9/24/20 Spaceward Ho! (1990)

Spaceward Ho! (1990) developed and published by Delta Tao Software for DOS, Amiga, and Mac; later published by Ariton for iOS. This game is quite popular among Mac enthusiasts, and supposedly sits in the Macworld Game Hall of Fame. I say supposedly because I can only find a handful of records of such a Hall, but I am assured it exists. Spaceward Ho! is a sci-fi 4X game, so you’ll be expanding your empire by conquering various planets, building ships, and engaging your enemies. It all sounds a lot more exciting in writing than practice, but at the time, this game was considered a landmark in the fledgling genre, before Civilization and Master of Orion. The only game that had attempted anything like this on Mac was 1983’s Reach for the Stars. It has a simple but effective resource system, using metal mined from your planets to build ships, and requiring budget management lest your colonies die from spreading yourself too thin. You can allocate funds to various types of research, and specialize individual planets’ focuses. The presentation is overall pretty sparse (everything looks like a debug menu), and I don’t think I’d pick it over some personal favorite 4X titles, but it deserves its place in history for being a watershed moment in the oft-forgotten Mac gaming scene. Also, everything is wearing a cowboy hat, that’s gotta be worth something, right?