X4:
Foundations

X4: Foundations (2018) is a space adventure where every element, from planets to ships to finance, is simulated to create a living universe where actions breed deep consequences. Play is varied; you can fly every ship, explore anywhere, trade, build a space station or manage an empire. Other games make similar claims, but this is a long way from a web of pre-determined paths, this simulation stands out for how your actions impact far and wide.

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It's a game made up of thousands of ships and stations trading, mining and producing, all realistically simulated on your computer. Because everything is really happening in the universe you can grow from a lone fighter pilot to managing a vast empire with a fleet to command and space stations to design.

When you begin you have your character with their own role, relationships and ship technologies. You can seamlessly explore everything from the planet to outer space. Focus on exploration, make money with illegal trading and theft, command large battle fleets or become the greatest entrepreneur ever. It's all up to you to decide.

As you progress the open-ness of the game starts to hit. Perhaps you have had enough of flying your ship. You can leave, climb down a ladder, walk over the dock of a large space station into another ship you may have parked there and replace the pilot that was working for you just by clicking on his chair.

Because finances are simulated along with everything else, you can leverage the economy of computer characters to turn a profit. Once you have traded (or stolen) enough money you can establish your own economy to wield wider influence. You can drag and connect different modules to make your own base. At the same time though, other races and factions are also building and expanding their empires based on supply and demand. Influence this in the right way and you can tip things in your direction. Get it wrong and you can find enemy factions suddenly got more powerful.

The result looks like many other space-based video games - but is actually very different. Other games offer choice and consequence through interweaving missions and stories, but they rarely simulate the actual impact you are having on the world around you. X4: Foundations, building on the previous games in the series, offers adventures that emerge from dynamic systems. It sounds complicated, but it boils down to a game where anything is possible and outcomes often surprise the developers as much as the players.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked X4: Foundations 6 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 months ago.