Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
A Turn-based Strategy game in a futuristic global cold war from the award-winning creators of Out There. Recruit a squad of special agents and run your intel agency to secure the control of the singularity.
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War is a political sim, sandbox and economy game
developed by Mi-Clos Studio, Goblinz Studio and FibreTigre
and published by Goblinz Publishing and Fractale.
Released on November 21st 2019 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 5 languages: English, French, German, Russian and Simplified Chinese.
It has received 1,324 reviews of which 1,012 were positive and 312 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.3 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 2.69€ on Steam and has a 85% discount.
The Steam community has classified Sigma Theory: Global Cold War into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows Vista
- Processor: 1,3 GHz CPU
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GT 440 or AMD Radeon HD 5550 w/ 512 MB
- Storage: 1 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: Mac OS X 10.7
- Processor: Dual Core 2Ghz
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Hardware Accelerated Graphics with dedicated memory
- Storage: 500 MB available space
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 12.04+
- Processor: 1,3 GHz CPU
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Storage: 1 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
I don't know how much I should recommend this, but I'm fairly addicted to it anyway, so I'm giving it a thumbs up. The plot is it is ten years in the future from whenever you start the game (neat little trick, devs) and you are one of ten global powers in a race to develop some crazy, world-changing technologies. You will use the disparate talents of your four agents to hack other countries, convince their scientists to come work for your country either through seduction, bribery, or a really good pep talk (or just straight abduct them) and then play a mini-game where you exfiltrate them out of the country. Meanwhile, your enemies are also developing technologies to use against you, deploying agents to steal your scientists, and otherwise being a general pain in the butt. Like most games of these types, once you figure out the optimal strategy, it's incredibly easy, but it's also good fun until you get there, and it's also fun to play less optimal strategies after that and see how well you do. Games are fairly quick as well, which is also a plus. Granted, from a balance standpoint, it's pants. High intelligence is vastly superior to high strength, hacking is ridiculously overpowered, and performing exfiltrations quickly and quietly is too easy, meaning your more gun-happy, violent agents are less viable. With some tweaking, this could be a much better game. It's probably not going to happen, but I'd love to see a sequel.
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Amazing game. Looks a bit complicated at first glance, but if you give it a 1 or 2 hours to figure out all the mechanics, it gets very addictive. The story is also simple, direct but very enjoyable. If you like games like Pandemic or Orwel. It even reminded me a bit of the old Medieval Total War games, with all the spies and sabotage missions.
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The gameplay is kind of mid but the atmosphere is actually really great and carries the game
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very addicting as the mechanics begin to click. problem is though, once those mechanics fully click there is very little depth
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[I]Sigma Theory comes with my recommendation on the proviso you pick it up on sale . It is a fun game, but it is not a £15.49 game in length or replayability. It's telling (and completely understandable) that the game has since had ports to portable and mobile hardware: this plays like a very high end mobile game that you would happily pay £5 or 6 for - which funnily enough, is exactly what it's priced at there. As it is, on sale it's £3.09 (£5.40 with the Nigeria and Brazil DLCs) which is absolutely spot on. That out of the way, what can you expect? Subtitling itself [I]Global Cold War[/I], the game takes the diplomacy, espionage and research that pitted the US against the USSR in the latter stages of World War II and... moves it all into a near, cyberpunk future. This move has several pros: not only do we end up dodging the complex what-iffery of revising history, but the game's focus on the nebulous and eponymous 'Sigma Theory' in the near future also means other nations get to play. The China, India, France, the UK, Germany, Korea, Turkey and Japan (plus Nigeria or Brazil if you plumped for the DLC) join the rivals of the first Cold War in trying to be the first to monopolise Sigma Theory. Each nation comes with a buff, but I can't really say I noticed it all that much, with many of them simply affecting your first few turns. In the end, all it really changed was who was my boss (same lines either way) and what flag I clicked on to send my agents home. The game starts with assembling a team of four agents, each with a nice, hand-drawn portrait as well as intellect and strength stats but also character traits. Careful perusal of a short bio for each agent allows you to succeed in a visual-novel minigame in which you approach and persuade said agent to work for you. Though the initial roster is small, STGCW showcases its roguelite credentials with agents being unlocked over the course of one play for use in another. Team assembled, you're given two scientists (in a lab that can, ultimately, hold fifteen), two drones (one for espionage, one for airstrikes) and the clock starts - actually, several clocks. Like the best strategy games, ST broadly has one way to win and many to lose. Certain decisions will impact what your employer nation thinks of you, while others will tick minutes off a doomsday clock running from 23:30 to, of course, midnight. Both of these can end your game early. Researching fifteen points of technology across five fields (all the cyberpunk favourites: neuroscience, health, robotics, astrophysics and finance) lets you research Sigma itself and win the game. Rushing the early stages or even one strand of the tech tree seems tempting, but the benefits yielded along the way for being the first to discover a tech can quickly compound in useful ways. Not only this, but the research is mostly background noise against the real meat of the game: trying to coerce, seduce, bribe or outright kidnap other nations' scientists to your side to stay ahead - a cyberpunk Operation Paperclip or Osoaviakhim, if you will, and were it not for the fact the reference might be lost on lots of folks, [I]Osoaviakhim[/I] would have made a cool name for this title. Rival nations have a diplomat to be negotiated with, again in a conversation minigame, and they can be charmed pressured or outright blackmailed, while infiltrators can scope out the ground, the scientists working there, and the weapons and route they'll need to get them out. The game does also offer up alliances with less-than-savoury groups, be they corporate entities or terrorists, but I never felt the risk of exploring the latter or the rewards laid out by the former warranted being a traitor. Exfiltrations, meanwhile, launch probably my favourite and really the one, true, fleshed out minigame. In a Fighting Fantasy-lite narrative, the escaping spy narrates their surroundings and you make a choice, hopefully remembering that spy's strengths. Where some spies are better at hiding in an alley from a prowling patrol car, others have no issue marching up to the officer and appropriating his vehicle. There can be some really fun flavour in these moments, though the choices are almost always binary, and it's a shame not to have a bit more scope to branch out. It's a shame, too, that the game's other, primary actions - hacking rival nations, counterintelligence in your homeland to arrest enemy spies and the actual process of approaching rival scientists - don't have minigames of their own. I'd have loved a conversation minigame to sway a wavering scientist or an interrogation minigame to deal with a captured agent. On the one hand, I could see how a player could be fed up of one minigame after another, and yet it does leave the game's other actions feeling less exciting and less important. These other actions are, instead, reliant on a behind-the-scenes roll of the dice. Another minigame of sorts in which you balance your relationship with your spouse versus your commitment to your country feels not only unconvincingly written but also underused. ST does offer a 'story' mode in a presumed attempt to coutner this, but my dabbling in it didn't reveal more than a few more, hand-drawn, visual novel style moments thrown in with no real choices or impact. There's also the fact that this game very much feels like a puzzle that, once solved, you don't need to go back to. Once I'd worked out what a 'balanced' team felt like, I breezed fairly (and then too) comfortably through my second playthrough, especially with one agent who I shan't spoil who was an absolute unit by game's end. Though it was clear that I'd unlocked just one ending (of five, if the hidden achievements are any indication), I didn't feel the immediate need to go back - and not being a score hero sort of player, I don't feel the need to grow that number any, either. This is why I called it a good mobile game - it's nicely designed, looks and sounds great but has minimal requirements and there's some fun gameplay here that'll entertain you for 3-5 hours. You could argue that, even at £15, few things could be said to entertain you for £3-5/hour, but there could have been so much more depth in so many places to warrant the £15.49 full price tag. That said, at the £5.40 I paid for it, I got entertained for £1 an hour. I really can't sniff at that. I will definitely fire this game back up again in a year or two when I want to lose myself in its neon world map, fun exfil minigame and unintrusive soundtrack, probably keeping it on as background noise to something else. If Mi-Clos ever made a follow up title, I'd definitely suggest they make it much deeper with lots more minigames and less reliance on high stats and a good die roll. If you're not worried about how you'll pay for your next meal, £3.09 will see you suitably entertained for the rest of the day - just don't drop £15 on it.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 17 November 2024 19:21 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 23 December 2024 13:31 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:40 |
| Steam reviews | 22 December 2024 11:54 |
Online players
6
Developer
Mi-Clos Studio,
Goblinz Studio,
FibreTigre
Publisher
Goblinz Publishing,
Fractale
Release
21 Nov 2019
Platforms
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