Galcon

Galcon is a series of video games for Android, iPhone, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Flash, which were developed by Phil Hassey. It is a real time strategy game set in space and involves maneuvering fleets of ships to capture enemy planets.

Games
The original Galcon, Galcon Classic, was released for the desktop in late 2006 for a timed game development contest. It was then developed into a more advanced video game. Galcon Classic features dozens of singleplayer game modes and full multiplayer.

In July 2008, Galcon was publicly released on Instant Action (IA), a web browser game platform released by GarageGames. This is the first time Galcon was released with campaign sort of gameplay.

A couple months later, Galcon was released for the iPhone, frequently called by fans, "iGalcon". iGalcon was one of the first true multiplayer experiences for the iPhone but never gained enough publicity to kick off. iGalcon comes with multiple singleplayer modes featuring varying degrees of bot difficulty, and an advanced online multiplayer system where players can battle in rooms up to four.

In June 2009, Galcon Flash was released. Galcon Flash was a Flash port of Galcon and closely resembled the iPhone port. Although Galcon Flash was given a small introductory price, the amount of registered users was very small; however, there is a limited demo version.

Galcon Labs was released in early October 2009. Galcon Labs is a sequel to the first iGalcon. Galcon Labs features four new modes which are both singleplayer and multiplayer compatible. Galcon Labs has been received as a very positive addition to the Galcon family.

On February 11, 2010, Galcon Fusion was released for Mac and Windows as the latest addition to the Galcon family. It is the desktop and iPad equivalent to Galcon Labs and the original Galcon. Its greatest player of all time is Txgangsta.

Gameplay
Players start with 1-3 home planets and send off ships to conquer other planets around them. The numbers on each planet indicate how many ships it will take to conquer them. The numbers on a player's own planet indicate the amount of ships that their planet holds. Each planet a player owns produces ships for that player with more ships at a faster rate produced depending on the planet's size. Players can select what percentage of the ships to send from a planet and players can redirect ships in midair. The aim of the game is to defeat the other opponent(s).

Rankings
All versions of Galcon (with the exception of the Instant Action port) involve a unique ranking system. After ten days a player's score is erased, meaning a player must keep winning matches to increase his or her score and keep it high on the score boards, which can be found on Galcon.com. Each ranking is symbolized by a flag. The flags are:


 * Cabin Boy - Pink flag, generally for the unregistered
 * Ensign - Green flag, usually takes winning one game to achieve this rank
 * Lieutenant - Yellow flag
 * Commander - White flag
 * Captain - Red flag
 * Admiral - Blue flag
 * Admiral (one stripe) - Blue flag with one yellow stripe
 * Admiral (two stripe) - Blue flag with two yellow stripes
 * Admiral (three stripes) - Blue flag with three yellow stripes
 * Grand Admiral - Blue flag with yellow triangle, normally nearly impossible to gain, if gained only for a few days at most

Reception
Galcon Classic received good reviews and won multiple awards. Both iPhone Galcons also received excellent reviews, but there was a smaller publicity angle. The IA version was given few public reviews, but the overall rating is high. Galcon Flash also did not receive very many reviews, and mostly failed in the popularity.

iGalcon (Standard)
Macworld gave the game 4 stars praising the game for being entertaining and online play but felt the single player levels did not progress evenly from easy to hard, in some cases. PocketGamer gave the game 8 out of 10 commenting it was an 'innovative space game with simple controls and deep strategy'. Slide to Play gave the game 3 (good) out of 4 saying that the extremely satisfying online play made it a good game.