When you've got a cult strategy game on your roster, how do you get the masses to buy into it? One answer could well be the simple 'tart it up a bit and release a sequel'. Empire Interactive hope so anyway...
Andy Smith

That sounds a little cynical to me.
Sorry, it wasn't meant to be. I was just trying to say that people's preconceptions of a game can be difficult to change and marketing departments then have their work cut out.

So they should, the workshy fops...
Steady! But let's not go off-topic. Stars! Supernova is the follow-up to the successful cult strategy game Stars!, a niche market game that's done well in the States, and though it's available over here, it hasn't quite got the same following. Empire are hoping the sequel will have much more mass appeal.

How are they going to do that then?
With a lot more work than simply 'tarting it up'. The core elements of the gameplay remain: you're the leader of one of 16 races of alien stuck in a huge galaxy with little more than a basic space station from which you must expand and manage your empire. However, the game's been tweaked and updated.

With more than just fancy graphics?
Indeed. Although loads of graphics have been added, the major improvements have been made to the game's interface and resource management structure. The original game was very heavy on the detail and though some found this good fun, the majority of gamers prefer to leave a lot of the game's tactics to the in-built AI while they concentrate on the strategy of empire building and winning wars.