Lord of Rigel Leaves Early Access
It's been a long journey of development for Lord of Rigel. The project began as a conversation about what seemed to be missing in various 4x games and "MOO Clones" in particular with two takeaways being tactical combat and providing more to the end game. Some recent trends with autoresolve or simplified combat systems and quests seemed to pull games in a direction we didn't prefer.
Development is a road of compromises and there's aspects of the game not fitting with the original vision such as the switch to real time tactical, However with your feedback and comments during Early Access to add features liked from loved real time tactical space strategy games like Birth of the Federation and Sword of the Stars we think even some of the compromises have worked out.
The game you're now playing was started in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic as we reworked the game in Unreal Engine, and is the product of your feedback since Early Access began in October 2022.
While the types of space strategy games out are quite different than when we started, Lord of Rigel does aim to provide old school gameplay with reduced strategic micromanagement, a universe with some unique twists, and some surprises.
In the Beginning...
Changing to Unreal to the start of Early Access...
Release 1.0
Early Access Summarized:
Your feedback and reporting as a community has been crucial over the past year and a half, and over Early Access we've implemented the following key features:
- Lithovore and Mechanoid species- The Tulocks and Synth
- Custom species
- Gigantic and Legendary Galaxies
- Elder Species- The Rigelans and Arcturans
- Diplomacy Victories
- Final War
- Galactic Tension and the Doomsday Clock
- Megastructures- Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds
- Additional ground combat units
- Research Victory
- Grand Menaces
In addition to these we've added numerous quality of life features based on your feedback (not an exhaustive list, but the major ones):
- Leaders
- Ship Refitting
- Strategic AI overhaul
- User Interface reskin and color selection
- Event ticker filter
- System sidebar in colony view
- Cycling between systems and colonies in system and colony view
- Player engagement options (chase, evade, circle) in tactical
- Auto ship design generation in ship designer
- Post combat report
- Ship info tooltips
- Loading and saving build queue presets
- Sharpness graphics setting
- Volumetric clouds
- Planet shader rework
- AI personality type indicators in diplomacy and info screens
- Build queue item movement
- Threat diplomacy options
- Tactical scan option
- Advanced New Game Settings
- Camera Rotation and Zoom Sensitivity Settings
Game Soundtrack Download
The Lord of Rigel soundtrack is available for free download and is compatible with the Steam Audio Player.
Lord of Rigel Soundtrack Download
Here is a preview of some of the tracks:
Bonus Content: Soundtrack and Artbook
In your local Steam install for Lord of Rigel is a bonus materials folder. This includes a high resolution version of the soundtrack, wallpapers, and the 76 page Lord of Rigel Historical Briefing (Art Book).
Community Guide
An official guide outlining game mechanics and some strategy hints is also available. The guide will be occasionally updated with additional hints and information.
Lord of Rigel Official Guide
Steam Cards
Steam Trading cards are also now available for the game. Each card is a leader you can recruit in game.
What is in the Future
We're not planning on any large expansions or paid DLCs at this point. The game has ten playable species and two elder species, There are also numerous random events, leaders, and space monsters. However, some new technologies, leaders, events, and monsters may be in the future as community updates. Primarily the focus will be on critical bugs.
Lord of Rigel has always been envisioned as a single player game. There are also no plans for localization as we're a tiny independent team. That being said LoR was developed in UE4 and has data tables that can be modded including for text localization.
For Returning Players
If you are having control issues or settings issues:
1) Turn off Steam cloud save sync
2) Clear out your Local folder for Lord of Rigel which can be found at:
C:\Users\ YOUR USER NAME \AppData\Local\LordofRigel
3) Turn on steam cloud sync
If you have had Steam installs on different drives be sure to clear out local app data on each drive for LoR.
Alternatively you can delete the local data folders while the game is running with cloud sync on.