''Spaceward Ho!'' is a

turn-based In video and other games, the passage of time must be handled in a way that players find fair and easy to understand. This is usually done in one of the two ways: real-time and turn-based. Real-time Real-time games have game time progress cont ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

computer strategy game Strategy is a major Video game genres, video game genre that emphasizes thinking and planning over direct instant action in order to achieve victory. Although many types of Video game, video games can contain strategic elements, as a genre, strate ...

that was written by Peter Commons, designed by Joe Williams (Joedelta) and published by

Delta Tao Software Delta Tao Software is a small software developer and publisher focusing on games for Macintosh, though some of its more popular products have been ported to Windows, Linux, and other platforms. History Delta Tao was founded in 1990 by Joe William ...

. The first version was released in 1990, and further upgrades followed regularly; the current version, 5.0.5, was released on July 8, 2003. It has received wide recognition in the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

community, for example being inducted into the

Macworld ''Macworld'' is a website dedicated to products and software of Apple Inc., published by Foundry, a subsidiary of IDG Inc. It started life as a print magazine in 1984 and had the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macint ...

Game Hall of Fame. ''Spaceward Ho!'' can be categorized in the

4X game 4X (abbreviation of ''Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate'') is a subgenre of strategy-based computer and board games, and include both turn-based and real-time strategy titles. The gameplay involves building an empire. Emphasis is placed ...

genre (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) with a theme of galactic conquest. It took many elements of its design from the earlier '' Reach for the Stars'', but expanded on many of that game's basic themes while taking advantage of the larger memory and better graphics available on the Mac platform. Version 5 is available for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

, Android, Classic

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...

, and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

versions before 10.7 (there is no universal binary) and

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

. Version 4 is also available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and version 2 for

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

Gameplay

The

gameplay Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and pla ...

of ''Spaceward Ho!'' focuses on efficiently extracting the resources of conquered worlds while correctly anticipating and countering opponents' actions. ''Spaceward Ho!'' can be played against a computer AI, or against other human players over the internet (via spacewardho.net). Previous versions of the game allowed also LAN-based networked play, but this feature has been disabled in the

version. It has a very simple gameplay compared with most other games in the genre (such as ''

Master of Orion ''Master of Orion'' (abbreviated as MoO) is a turn-based, 4X science fiction strategy game in which the player leads one of ten races to dominate the galaxy through a combination of diplomacy and conquest while developing technology, exploring a ...

''). Depending on the initial settings, games take from about ten minutes to an hour. Its small but dedicated fanbase considers the simplicity to be elegance, and its designers boast that it has gotten faster and more intuitive to play with each new version. All unnecessary complexity has been stripped from the game, resulting in a fast-paced game that still manages to be very engaging. The core of the game is the two-dimensional map of "planets". Each "planet" has three characteristics: temperature, gravity, and metal. Temperature and gravity are both used to determine how fast colonies can grow and how large they can become (based on the preferred temperature and gravity for the colonizer, which is different for each player); the difference is that a player may spend money to change the temperature ("

terraforming Terraforming or terraformation ("Earth-shaping") is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth to make ...

") while gravity cannot be changed. Colonies with low population take a certain amount of money per turn to support, while colonies with high population earn money for their owner. Metal can, with money expenditure, be mined for use with shipbuilding. A planet's stats are unknown until explored (to get current info on a planet, a player must have ships in orbit with no enemies present). Travel between planets is via

hyperspace In science fiction, hyperspace (also known as nulspace, subspace, overspace, jumpspace and similar terms) is a concept relating to dimension#Additional dimensions, higher dimensions as well as parallel universes in fiction, parallel universe ...

(ships cannot encounter each other except at planets), and the time it takes depends on the

distance Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects or points are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two counties over"). ...

between the origin and the destination on the map, as well as on the speed of the ship in question. Ships are built with money (representing

renewable resource A renewable resource, also known as a flow resource, is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion resource depletion, depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a ...

s) and metal (representing

non-renewable resources A non-renewable resource (also called a finite resource) is a natural resource that cannot be readily replaced by natural means at a pace quick enough to keep up with consumption. An example is carbon-based fossil fuels. The original organic mat ...

). Money and metal are available instantly, wherever needed. There are several different kinds of ships, including the basic Fighter, a Scout with longer range but weaker weapons, a Colony Ship used to found new colonies, Satellites which are cheap but cannot move from the world at which they are built, and in recent versions a few others as well, such as the Tanker and Dreadnought. Each ship has a ranking in each of five technologies: range (determining how far a ship can fly before refueling), speed (determining how quickly ships reach their destinations and who shoots first in a battle), weapons, shields, and "miniaturization". Higher-tech ships cost more money and metal, with the exception of ships with high "miniaturization" which take far more money but less metal. Miniaturization is much less effective when applied to Colony Ships, compared to other types of ships. Ships cannot be upgraded, although old ships can be scrapped to retrieve a portion of their metal. When a ship is destroyed in battle, a smaller portion can also be recovered. The first ship of a given design costs two to four times as much as subsequent units, to account for research and design costs. There is no ground combat; ships that face an undefended enemy colony simply bombard it from orbit until they or the entire planet population is dead. The planet can then be recolonized by the victor's species. If a battle lasts into the second round of firing, the participants will get information on what happened; if it ends in only one round, the loser will know only that he lost. In addition to spending on supporting colonies, terraforming planets, mining planets, and building ships, players can spend money on technological research. This raises the available maximum for each of the five ship technologies. There is also a sixth type of research, "Radical", which gives unpredictable advantages such as improved terraforming, information about distant planets, or a temporary advantage in one tech. Most spending in the game follows the law of

diminishing returns In economics, diminishing returns are the decrease in marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, holding all other factors of production equal ( ceteris paribu ...

: it is more effective to spend lightly but constantly on a given tech or planet for a long period of time than to spend heavily for a short period of time. For example, a novice player might reason that allocating 20% of one's income to mining a particular planet would yield twice as much metal as allocating 10%; in fact, it yields only 40% more metal. A pseudo-logarithmic bar graph displays the player's spending allocations. The player manipulates the bars with the mouse to allocate spending. As one bar is lengthened, the lengths of the other bars are automatically shortened (and vice versa).

Ports

* ''Spaceward Ho!'' for iOS was released in March 2012 by Ariton. * ''Spaceward Ho!'' for Android was released in March 2013 by Ariton.

Reception

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through t ...

'' praised ''Spaceward Ho!'', calling it "the

Holy Grail The Holy Grail (french: Saint Graal, br, Graal Santel, cy, Greal Sanctaidd, kw, Gral) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miracu ...

of strategic computer games – ''the'' entertaining, introductory strategy game", especially for multiple players over a network. A February 1994 survey of space war games gave it a grade of A, stating that ''Spaceward Ho!'' "drew in many non-wargamer types with the use of clever bells and whistles". A 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave the game four stars out of five, criticizing the cover art but stating that it "offers a fine 'beer and pretzels' game of economic/military space conquest ... Great gameplay and graphics with a touch of crass". ''Spaceward Ho!'' v. 3.0 for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

was reviewed in 1993 in '' Dragon'' #196 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4 out of 5 stars. The game was reviewed in 1994 in ''Dragon'' #202 by

Sandy Petersen Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is an American game designer. He worked at Chaosium, contributing to the development of '' RuneQuest'' and later creating the acclaimed and influential horror role-playing game ''Cal ...

in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the solo version of the game 2 out of 5 stars, and the multiplayer version 3 stars. ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' reviewed the Macintosh version of ''Spaceward Ho 4.0'', rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "If you already own a copy, now is definitely time to step up to a new level of play." In 1996, ''

'' listed ''Spaceward Ho!'' as number 52 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", citing its "deceptive level of depth", high replay value, and eight-player mode.

Wil Wheaton Richard William Wheaton III (born July 29, 1972) is an American actor. He portrayed Wesley Crusher on the television series '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'', Gordie Lachance in the film '' Stand by Me'', Joey Trotta in ''Toy Soldiers'', an ...

called it one of his favorite games.

Reviews

* ''

Casus Belli A (; ) is an act or an event that either provokes or is used to justify a war. A ''casus belli'' involves direct offenses or threats against the nation declaring the war, whereas a ' involves offenses or threats against its ally—usually one ...

'' #69 (May 1992)

References

External links