Strategy games are often the brain trust of the gaming world, asking for slow-paced motions broken up by periods of intensely destructive activity, and resulting in missions that can last for hours. While they may not attract the widespread following that the genre has in comparison with other genres, the strategy genre still has a firm foothold in the gaming market as evidenced by the recent appearance of games like Universe at War: Earth Assault or the continuing popularity of the Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and Starcraft series. As with all gaming genres, though, it’s not only open to the big and the bright, but also the independent market as is the case with the game Galactic Dream: Rage of War which has been developed by the relatively unknown firm Evolution Vault and published by the equally unknown Strategy First.

"Independent game" does not automatically equate to "bad game," as many companies without the resources of much more well-known gaming companies have created great games that become quite well-known and, more importantly, quite fun to play. However, I regret to say that, by and large, Galactic Dream is not one of those games. It has the elements of what could be a fun game, but they weren’t brought to the level they could have been, and so Galactic Dream ends up being merely a faint shadow on the real-time strategy genre.

Why is it that I choose to describe the failure of this game in this overly sentimental way? The game seems to suffer from a lack of direction. The official explanation of the story found on the game’s official site describes it as “the ultimate strategy game in space” which takes place in a 24th century that sees humanity taking its first steps towards establishing itself in space. In addition, humanity is attempting to escape from the Second Big Bang while being pursued by an unknown and yet extremely powerful alien race. The search for a new home, a peaceful existence free of war; that is what the game seems to be about, but at no time playing the game did I have an inkling of any of these weighty matters were going on. This is one of the game’s major failing points, as even a brief indication of the plot is needed to draw the player into the game. Otherwise it will instill a feeling of aimlessness into even the most technically sophisticated game.

The single player mode game begins with three training missions that work to teach you about movement, camera controls, building types, and resource management, which is pretty basic for all RTS games. These missions are rather simplistic in their form and objectives -- learning how to build units, move them, attack targets, etc. -- and can be accomplished within a matter of minutes. After that, though, the difficulty level takes a sharp upswing.