PC Spotlight #49: Super Kaiser Earth

Title: Super Kaiser Earth
Developer: Evil Mountain
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $4.99 (currently on sale for $1.49)
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Combine Starmade's ship building with top-down tactical combat and you'd get Kaiser Earth.

You are in command of the Earth's defense, in an era where alien races and enemy fleets roam the galaxy with the planet in their sights. It's up to you to decide which threats to prioritize, but it an imminent asteroid strike or an group of enemy ship closing in on the planet. Many times more than one threat will be approaching, forcing you to choose the greater threat. To combat these threats, you're able to build ships based on various blueprints, customizing each with modules ranging from shields to thrusters to laser, rockets, and more. As time goes on, vendors provide new parts, and each vendor giving certain bonuses and stat boosts for staying loyal to their store. Combat itself can be played two ways. The traditional method is tactical, in which you pause the game and direct the direction of your thrusters, aim your weapons, activate your shields. This control method allows for greater strategy and more tactical depth. The second method was added in a recent update, and is more action oriented, with your ship controlled by the arrows and you aiming with the mouse. Both work well, although I preferred the slower more tactical scheme.

Kaiser Earth is fun, although I did find it got repetitive after a while. It could use more enemy types and modules, and I wish that the ship building wasn't confined to blueprint types. The developer is planning more updates, with new enemies, weapons, modules, and event types coming. You can purchase Kaiser Earth on the developer's site and Desura.