Free Talk Friday - October 02, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

There's going to be a new post every week, and the newest one will be pinned in the announcement bar for quick access. So feel free to visit these posts during the rest of the week.

Here's a list of all Free Talk Friday posts

[u/HiroProtagonest]

Been playing a city-builder game called Ixion, which seems more inspired by Frostpunk than anything else but isn't as... cynical. You are (likely) humanity's last hope, and have to find the FTL jump coordinates for the one viable exoplanet discovered. The main gimmick of Ixion is your "city" is a spacecraft colony, which can move but also is in need of constant hull maintenance. It's also a prototype craft, so you start with most of its interior unoccupied and have to open it up more over time (this just takes some resources, a bunch of which you get back from the storage boxes in newly-opened areas, but the main thing is each new area makes the hull need more maintenance). The ship can also fly, but that diverts all power generators so you have to rely on battery storage to keep the interior running during it, and the hull takes more damage too. The main way star systems are explored, though, is by sending out a fleet of smaller ships to investigate planets, mine asteroids, and retrieve resources. Also, there's space weather once you leave the solar system!

Anyway, I've never managed to get into a city-builder before but this one's been nice. I think the aspect of unlocking an entire section of the ship at once as a milestone helps me feel a big progress leap, as often a lot of the other stuff just kinda blends together and barely feels like I've done anything to the city even though I've certainly made it more efficient. There's also the continuous story, sending explorers out to learn things about the places you visit and advance your ultimate goal. This is stuff I get the feeling Frostpunk did as well, but Ixion lets me win with, as a friend put it, "socialism and sports" where Frostpunk demands you became an authoritarian society. You can still play that way if you want, focusing on propaganda and cops to keep people in line who'd otherwise be restless while you cram the population into tiny living quarters to maximize space. It lets you play into a cult forming on your ship which views the ship's journey as a profound religious experience. But you can also give people comfortable living quarters, build train stations between all the sectors for their convenience, adopt a dog, and build a boxing arena to make everyone really happy.