Despite the 4X genre historically being home to devout fans, it often runs sparse in way of competition. With only one or two major titles released every year or so, we now find Endless Space has come to join the fray. From seemingly nowhere it is already playable and in Alpha build right now. To gain access you must pre-purchase and Endless Space's actual release date is currently the 28th August.

Endless Space is a very ambitious, pretty indie title that looks similar to Sins of A Solar Empire, another very successful 4X space game. The final expansion for Sins:Rebellion is also due out this summer, so we will be following these two closely. Lets take a look at the Endless Space system requirements and game details...

4X can be traced back to the likes of Master Of Orion and even the mighty Civilisation series and it stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. When we look at the Indie devs behind Endless Space you quickly see pedigree. The Creative Director is Romain de Waubert (Lead Designer of Battlefield 1942 and Producer of Dark Messiah, Heroes of Might & Magic, Clash of Heroes and Call of Juarez). Working to the strengths of an indie title, Romain has opted to get fans on board from the start with a very public development cycle where fans can offer development ideas via the Amplitude Studios forum. This also makes it very easy to see the high levels of polish that are going in to get Endless Space just right.

Endless Space is a simultaneous turn-based space game with empire building and diplomacy, where you can play up to 7 opponents in a sandbox style galaxy.

Endless Space Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows XP SP3 / Vista / 7

CPU: Core 2 Duo Processor or Equivalent

RAM: 2GB

GPU: 256 MB DX9 Compliant

DX: 9.0c

HDD: 2GB free hard drive space

AUDIO: DirectX 9 Compatible Audio

Endless Space Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows XP SP3 / Vista / 7

CPU: Core i5/i7 or equivalent

RAM: 2GB

GPU: 512MB DX9 Compliant with PS 3.0 support

It seems like the high end recommended CPU requirement is likely needed when you set up huge maps (you can have up to 1200 planets) and you click turn end and wait for the game to number crunch its way through the AI opponents. Depending on your CPU some larger game turns can take around 30 seconds to process in its current Alpha state.

So consider these few things...If you are not sure if your CPU can handle this then you may be able to play smaller custom games to be less resource intense and they may be able to further optimise before final release at the end of the summer.