To celebrate the announcement of the release date for Hotel Architect I have TWO Steam keys for the game to giveaway! I will draw ONE winning entrant on the Gleam.io competition page and ONE entrant from the comments section of the announcement Lets Play video. Terms and Conditions General The Ajaxpost Plays Hotel Architect Giveaway ( the Giveaway ) is a lottery run exclusively by the Ajaxpost Plays YouTube Channel ( Ajaxpost Plays ) All the terms described here are in addition to the standard terms and conditions applied by Gleam.io and YouTube for all giveaways run on their platform. YouTube, Bluesky, Instagram, Twitter, X, and any other platforms used to advertise or promote the Giveaway do not sponsor the Giveaway and are in no way responsible or liable for any aspect of the operation of the Giveaway There will up to TWO winners who shall receive ONE Steam key for Hotel Architect: An Entrant that wins a prize on one draw will not be ...
Today I published the first episode for a new series on my YouTube channel, a Lets Play of Stellaris with the newly released Federations expansion pack.
Why, you might be thinking, am I doing a big outer space grand strategy game? The answer, my friends, is back, way back, in my gaming history ...
When I first discovered computer gaming it was on a magnificent Commodore 286 PC.
Starting with this marvellous machine, and subsequent PC clones, I discovered the original Civilisation, Championship Manager (now Football Manager), SimCity, Master of Orion, Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon and many other great PC games. I never got into consoles at all so strategy and adventure were what captured my (relatively) youthful imagination.
Time passes, and now while Civilisation is still great fun to play and retains it's essential 'pick up and play' quality to draw you easily into the gameplay complexities many of the "4X" games that followed it provide much deeper and involved 'grand strategy' mechanics. If I have the time, and inclination, I can enjoy the challenge of these more complex games but these days like to take a more 'casual' approach and prefer a game that will test me, will require me to do some thinking and planning but not too much, I play to relax and have fun not solve complicated algorithms.
So, what has this got to do with Stellaris? Since childhood I have been fascinated by space and what may lie out there in the inky darkness, so MOO was a favourite of mine for a long time but I never found another that I enjoyed quite as much. So, fast forward to November 2018 mostly intrigued by the wonderful graphics, the scope of the game and the fact that it was on sale for a very good price I took a punt on Stellaris.
I was very pleased to discover that unlike some other grand strategy games (yes, CKII I am looking at you!) you could set a novice difficulty level, there was a well-designed tutorial/guide and you could find your feet in the game, learn the various mechanics and achieve some goals before things got too complicated or challenging.
Having spent a lot of time in the game inevitably I had to take a break which also coincided with my YouTube channel becoming a more significant leisure activity for me. Fast forward to March 2020, Paradox are offering content creators like me a free key to the new Federations expansion. It looks good, and I did love playing the game last year, maybe I could pick it up? But could I create a worthwhile YouTube series for it? Back in the early days of my channel I tried recording a Civ series but I was not at all happy that my play style suited the game as an entertaining watch so never published anything. But, since then, I have learnt a lot about the YouTube 'process' and there appear to be quite a few people who enjoy my content style so maybe ... maybe it could work this time!
So, here we are. I picked up the free key to Federations and to help flesh out the gameplay purchased a few more of the DLC packs (on sale, of course!) and set about creating this new series - The Ajax Mandate.
I haven't spent long getting reacquainted with the game so the first few episodes, at least, will be full of misunderstanding, mistakes and mess-ups but will, I hope still be fun for me to play and entertaining for you to watch.
*Stellaris: Federations was provided free by the lovely people at Paradox Development.
Why, you might be thinking, am I doing a big outer space grand strategy game? The answer, my friends, is back, way back, in my gaming history ...
When I first discovered computer gaming it was on a magnificent Commodore 286 PC.
Starting with this marvellous machine, and subsequent PC clones, I discovered the original Civilisation, Championship Manager (now Football Manager), SimCity, Master of Orion, Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon and many other great PC games. I never got into consoles at all so strategy and adventure were what captured my (relatively) youthful imagination.
Time passes, and now while Civilisation is still great fun to play and retains it's essential 'pick up and play' quality to draw you easily into the gameplay complexities many of the "4X" games that followed it provide much deeper and involved 'grand strategy' mechanics. If I have the time, and inclination, I can enjoy the challenge of these more complex games but these days like to take a more 'casual' approach and prefer a game that will test me, will require me to do some thinking and planning but not too much, I play to relax and have fun not solve complicated algorithms.
So, what has this got to do with Stellaris? Since childhood I have been fascinated by space and what may lie out there in the inky darkness, so MOO was a favourite of mine for a long time but I never found another that I enjoyed quite as much. So, fast forward to November 2018 mostly intrigued by the wonderful graphics, the scope of the game and the fact that it was on sale for a very good price I took a punt on Stellaris.
I was very pleased to discover that unlike some other grand strategy games (yes, CKII I am looking at you!) you could set a novice difficulty level, there was a well-designed tutorial/guide and you could find your feet in the game, learn the various mechanics and achieve some goals before things got too complicated or challenging.
Having spent a lot of time in the game inevitably I had to take a break which also coincided with my YouTube channel becoming a more significant leisure activity for me. Fast forward to March 2020, Paradox are offering content creators like me a free key to the new Federations expansion. It looks good, and I did love playing the game last year, maybe I could pick it up? But could I create a worthwhile YouTube series for it? Back in the early days of my channel I tried recording a Civ series but I was not at all happy that my play style suited the game as an entertaining watch so never published anything. But, since then, I have learnt a lot about the YouTube 'process' and there appear to be quite a few people who enjoy my content style so maybe ... maybe it could work this time!
So, here we are. I picked up the free key to Federations and to help flesh out the gameplay purchased a few more of the DLC packs (on sale, of course!) and set about creating this new series - The Ajax Mandate.
I haven't spent long getting reacquainted with the game so the first few episodes, at least, will be full of misunderstanding, mistakes and mess-ups but will, I hope still be fun for me to play and entertaining for you to watch.
Series Information
This series makes use of the following DLC:- Stellaris: Leviathans Story Pack
- Stellaris: Utopia
- Stellaris: Apocalypse
- Stellaris: Distant Stars Story Pack
- Stellaris: Federations*
*Stellaris: Federations was provided free by the lovely people at Paradox Development.
Game Links
If Stellaris appeals to you and you fancy buying it for yourself (and/or a friend) please consider using one of the following links to stores which provide a small percentage of the price as support to my channel:Base Game:
- cdkeys.com: cdKeys.com Partner Link
- Humble Store: Humble Store Partner Link
Federations DLC:
- cdkeys.com: cdKeys.com Partner Link
- Humble Store: Humble Store Partner Link
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