Stellaris Nexus condenses the epic 4X into an hour of backstabby digital board game fun

Whatboy’s developers initially didn’t plan on making a Stellaris game, but after they successfully pitched the concept of a speedy 4X to Paradox, the publisher offered its IP for the project.

Think of Stellaris Nexus as a digital board game version of your favorite space strategy epic for six players. One hour is not a strict time limit, but matches do finish around that mark generally. Time is valuable – so that consistency makes Nexus a lot easier to plan with for game nights and such.

Obviously, Nexus doesn’t quite offer the freedom of its big brother: You can’t customize your own species. Instead, you choose from a variety of established factions, which in turn are divided into leaders. In this way, you can choose, for example, a faction that’s generally technology-oriented, and then select a certain flavor of that direction through your leader choice. With our example, the Voor Technocracy, you can focus more on exploring anomalies, researching technologies, or trading technologies with other players as your main mechanic. Choosing the leader with a focus on research unlocks a new type of resource for your faction, which allows you to build special science-oriented buildings. In this way, each unique faction has to offer a variety of play styles.

This can be expressed in exclusive resources, technologies, or buildings, but also in actions no other faction has access to. Actions are represented by cards you take into your hand every turn and playing these costs resources. The more actions – from moving fleets to colonizing planets, from unlocking new technology to sending a trade offer to another player – you take in a turn, the more expensive they get. Hence, planning your turns is extremely important – as is stocking up resources if, say, you’re planning a military campaign. It’d be embarrassing if you couldn’t move your fleets around in the decisive moment.

Speaking of moving: To cut down on game time, everyone’s turns happen simultaneously and a strict time limit is applied – if someone takes too long, a 30 second countdown appears before the turn is forcefully ended. Stuff like combat and diplomacy is resolved in-between turns when fleets meet and deals are negotiated. Everyone can communicate with everyone else publicly or through secret back-channels. There is also a neat ping system in the game to indicate claims and other things – and of all that can lead to some very fun galactic backroom politicking. That’s especially true when the galactic congress meets, which happens in a set interval of turns.

In congress, players gain victory points. Once someone reaches a certain limit, the game is all over. Aside from holding the central world of Nexus, which always generates victory points, it’s up to the players to vote on what earns them victory points until the next meeting of congress – and here’s where the politics really come into play. Coming back to our technocratic species, it would obviously be beneficial to vote for categories like “most anomalies explored” or “most technologies researched” as these are easy point-getters. But the others know that, too.

Commence the backroom deals and backstabbing, the horse-trading and making of promises you’re totally intending to keep, no take-backsies, wink wink. Obviously, this is much more fun with other human players, especially friends, than it is with the AI. Nexus is definitely intended to be played in multiplayer, but does offer full single-player matches.

All the while, the quick-paced 4X turn-based strategy gameplay is going on. Players start with a small number of ships and a home planet and set out to explore the stars beyond. Just like in the inspiration, there are different kinds of worlds with various benefits out there and anomalies await discovery. These can provide new tech, more resources, and even advanced or exotic fleets. As you expand, you’ll want to build structures on your planets to keep your base resource income high and increase your fleet capacity.

Nexus promises typical Stellaris gameplay, and that’s actually what you get – only at a quicker pace and on a smaller scale. One thing I really appreciated about the game is that it didn’t force everyone into playing a heavy military style. Sure, in the end it often comes to that, especially as the world of Nexus becomes a focus of attention to gain points. But elements like the espionage action, which allows you to take planets by subterfuge and without declaring war, really help make other play styles viable.

Another positive aspect is that aside from card draws and anomaly contents, which both can definitely not go your way at times, there is very little randomness involved in what’s going on. All of the betrayal, the chaos, and the excitement comes from players interacting with each other.

There is a lot to learn at first, especially for players unfamiliar with Stellaris’ core concepts, but you’ll get the hang of it during your very first session. The UI is pretty clean and practical, but could be improved in places when it comes explaining the controls – this might be down to everyone jumping into multiplayer mode immediately for the preview event before getting a crack at the tutorial, though.

Altogether, I can see Stellaris Nexus becoming a regular at many people’s game nights. The game will be available on December 5, 2023.