Galcon Labs, the follow-up to the popular RTS game Galcon, is available from the app store. Galcon Labs improves upon the original by including several new game modes with unique challenges that make a fun game even more enjoyable.
The goal of Galcon Labs, as in Galcon, is to eradicate the enemy by occupying all of the planets on the gameboard. Tap a planet that you occupy to select its fleet, indicated by a number on the planet. Then, tap another planet to send a percentage of your ships from the first planet to the second. Some planets are large and some are small. The larger planets produce more ships and are strategically more important to conquer so that you can keep your numbers high. Whichever side is able to conquer all planets first is declared the winner.
Galcon Labs offers 5 game modes: Classic, Crash, Billiards, Stealth, and Assassin. Classic is the same gameplay as in the original. Crash is the same as Classic except that ships that pass each other will collide and cancel each other out. Billiards causes the planets to float around, creating an ever-changing game board. Assassin tasks you with conquering specific planets before your opponent can. Our favorite, by far, is Stealth, which hides the enemy ships as they travel from one planet to another. You do see a slight glow as the ships leave one planet and you can see the numbers on your planets change as the ships arrive. In all modes, the number of enemy ships residing on their planets is unseen, adding a challenge as you cannot tell if a planet has 3 ships or 100 ships.
Galcon Labs has both single player and multiplayer options, allowing you to play locally against the AI or online against players from around the globe. You’ll need to sign up at Galcon.com in order to use this function. You can customize your experience by choosing the team colors and default percentage of ships that launch from the planets. The percentage can also be adjusted on the fly by tapping the indicator in the lower right corner of the screen. There are several levels of difficulty to choose, from Cabin Boy to Grand Admiral. Cabin Boy barely puts up any challenge whatsoever. Moving up the difficulty chart does noticeably increase the challenge you’ll face from the AI. We chose the 4th level (Commander) and promptly got stomped on our first attempt. Our second attempt at the same level went in our favor, though, so it felt like a fairly balanced experience. Depending on your strategy, one wrong move can tip the game in the opposite favor very quickly.
Graphically, the game has made slight improvements from the original. The planets show nice texture and the colors are bold. The soundtrack is subtle, but has some great space-type tones that enhance the gameplay. Sound effects are decent, too. Controls are strictly touch-based and work flawlessly. Replay value is great, as the gameplay is very enjoyable, the higher difficulty levels can be quite challenging, levels track best times, and multiplayer can be a ton of fun. Galcon Labs is a simple game that can become complex depending on the strategy you choose to employ. Currently on sale, the game can be had for $0.99, an absolute steal for a 5-Dimple gem.
Galcon Labs gets our AppSmile 5-Dimple rating:
