital games both have mixed reviews on Steam. SlavicPunk and Santicide are both apparently plagued by bugs and optimization issues. The latter reportedly features some unpleasant voice acting to boot.
None of these critiques bode well for Twilight Imperium, a high-complexity game with many plates to spin. A well-designed UI is essential for keeping play smooth, especially when that play takes place over an entire working day.
I'll keep my fingers crossed that the Steam adaptation lives up to my grand space opera expectations. But, if it doesn't, at least BoardGameArena is working on its own digital version of Twilight Imperium.
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