“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays. It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.
Issue #14: Space Empires Crossover
Jim Krohn and GMT Games have another game called Space Empires: 4x. It’s a 4x (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) board war game in the vein of old PC games like Masters of Orion and its namesake – Space Empires. It’s a strategic level game, where you are mostly concerned with the development of your empire, research and area control on the board. Combat is handled through a very slick system that still gives players interesting tactical choices – however, it is abstracted. The ships are not on a map, moving around, they instead take turns firing.
From the outset, Talon was always meant to be its own thing. Talon was never meant to be an expansion for Space Empires. It exists in its own flavorful universe while Space Empires has only mild seasoning for flavor. We realized shortly after Talon was announced that there was a big demand from our Space Empires fan base for there to be a Talon tie-in for Space Empires. Fans wanted a way to play out their Space Empires tactical battles in the Talon system – letting them zoom in and control the nitty gritty details of the ships they’ve built. We wanted to satisfy our fans, but at the same time, Space Empires needed to bend to the rules of Talon, not the other way around.