Games as a civil service.
you’re able to view them all in our2022 Next Fest archive.
Oh, to economise.
Ixion
Ixion is a game about managing a big, circular - almost tubular - space station.
But really it’s all for the love of the bureaucracy.
This is Civil Service in Space.
You’ll start by being talked to, at length, by a robo-P.A.
In Ixion you manage this curious space-tube’s six sectors, starting out with just one.
These potter off around the galaxy finding solutions to local problems.
There’s an abandoned structure on the Moon that could do with a quick looting.
The UN’s running out of Oxygen on Mars.
These give you little FTL-like pop-up dilemmas, semi-blind decisions about what to prioritise to earn what resource.
It’s a wonderfully therapeutic kind of circularity, as these kinds of games always are.
That can seem like a drab and grey thing, a vicious circle, a bore.
In Ixion and its ilk that circularity is the beauty of it.
Round and round you go, taking pleasure in busyness for the sake of it.
