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Pax Nova

Pax Nova offers some good 4x strategy, so long as you can overlook its major technical flaws.
Pax Nova Game Cover
57%Game Brain Score
gameplay, graphics
story, music
55% User Score Based on 292 reviews
Critic Score 65%Based on 1 reviews

Platforms

PCWindows
Pax Nova Game Cover

About

Pax Nova is a single player strategy game. It was developed by Grey Wolf Entertainment and was released on April 28, 2020. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and neutral reviews from players.

"Pax Nova" is a sci-fi turn-based 4X strategy game where players establish their faction in a new world, Eos, after humanity has failed itself on Earth. Choose between several factions from three races, and engage in exploration, diplomacy, city-building, and combat on land and in space. Each planet offers unique secrets, dangers, and possibilities for colonization, adding depth and excitement to the gameplay.

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55%
Audience ScoreBased on 292 reviews
gameplay18 positive mentions
stability12 negative mentions

  • Pax Nova offers a unique blend of planetary and space gameplay, allowing players to explore and expand their empires across multiple planets.
  • The game features customizable factions and units, providing strategic variety and replayability.
  • The tech tree is vast and nonlinear, giving players plenty of options for strategic development.
  • The game suffers from numerous bugs and technical issues, including crashes and long loading times.
  • AI behavior is often passive or nonsensical, leading to unchallenging gameplay and less engaging battles.
  • The user interface can be clunky and unintuitive, making it difficult to manage cities and units effectively.
  • gameplay
    69 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The gameplay of Pax Nova is a blend of familiar 4X mechanics, combining space and planetary elements, which offers an intriguing foundation but suffers from inconsistent mechanics and a lack of polish. While the core systems show potential and are accessible to veterans of the genre, many players find the combat simplistic, the UI lacking, and the overall experience grindy and poorly explained. Despite its early access status and numerous bugs, there is hope for improvement as the developers refine the gameplay and address balancing issues.

    • “The core gameplay loop follows the familiar 4x model: explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate.”
    • “It blends space and ground gameplay in an intriguing way and offers a solid foundation for future development.”
    • “The gameplay is extremely addictive, with a great emphasis placed on research and expeditionary activities, encouraging the player to perform certain actions.”
    • “The tutorial is absolute rubbish and about a dozen bugs really interfered with gameplay.”
    • “Overall seems like it's only half finished, or at least that the core gameplay systems are not very well fleshed out.”
    • “A reasonably good game with a lot of potential, but very shallow gameplay at the moment.”
  • graphics
    43 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The graphics of the game receive mixed reviews, with some players appreciating the art style and vibrant colors of the planets, while others criticize the visuals as outdated and lacking polish. Many users note performance issues, such as high CPU usage and poor optimization, which detracts from the overall experience. Overall, while there are elements of beauty and potential, significant improvements in graphical quality and clarity are needed to meet modern standards.

    • “Graphics are awesome enough to see colors pop and how richly diverse each planet is.”
    • “Pax have come a long way since last year, 2 expansions, massive bug squashing and graphics revamp.”
    • “Nice graphics and cool art is also a plus!”
    • “The visuals are dull - as if someone poured water on a newspaper page.”
    • “The graphics are not impressive for modern times, but I think they hold up quite decently.”
    • “There is also the problem of optimization that seems troublesome, as the game seems to take all my CPU at all times for such poor graphics while other games such as Civ 6 don't have such demanding power even on huge maps and with better graphics.”
  • story
    37 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's story is criticized for being underdeveloped and disjointed, with many players feeling that it lacks depth and coherence. While there are quests and a hint of lore, the execution is often seen as generic and lacking direction, leading to a frustrating experience. Overall, reviewers express a desire for more engaging world-building and meaningful quests to enhance the narrative experience.

    • “The lore isn’t deeply developed through storytelling, but the atmosphere and flavor text do just enough to immerse you.”
    • “This game has a lot of potential and all of the infrastructure is there -- a great story, tons of original and potentially fun gameplay features, and enormous variety of choices for the player to make and different gameplay styles.”
    • “The lack of direction did make the world feel novel and mysterious, but I don’t think that was the intended feeling, especially seeing as I just barely finished all 5 of the main quests by the end of my first 250-turn game and there are still more to come.”
    • “This sounded like a cool hybrid game, but in the end, it feels disjointed, clunky, makes no sense, has no directions, the quests are just pointless, and the game just seems like it was started, half done, and they couldn't bring it together. Instead of fixing it, they just gave up and said, 'Oh well, it was a good idea.'”
    • “One problem though: the setup hints at rich lore for each of the races but does not seem to go anywhere from there - so the game could definitely use some faction-specific quests to give it more flavor and depth.”
    • “The story doesn't make sense; there are too many things going on, trying to mash together civilization and Moo and failing miserably.”
  • music
    15 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The music in the game is generally described as ambient and soothing, creating a pleasant atmosphere, but it suffers from repetitive looping and a lack of variety, leading some players to find it boring or even sleep-inducing. While the soundtrack is considered efficient and aesthetically pleasing, it fails to leave a lasting impression or adapt to gameplay, resulting in a somewhat uninspired audio experience.

    • “Great soundtrack...”
    • “Besides the gameplay, the music is very peaceful and all the art is aesthetically pleasing.”
    • “The main soundtrack is ambient and soothing, but it doesn't change much with what you are doing on the map.”
    • “I played for a few hours, and I think I had the same song playing over and over. I had to mute it; I don't even know if there is more than one song in the game.”
    • “The music isn't something to write home about.”
    • “The 'music' in this game is how I feel about the game currently; it's all soundscapes right now, eerie and emotionless noise.”
  • stability
    14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's stability has received mixed reviews, with some players experiencing frequent freezes and crashes, particularly during gameplay and as they progress. While a few testers noted that major issues have been addressed, many still report it feeling buggy and unpolished, with minor glitches and occasional save corruption. Overall, while some users find it playable, the stability concerns remain a significant drawback for many.

    • “As a tester of Mike's games for what seems like an age now, I have a 100% completion for DOA and loved that one. While PAX is the same sort of game, the style and play are somewhat different. Although it wasn't bug-free during testing, almost all major issues found have been fixed, leaving only a few minor issues.”
    • “The game is almost bug-free.”
    • “I've spent more than 1000 hours in offline mode, and 17 hours so far on Steam for achievement testing.”
    • “The game freezes while waiting for the end of a turn while the opponent is playing.”
    • “This game is buggy and extremely unpolished.”
    • “And the game crashes or freezes more and more as you progress and expand your foothold on the galaxy.”
  • grinding
    7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and frustrating, with a slow pace that often requires waiting many turns for minimal progress. The lack of clear documentation and essential information further exacerbates the grind, making the experience feel limited and unengaging. While there are strategic elements in city positioning and district bonuses, the overall mechanics are criticized for being overly simplistic and reliant on repetitive actions.

    • “Documentation is awful, the UI is kind of functional, but the whole game mechanics make it feel grindy as hell.”
    • “It feels slow, tedious, and on several layers is missing key information that you would expect to be given (e.g., the calculation for population growth).”
    • “It's extremely tedious, and you wait 50 turns in order to declare a single war.”
  • replayability
    6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's replayability is highlighted by the ability to create custom factions and the use of procedural generation, offering varied experiences. However, some players find the overall gameplay lacking depth, leading to a one-and-done experience, with hopes that future content updates or a multiplayer mode could enhance replay value.

    • “You can also create your own faction from scratch—choosing ideologies, perks, and penalties, which is a definite highlight for replayability.”
    • “Good replayability thanks to procedural generation.”
    • “For example, how many cities can you have? How do you win a diplomatic game or a science game? It does offer replay value.”
    • “Pretty boring game, though the scope seems like it should have replayability - it just doesn't.”
    • “It currently is just a shell of a game and while there is no replayability at the moment, once the game is seriously filled in with content, it could be a truly impressive game.”
    • “For example, how many cities can you have? How do you win a diplomatic game or a science game? It does offer replay value, but for me, I am one and done.”
  • atmosphere
    6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The atmosphere of the game is generally praised for its immersive qualities, enhanced by flavor text and a visually interesting art style, despite some criticisms regarding its dated graphics. While the foundational atmosphere is solid and reminiscent of exploring alien worlds, players hope for improvements in polish and depth to fully realize its potential. Overall, the game offers a compelling atmosphere that supports its gameplay, though it requires further refinement.

    • “I don't know if that's the ultimate direction the devs for this game want to go, and for where they are now, have done a great job making a visually interesting and atmospheric game foundation on which to build something much more intricate and challenging.”
    • “Very much reminds me of my favorite Civ: Beyond Earth; the atmosphere of exploring an alien planet is there.”
    • “The art style and atmosphere: graphics do not mean everything to me ninety percent of the time, but this game was just released and the art style of the cities, districts, and maps feels so old already.”
    • “Polish the art and atmosphere, fix the bugs; this game has a ton of potential.”
    • “The lore isn’t deeply developed through storytelling, but the atmosphere and flavor text do just enough to immerse you.”
  • optimization
    3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's optimization is a significant concern, with players noting that it can severely impact performance, especially on lower-end systems. While the core gameplay is enjoyable, the early access status reveals issues such as poor optimization, limited AI aggression, and an unclear user interface.

    • “Optimization is mandatory; otherwise, it will kill my lovely laptop.”
    • “The performance in PlanetSide is impressive, even with 4-5 cities.”
    • “Performance in the game is poor, especially when there are 4-5 cities on the screen.”
    • “While this is still definitely an early access game, it suffers from poor optimization, limited AI aggression, and an unclear UI.”
  • humor
    3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The humor in the game is characterized by its playful and sometimes absurd scenarios, where players can easily misinterpret situations, leading to comedic outcomes. Reviewers note a mix of short, witty jokes and longer, less effective comedic moments, suggesting a varied approach to humor that may not always land.

    • “If you aren't paying attention, you might start a war with the purple guy instead of the purple guy with the funny hair.”
    • “The humor in this game is so clever that it keeps you laughing even during the most intense moments.”
    • “The witty dialogue and hilarious character interactions make every playthrough a joy.”
    • “The humor in this game falls flat and feels forced, making it more cringeworthy than entertaining.”
    • “I expected some clever jokes, but instead, I was met with tired clichés and predictable punchlines.”
    • “The attempts at humor are so over-the-top that they detract from the overall experience rather than enhance it.”
  • monetization
    3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The monetization aspect of the game is criticized for being a blatant cash grab, with users expressing disappointment in its lack of depth and overall execution. Many reviewers suggest that the game feels more like a rushed project rather than a well-developed title, leading them to recommend other 4X strategy games instead.

    • “While there are some unique systems in the game, the lack of depth in every other part of the game hinders this game from being anything other than an expensive cash grab.”
    • “Blatant cash grab, go buy just about any other 4X strategy game.”
    • “I wish this developer would actually follow through on their concepts rather than make lazy cash grab titles that feel more like a project manager's quick fix than a fleshed-out game that anyone will enjoy playing.”
  • emotional
    1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The emotional aspect of the game is enhanced by the diverse and immersive environments of multiple planets, each offering unique maps and resources, which contribute to a sense of exploration and adventure. The developers' effective use of lighting creates distinct atmospheres, allowing players to feel a deeper connection to the varied worlds they encounter. Overall, the vastness of space and the strategic elements evoke a sense of wonder and emotional investment in the journey.

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5h Median play time
5h Average play time
3-7h Spent by most gamers
*Based on 5 analyzed playthroughs
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Pax Nova is a strategy game.

Pax Nova is available on PC and Windows.

On average players spend around 5 hours playing Pax Nova.

Pax Nova was released on April 28, 2020.

Pax Nova was developed by Grey Wolf Entertainment.

Pax Nova has received mostly positive reviews from players and mostly positive reviews from critics. Most players liked this game for its gameplay but disliked it for its story.

Pax Nova is a single player game.

Similar games include HUMANKIND, Galactic Civilizations III, StarDrive 2, Master of Orion, Stars in Shadow and others.