Shadow Empire on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Shadow Empire is a deep turn-based 4X wargame with a unique blend of military focus, procedurally generated content and role-playing features. Players take the seat of the supreme ruler of a small nation, with the goal of reconquering a devastated planet.
Shadow Empire is a strategy, simulation and 4x game
developed by VR Designs
and published by Slitherine Ltd..
Released on December 03rd 2020 is available in English only on Windows.
It has received 1,471 reviews of which 1,280 were positive and 191 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 38.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 11.97€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified Shadow Empire into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows Windows 8, Windows 10
- Processor: 1.5 GHZ
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: 8MB video memory, 1280x768 or higher resolution
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 1 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible 9 Sound Card
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is a textbook one-dev niche strategy game that gets most things right but some not very much. If you liked SMAC and HOI3, this is THE game for you. But whether or not you would enjoy this game will ultimately depend on your own definition of "fun". You are required to spend ~8 hours play testing/"learning" the basic mechanics. And boy there's alot. As a comparison I spent ~2-4 hrs learning basics of SMAC, Old World, Terra Invicta, Pandora FC and MOO2, >4 hrs on HOI4. If you read the 400-page manual you should get a good amount of ideas how things work, but imho you don't need to read the thing (it lacks focus on critical info). For simplicity's sake I'll explain the core game experience as short but factual as possible: [*]You interact with the game in ways I categorize as Economic decisions, Military decisions, and Political decisions. You need an army to expand, which is supported by your economic base; both of them are governed by a political system that you have varying levels of control. These decisions are executed through "Stratagem", or by spending Political Power "PP", or with some kind of limited resource (Unit movement points (AP), your national resource stockpile, Logistical Points etc.). [*]Your decisions/Stratagems are executed by your Councilors, Governors, OHQ commanders or direct button-clicking, whereby usually a check is initiated against a difficulty score: Check=[Your subordinates' relevant stats]+[XdY dice roll]+[Other Bonuses]; Difficulty is usually fixed every turn but sometimes also involves a XdY dice roll. You want to stack the check score so high that the XdY only determines if the check is a success (>= Difficulty) or Critical Success (>= Difficulty + 50). [*]Every turn you obtain a certain amount of Political Points, which is generated by spending Bureaucratic Points on your Supreme Command Council, de facto Head office of your state. These Political Points should first be spent on resolving your urgent crisis events usually omnipresent through the game. Then you may spend PP on executing Stratagem to govern, or restructuring your military, or purging some unwanted persons from your government, or directing your governors on zone management etc. [*]Bureaucratic Points (BP) is a basic resource that can be generated by building Bureaucratic Office Building (or the unique Head Command Bunker), a huge sink of your Manpower (Worker) and Electricity (Power); BP is allocated by National Budget to your established Councils, in order to generate new Economic and Military Research, new Stratagem, PP, new Unit and Army templates etc. [*]Why can't you just keep building new zones and new Bureaucratic Offices and nothing else then? This is due to the only fundamental resource constraint in the game: Manpower. Your natural population growth can be described as meager at best. For one ~100k (civilian) population zone, every turn you receive ~1k new civilians. With a lower Quality of Life score you should also expect regular population reducing events, mitigated by competent governors and lucky dice rolls. Thus, the only real way "winning the game" is not through internal growth but external expansion. [*]Natural resources like metal, rare metal, oil, food, water depend on your population's capacity to extract them. [*]Industrial resources like Industrial Points (IP), machines, Hi-Tech parts depend on your population's capacity to construct and support your advanced industries. [*]Your military needs recruits from your population. [*]The new zone you want to develop needs colonists enlisted from your population. [*] However, new zones "conquered" as opposed to colonized or annexed peacefully will take a long time to assimilate, determined by your ability to keep the conquered population happy: keeping them fed, stationing troops equal to the population size in the city, raising Quality of Life scores, putting a competent governor in charge and get a few good dice rolls on the inevitably bad events. Most zones at the start of the game worth a great deal, with established Public Assets present. New zones created by AI generally do not offer much value beside its population, because a few overpowered AI buildings are destroyed when you occupy them. [*]I recommend first generating an Empty planet with no opponent at the lowest difficulty for you to try things out and figure out how to build up industries, lay logistical networks and deal with bad events. [*] Will you enjoy this game? I honestly cannot say. I personally find fighting a uphill battle against AI with some form of advantage or another unrewarding, and most people do not want to spend hours trying to figure out how to eke out that tiny bit of advantage against AI through mastering the knowledge of game systems. That means finding anything you can including the manual to learn as many things about the game as possible. I find the learning process deeply rewarding, yet the game itself lukewarm in the sense that conquering the planet/AI/new zones by manipulating dozens of systems does not offer me the same level of adrenaline rush like forming Super Germany in Victoria 2 or outproducing and outgunning my AI opponents in SMAC. And I don't really blame the game, just that I believe my personal preference for "fun" is different. To address some points made in other comments: [*]The UI has no priority on things you really need to focus on, but I'd say most other strategy games aren't much better at the start when you are not used to them. The reason why it's such a problem here is the amount of systems and decisions for a new player being overwhelming, and one has to avoid micro-adjusting everything all the time. [*] The game assumes you know how to maintain a supply line, that is the uninterrupted flow of military supply through lines of infrastructure to your units. For a new player it's not as straightforward as HOI4 etc. The "Railhead" "Railway Station" "Truck Station" system needs some learning to get used to. As a rule of thumb, more rail tracks mean less logistical capacity on each individual tracks, So you want to ideally have a Triangle/Diamond shaped railway network. [*] The game delegates many decisions such as developing a new tank model to one specific council which you need to allocate a specific budget to (Model--Design Model), which can lead to confusion on how much you need to spend on any council to make any decision (because there are a lot options). These information is not all shown in-game and can be a nerve wrecking problem for new players. [*]The Diplomatic Experience: In especially the early game, you have VERY limited tools to deal with these things. Without a Foreign Affairs Council or Secret Service Council, you are practically in a Dark Forest scenario whereby almost everyone is your enemy, including the minor regimes. While Shadow Empire may not eclipse my love for map-painting games like Victoria 2 and HOI4, it offers a unique take on Sci-Fi 4X grand strategy genre, and I'd recommend this game to anyone with a patient mind and passion for 4X.
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This game is extremely unintuitive and the UI is more like that of Microsoft Office then it is any Paradox Interactive Game. With all this said, it is VERY unique and I feel the focus on gameplay makes this game almost addictive, you likely won't find a Planet Unification War simulator like this one anywhere else in the market. Imagine Aurora 4x mixed with Alpha Centauri and a dad game like Strategic Command The ONE bad thing about this game is the developer has begun to use more AI art, thankfully the major amount of AI art (the new leader portraits) can be turned off in settings, but it seems some of the more recent images for events and cards have odd details that make me pretty sure they are made with AI (if I am wrong, I will edit this review). I personally would rather have the dated low-budget CGI then good-looking AI art, but I won't give a negative review because not only is this just one guy, but it's one guy making a very, very niche game for a small audience.
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If your dad has every dune novel splayed on his bookshelf and you've played a dozen other war games then yeah this is in your wheelhouse, if not then buddy... this is an autism only zone, i dont know why you're here. if the phrase "aurora 4x" rings a bell. Then 1 im sorry, god help you. 2 proceed. Ok jokes aside the best thing i can say about this game is that. It tries to combine a lot of different things on top of a completely open, randomly generated framework, and SOMEHOW, Somehow... it manages be coherent, and not a jumbled confused trash fire, and shockingly its actually somewhat balanced and quite fun. Its rough but not buggy or broken and has weird problems inherent to its design which you Will notice but for a small production, thats pretty good. The planet generation is so chaotic that you'll need to play a lot of games just to get a feel for the settings and kind of planets you like because they are very different so it's gonna take a while to figure out what even is fun about the game as you try to learn it. Lastly an imagination, patience, optimism, and creativity help, y'know naming units, having personal vendettas against characters, creating little stories or whatever, this is absolutely a numbers driven strategy game but light role play is a staple of this kind of game and helps with player morale. if you're a miserable or very boring person then just go paint miniatures.
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My friends all think that this game looks horrible, and I'll admit some of the artwork is pretty terrible... I don't care - there is nothing quite like this game. From having a robust random planet generator that will impact how you play each game in immense ways to building a regime to managing your cities private and public sectors it is a very in-depth game that to me sparks my imagination each game in how I am building up my regime. Oh, and by the way all of the above is (arguably) not even the primary focus of this game which is in fact combat. This has a very in depth combat system and a logistics system that will punish you if you don't respect its impact on your troops and reward you when you do respect its impact on enemy troops. Full disclosure I spent a LONG time reading the manual and to this day play with it up on my second screen, but one of the strokes of genius with this game is that you CAN play it (on a lower difficulty) without fully understanding everything. Yes, the game strongly rewards a deep understanding of its mechanics but for the most part you can just do what makes sense and fight your way to victory. 10/10 game and one I would take with me to a deserted island.
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Unusual and bizarre game, has elements recognisable from traditional 4X games, Paradox titles, Civ and Total war, in a pseudo-scifi space colony future setting ala Rimworld. 8/10 Shadow Empire positions you as the head of state of a neo-industrial space colony after an apocalyptic galactic war that threw all of mankind back to the technology of the early 20th century. Partially though RNG and a bit through choice you can customise which planet you are on, from small planetoids to massive swap-planets with other intelligent aliens. Play is turn-based and the gameplay loop consists of managing the economy, bureaucracy and military of your nation every loop, dealing with factions, setting goals. Political and bureaucratic power is generated and spent as 'PP' and 'BP' points. 'PP' is used to execute 'stratagems', which are actions that effect your nation, zone, an individual unit or leader, as well as changing existing policy. 'BP' is the abstracted way of developing technology and economic/political development. Natural resources include food, water fuel, metals, energy, radioactive and rare earth metals, as well as special resources like high-tech machines and parts. A very interesting part of the game is how the economy and politics works. Unlike in other games, you are restricted by manpower needed to build and then operate buildings. It is not abstracted in any way, if you have 20k manpower then you can only operate within that limit. Additionally your nation has both a public (your state-owned mines, factories, farms) and private economy, (generates tax revenue) you must balance between those. Population growth comes slowly, from villages you acquire through expansion and certain events, so you are quite limited in some cases. This depends on how fractured your nation is (how many zones/states) and how you set up the game. Quite similar to Stellaris, your inner circle of cabinet appointees all come from different factions who can and will be a pain in the backside for political advantage and favours. You also have some internal non-government factions such as a major corporation, your militia, slavers, workers unions, a crime syndicate and a cult. Combat and logistics is very detailed, you can set up a full order-of-battle with independent or multi unit formations (battalion/regiment/division and brigade/corps/army based on size), you can transfer troops and equipment between them as well as set up ad-hoc battle groups with units from different formations. These must be supported by a logistics system that will supply food, fuel, munitions and reinforcements so they can move and fight. I have a few criticisms, first is that the game is the overall lack of polish, the graphics are of course stylised but they aren't really that pleasurable visually. There are numerous spelling and grammatical errors, and I don't think a lot of the tooltips and descriptions are that well thought out. Secondly, the in-game help available is quite limited, which isn't that bad because the people playing this game are pretty savy strategy wise but I'd say it limits who I'd recommend the game to. Overall I'd recommend to anyone who likes 4X games, the paradox suite of titles and colony sims i.e Rimworld.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Shadow Empire is currently priced at 38.99€ on Steam.
Shadow Empire is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 38.99€ on Steam.
Shadow Empire received 1,280 positive votes out of a total of 1,471 achieving a rating of 8.29.
😎
Shadow Empire was developed by VR Designs and published by Slitherine Ltd..
Shadow Empire is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Shadow Empire is not playable on MacOS.
Shadow Empire is not playable on Linux.
Shadow Empire offers both single-player and multi-player modes.
Shadow Empire offers both Co-op and PvP modes.
There are 2 DLCs available for Shadow Empire. Explore additional content available for Shadow Empire on Steam.
Shadow Empire does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Shadow Empire supports Remote Play Together. Discover more about Steam Remote Play.
Shadow Empire is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Shadow Empire.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 26 July 2025 00:35 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 23 July 2025 18:27 |
| Steam price | 30 July 2025 04:50 |
| Steam reviews | 29 July 2025 18:03 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Shadow Empire, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Shadow Empire
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Shadow Empire concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Shadow Empire compatibility
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Game modes
Multiplayer
Features
Online players
56
Developer
VR Designs
Publisher
Slitherine Ltd.
Release
03 Dec 2020
Platforms
Remote Play
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