The Challenge of Infinite Space: A New Game Mode Suggestion

The Challenge of Infinite Space: A New Game Mode Suggestion

Even now, four years after its initial release, Infinite Space III: Sea of Stars continues to impress with seemingly endless replay value, more balanced gameplay and some of the best audio and visuals of any sci-fi roguelike on the market today. The campaign mode is the best it's ever been, and the Combat Simulator mode finally allows you to mix and match ships from different factions - and customize them to your liking for good measure. However, as a suggestion, I would propose a new game mode that could make it more compelling - for obvious reasons, I would call this the Challenge Mode.

The premise of Challenge Mode is as follows: you have a selection of preset battle scenarios, and completing the current challenge unlocks the next one. In each challenge, you are assigned a faction and flotilla of up to five ships, each of which has a preset weapon loadout and equipment configuration. You would start out with cheaper, lower-end items, but in later challenges you will get to use the more expensive high-end stuff. And you will most definitely be needing it; your targets will be more numerous and/or more heavily armed as you progress through Challenge Mode. Completing a challenge requires you to destroy some or all hostile ships and/or protect a vital allied ship or space station from enemy units. While I'm at it, I might add a separate tutorial for Challenge Mode to help you understand how it would work.

I'd suggest 15 to 20 challenges for this mode, to strike a balance between quick completion and a deep gameplay experience. Also, when you complete a challenge, you would earn a gold, silver or bronze medal depending on how many points you scored, with gold requiring more points than silver, which in turn requires more points than bronze. Fittingly, this mode would deserve several unique Steam achievements, most likely four of them: one for completing the first challenge, another for getting your first gold medal, still another for completing every challenge, and one final achievement for earning every gold medal the Challenge Mode has to offer. But how would this mode be introduced? Making it a paid DLC item might not be required (or even desirable), because with the base game, you already get plenty of bang for your buck, and forcing customers to pay extra for this mode weakens the game's value equation. It would thus be best to patch Challenge mode into a future update for the game for free, as has been the case for any and all content added to Sea of Stars throughout its entire history.

In short, Challenge Mode, as I have explained above, would be a worthwhile addition to the game. Not only would it appeal to those who have already fully completed the campaign on the highest difficulty, it would also allow beginners to learn the basics of combat without having to jump into the campaign. Moreover, you get the chance to improve your skills by making the most of various preset loadouts. Because as you may or may not know, there is more to Sea of Stars than attempting to score 250,000 points during the campaign on the highest possible difficulty.