Author - Jerry Paxton

Haarlem, The Netherlands– April 22, 2014 – Indie developer Arkavi Studios has issued a one-two punch announcement today by revealing it’s changed its name from Star Lords to Lords of the Black Sun, while simultaneously reaching the all-important Beta stage of development on Steam. The Beta features highly improved AI that utilizes the ship design component, making for more powerful ships and tougher battles, and offers streamlined gameplay and interface functionality, better lighting, and more.

The brand new gameplay trailer emphasizes what sets apart Lords of the Black Sun from other entries in the 4X realm. Check out the all new gameplay trailer HERE:

Important Beta Updates:

• Improved AI: Now the AI fully uses the ship design component and its latest additions, designing more powerful ships and better managing its military forces making it a significantly tougher opponent.
• Major bug fixes and fixed some crashes and stability issues. Bug and crash fixes include the corrupted save files bug and the Trade Routes menu crash.
• Multiplayer is now being tested internally. While it’s not available in this first Beta release, it will be included soon.
• Added revamped Light and Medium Draakian ships models.

For a full list of changes please visit the official Steam community hub HERE: steamcommunity.com/app/246940

“We at Arkavi Studios are very happy to see Lords of the Black Sun reach this new stage of development,” says Mike Domingues from Arkavi Studios. “We’ve been working hard and the community has been incredibly useful since we went into Early Access, and for that we want to thank everyone involved. However, we still have a long road ahead of us and we hope to continue having the community by our side, helping us make the great space strategy title everyone wants and expects.”

In Lords of the Black Sun, players take command of one race to join the struggle for supremacy in the galaxy. As the leader of an empire, gamers are tasked with exploring the stars, colonizing new worlds, managing their empire and conquering whoever dares to oppose them. Within a framework of turn-based strategy and turn-based combat, Lords of the Black Sun endeavors to differentiate itself by providing players with the ability to beat their opponents by using generals, diplomacy, intelligence, trading, or plotting the downfall of enemies by financing wars against them or aiming to cause anarchy.

Lords of the Black Sun has now entered Beta and is available on the Steam Early Access program at $24.99 at store.steampowered.com/app/246940/

Key Features

• Eight major races each with their own ship designs, technologies, unique traits and unique abilities, meaning playing with each race is a different challenge and offers new ways to approach the game.
• Big, living universe: In addition to the major powers, independent races and pirate clans also claim the galaxy as their residence; their existence can be an annoyance, or a blessing if gamers take advantage of them.
• Deep economic and political layer: War isn’t the only way to weaken players’ rivals. Diplomacy, intelligence and trade can be one of many powerful tools that, if used properly, can be very effective as well.
• Tactical turn-based combat.
• Create and customize ship designs.
• Generals: These unique and powerful units evolve as they battle and if used well can be the difference between defeat and victory.
• Randomly generated universe, tech tree and units: gamers will never play the same game twice.
• Empire shattering: Unrest might lead rebels to start a civil war, which in turn might lead to the creation of a new, independent empire that might grow to rival one’s own.
• Plotting: Secretly finance a war against one’s rivals in order to weaken them or prepare a surprise joint war along with allies in a bid to destroy that frighteningly fast growing empire.
• Human-like AI that doesn’t cheat and plays by the same rules as human players, while presenting a constant challenge; conversely, play with one’s friends in Hotseat mode.