Horizon is a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) turn-based space strategy game of galactic exploration and conquest in which you are in control of humanity’s destiny.

Horizon opens with a cut scene of technicians in mission control for the deep space Voyager mission, as one of humanities greatest achievement drifts ever deeper in the vastness of space, there is an encounter with an unknown and potentially alien artifact. At last, humanity has been given it's answer to the question, "Are we alone in the universe?". This is where the game begins.

There are many options when it comes to choosing your galaxy, you can play a small game, or a game with missions (quests within the game), completing the missions gains you favor with neighboring races.

There are many different options on the galaxy in which you want to play.

- Quantity of stars (Low / Average / Fair / High / Very High)
- Number of Planets ( 1 to 9 per system)
- Quantity of Anomalies ( 2 ~ 12)
- Habitable Planets (Rare / Common)
- Scenario (Normal mode starts the game with the default storyline settings for each race / Classic mode starts everyone on an equal footing with one world and the same technological level)
- Special Planets (Planets with unique benefits)

With each modification to the game setup, this will change the size and difficulty of the galaxy that you will be playing in.

You can also choose the number races that you wish to meet during your adventure through the galaxy. Each race has it's own unique abilities, whether they're brilliant scientists, skilled diplomats, shrewd financiers or ferocious warriors. These attributes can be adjusted as you play. 

Once you've decided on the size and difficulty of the game you want to play, you'll then be launched into the Milky way galaxy and the race to be the supreme empire begins.  However, your humble beginnings starts in the Sol system, humanity has yet to venture out much past the safety of Earth orbit.

Humanities time has finally come to venture out to the stars, your first mission will be to build a ship to explore the mysterious probe that orbits Pluto. The probe was sent by the Kor'tahz Alliance, once you arrive, you will need to knock out it's defensive capabilities and launch a bordering party to seize control of it. After the ship has been taken, you'll gain access to new technologies that will help you in your quest through the galaxy.

At this point, the game really takes on a world of it's own, each user will have a different experience as they play. Myself, when it comes to strategy games, I take on a very aggressive expansion, exploration role and with Horizon it was no different. I began by building scouts to explore near by star systems, to find new planets to colonize and expand my empire.  Once a habitable world was discovered, I would build colonizers to spread out as quickly as possible. Taking advantage of the wide open space to maneuver around before other empires started knocking on my doorstep.

One of the features of this game is special planets, these worlds have special attributes, such as valuable minerals deposits, ruins of ancient civilizations and their technologies.  While out exploring the galaxy with you fleet, while waiting for you colonizers to arrive, be sure to survey each planet. This will help to make a decision which world is more important to colonize, while waiting for your fleet of colonizers to arrive.

One advantage of turned based strategy games, vs an RTS game, is paying to complete construction early on projects, it may cost a lot of credits to do so, but getting ships such as colonizers built early in the game and being able to snatch up valuable real estate is vital to your empires long term survival. Once a planet is colonized, the ship becomes useless until it's resupplied. To resupply your vessel, you will have to return to a planet with a shipyard. Again, taking advantage of surplus credits, building a shipyard is vital, this allows those important colonizers to be resupplied and sent out on their mission to spread humanity amongst the stars.

As your empire begins to expand it's inevitable that you will encounter alien races, each one will have their motivates and suspicions of your empire. How you react with these races can lead to close relationship, or all out warfare! Managing diplomacy is controlled through the 'races button' on the bottom of the screen, here you can offer greetings, make trade pacts, ask for assistance in war, etc.

Just as expanding your empire and  balancing relations with your neighbors is vital to your long term survival, so is expanding your planets institutions. As you advance in the game, it's important to keep up with new building and upgrading facilities planets side. Each planet has slots assigned for, Trade, Government, Entertainment, Farming, Industry, Research, each of the expansion is important to the health of you colony and expansion of your empire.

- Government - Is a necessary evil, whether in the digital or the physical world, in Horizon, government determines how much tax revenue is generated for your empire and the number of buildings your planet can support. Revenue is used to build more infrastructure, planet side as well as orbitals and ships.
- Trade - Generates revenue for your planet, which is taxed to help your empire expand.
- Entertainment - is important to keep you planetary citizenry happy, as well as generate revenue for you planet.
- Farming - produces food for your planet, without increases in farming your population can't grow.
- Industry - industry dictates how quickly you will be able to build vital infrastructure whether planet side or in orbit. The higher your industrial base, the faster projects can complete.
- Research - the more advanced your research facilities, the more points that are put towards the completion of research projects.

One additional feature of planet management, is to set the Ecology Control' of each of your planets.

- Maintain - This keeps the delicate balance between industry and the environment
- Clean - This keeps your planets ecology healthy, but at a cost of longer production times.
- Neglect - If you choose to do so, your worlds will become an industrial heaven, but at the cost of higher pollution and unhappy citizenry.

Later in the game, once you unlock Terra-forming, you can start to colonize hostile worlds, when doing so, you can set your Ecology Control to Terraform, this will make the planets more hospitable.

With all strategy games, research is a corner stone of your civilization, without constantly updating and upgrading your planets and vessels, you may fall prey to the stronger races. Horizon has six research fields that you can focus on, Propulsion, Armor, Electronics, Biotech, Construction, Weapons.

Each branch of research will affect different parts of you empire, whether ships, planets, troops, etc. Each research field is allocated a percentage of your research points, by default Propulsion, Armor, Electronics, Biotech receive 10% each of point allocation, Construction and Weapons receive 20% each. You can allocate up to 50 percent of you research points to one field to speed up research, as well within each field you can prioritize a particular piece of tech. 

Research and research management is one part of the game I didn't like. In Horizon, research isn't so much about completing research on a tech, then unlocking a new technology, it's more about the refinement of existing technologies. Each tech that you research has 10 levels of refinement, as you complete each level of refinement that piece of tech gets new features and functions. New technologies will be discovered as you play, but you will be just refining those technologies.

As this is a space based strategy game, it's time to talk about your fleets. Without ships, your civilization is going no where and will be an easy target of those space faring races that are constantly looking for new territories to expand in to. In the game you have 4 sizes of vessels that can be built, Small, Medium, Large, Huge.

Small - Scout, Scout2, Scout3, Scout4
Medium - Transport, Colonizer, Transport 3, Bomber 4
Large - Cruiser, Cruiser 2, Cruiser 3, Cruiser 4
Huge - Mothership, Mothership 2, Mothership 3, Mothership 4

Your ships can be built at any planet that has been colonized, click on the planet and in the upper right corner of the screen you will see your production queue for different hull sizes, by clicking on the ship name you can rotate between the 4 different classes of ships (such as scout, scout 1, scout 2, etc). The limiting factor for ship building, is the amount of credits you have available, the more money the more ships you can put into production queue. The higher the industrial level of your planet, the faster those ships will be built.

As you progress through the game and unlock new techs, you will be able to customize your vessels with different load outs and newer weapons. You can change armaments, supply, colonization, troop pods, as well as enhanced shielding and propulsion systems, but also your orbital defense platforms.

As with research, shipbuilding is one other feature of the game I wasn't too thrilled with, while it was nice having immediate access to various hull designs, I felt it would have been better to have to research (unlock) the various hulls. You would start with scouts, unlock cruisers, and then Mothership as you progress through the game. Additionally, you are locked into only 4 hull designs for each ship, so you can only have 4 variations of each hull design, when you do want to upgrade the hull you will have to over write a previous design. When you do upgrade your vessels (after researching the necessary tech), for those upgrades to be applied to your ships, you will need to place them in orbit of a planet with a shipyard. As turns are played, those upgrades will be applied to your ships.

Combat can occur, if an enemy fleet moves into range of either a planet or if you have a ship / fleet in a sector that you occupy. Or if you're feeling militaristic, you can launch your vessels against enemy ships or planets. You don't necessarily have to fight your enemies to cause them damage, one of the underlying concepts of the game is trade and trade routes. If you have a fleet in an enemy system, you can form a blockade, this will prevent valuable tax revenue from flowing into their capital planet, potentially crippling their empire.

If blockades and subterfuge isn't your style of game play, then you can issue orders to your fleet, moving them into a hostile sector in which you want a glorious battle to fought. Move you fleet to the desire location, click on the sector to engage your fleet in, and in the next turn you will be dropped into battle.

When combat commences, you have the option of manually issuing orders per individual round, moving your ship(s) into position, which enemy vessels or targets you wish to attack, or you can set the round to automatic and the computer will determine your moves on your behalf.  As your fleet moves into position, your ability to attack the enemy depends on the range of your weapons and the arc of your attack. Your fleet will cycle through their available weapons systems until the end of the round.

When initially playing for the first time, I decided to manually play the rounds, moving my vessels around and what targets to attack, but after a while, I found the manual option a bit clunky and cumbersome. So I switched to auto attack and let computer engage the targets for me. 

After knocking out any opposition to your fleet, it's time to conquer the worlds of your enemies, to do so you will have to again issue orders to your fleet and bombard the crap out of the enemy worlds. It take a few rounds to know out defenses and eliminate those who would stand in your way.

Ultimately the goal of the game is to win, there are several ways to go about it. Myself being a militant, I choose galactic domination, even at the expense of hundreds of ships and dozens of hours of game play. Some player may chose a more diplomatic approach, choosing to expand their empire, gain influence throughout the galaxy and form a powerful alliances with alien races. 

After playing Horizon several times in the last week, the game is a diamond in the rough. There's lots of potential here, I found myself on several nights, being fully engrossed in the game and quickly loosing track of time. When I only wanted to play for one or two hours, quickly (or suddenly) those few hours turned into 5 or 6 hours of slugging it out to expand and upgrade my empire as much as possible. However, there were several parts of the game play that I wasn't too fond of, as mentioned previously, the parts of the game I wasn't thrilled with, included research, ship design and manual combat.  I'm not sure how well it would translate into this game, but one option that would have been nice to see, would be multi-player.

If your a fan of 4x style games, and don't mind a game that's a little rough at the edges but still fun to play at it's core, then you should enjoy Horizon as much as I did.

Pros: Large universe to play in, multiple layers of management (planets, ships, diplomacy).

Cons: Research element, Ship design were limited, Manual combat felt too clunky