Bulwark Games has gone for something completely different for their third game, Ixion. Unlike the turn-based tactics RPG of Crowntakers and Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, this is a survival settlement builder set in space, with a rather linear story.
It’s a bit out there based on the developers’ past games, but in an ever-crowding space of city-builders and survival city-builders, does Ixion stands out from the crowd? It does, thankfully, this game definitely has a strong vision of what it wants to be. Though the execution could’ve been a bit better.

Presentation
Ixion knocks it out of the park when it comes to how the game presents itself. Its take on sci-fi is on the more grounded side of things. The spaceship you’ll be managing, the Tiqqun (pronounced like “tycoon”) is lavishly detailed and accentuated with bits and bobs on the exterior as well as the interior. Love the big signage saying what sector it is.
The exterior view lacks a bit on what it does gameplay-wise, but I love that it’s there. The view gives you a sense of place- where you are in the solar system right now. So you do get to see and up close shot of the planets and wreckage of where the Tiqqun is hovering. Things do get dire, and this exterior view helps sell that feeling.
Zoom into the interior where you plop various buildings and amenities, and you’ll spot quite many details too. Factories chugging along with appropriate animations. Railway stations zooming up above. The settlement you’re building across the six sections all feel alive when everything’s working as it should.
The voice acting, from what little it has due to story reasons, has pretty good performances.
But what will get you hooked on Ixion is that mesmerising soundtrack. Guillaume David previously composed for Mechanicus, which has a banger of a soundtrack. And Ixion’s is just as goosebumps-inducing. The weaving of synths and heavy organs here are orgasmic levels of epic.
The track Across The Void in particular is quite the highlight. It captures that feeling of helplessness, having to face the vast unknown, knowing that the fate of the people of the ship, and the entirety of humanity, lies on you. It’s grim, but still evokes that sense of responsibility and adventure. Excellent stuff.
Ixion’s soundtrack really hard carries the experience, but the sound design, in general, is also fantastic. Zoom in and you can hear the hustle and bustle of all the machinery and people going about.
If there’s a complaint, is that the game can look a bit blurry. There’s some odd dithering effect on the objects if you inspect them close enough. I’ve cranked the graphical settings all the way up and it is still in effect.
Apart from that, Ixion really sells its world well. You’d be delighted by what you eyes and ears experience.

Gameplay
Here’s the gist of Ixion’s story. In world in a brink of apocalypse, a major corporation decides to send people in a spaceship, in hopes of them finding and colonising a new world. You are the administrator, the person in charge of the spaceship Tiqqun and must ensure the mission succeed.
But all a sudden, after the tutorial sequence ends, the Tiqqun is possibly the last vestige of humanity, and now the mission to find a habitable planet becomes ever more important. But at least you know where you’re headed.
Without spoiling much, Ixion’s setup definitely took some notes out of Homeworld. If you’re unfamiliar with that RTS classic, Ixion’s premise should hit you good. It may not be original, but Ixion’s take on humanity’s only pilgrimage across the void is still pretty decent.
Gameplay-wise, Ixion is for the most part a city-builder. A settlement builder in this case. You need to ensure you have enough housing for the people onboard, have enough food for them, and have the factories to turn raw material into usable ones which these people work in.
But it’s also a survival city-builder. The hull of the Tiqqun is constantly taking damage, so you need to have a steady source of alloy, one of the usable materials, to keep up with the upkeep. If the hull ticks down to zero, that’s a game over.
But not only that, you have to deal with the people too. There’s a trust meter at play, and it will tick down should you not meet their demands or fail to keep the hope alive. If that bar goes to zero, a mutiny will kick you out and leave you for dead. In space.
There are definitely some Frostpunk vibes in Ixion. But unfortunately, the survival city-building aspect just isn’t as solid. Not to say you won’t have fun with it, but there are more annoying quirks than there are brilliant design choices.
For one thing, the whole aspect of shaping the population’s society feels underwhelming. The only good choice in the eight social policies you can change is cranking up the propaganda. The rest brings too much penalty but for marginal gains.
For example, you can loosen up the working hours for more stability, a +1, but that requires 25% extra workers. The only way for you to get more people on board is to wake people from cryo pods that you can find around the galaxy. But not all of them are workers. There’s a social policy that can selectively wake up only the workers first but that will heavily penalise you with a -3 on stability. But you can get it to lower by only -1 instead, but you need to invest in a lot on the tech tree to unlock that. So much work for barely any bonus, so why even bother?
Another aspect where the game is a bit of a letdown is the city-building itself. Space is at a premium, but man is it hard to fit in all the buildings you thought you need in one sector. As you progress, the unlocked buildings get bigger and bigger and it’s likely you need to demolish stuff out to make room. And demolishing is tedious as you have to wait for the refunded materials to be returned to a storage area. Sometimes you have no idea why the demolition seems to be idle, only to find out that there’s no space to place the refunded materials. So you have to go deal with that as well.
Plus, trying to optimise space by making full use of each tile seems like an impossible task. The buildings are sized in a way that you really can’t make a very nice grid on the first go. Plopping buildings feel like a terrible game of inventory tetris where all the pieces fit in such a not-so-obvious way which makes it frustrating and unsatisfying.
The game’s difficulty entirely relies on how little you know about the game is, because in the first 10 hours or so I was besieged by game overs after game overs for unable to juggle all the resources correctly while progressing through the story. But after I figured out all the things the tech tree offers and how each building works, and also deal with the weird quirks like how unstored materials will stop work from progressing, then it becomes easy. Too easy. I was loaded with resources as I scavenge and scoop up all the resources available in a solar system for a good one hour, and steamrolled the next few chapters as no material was out of stock. I wish the difficulty extended more than just the lack of player knowledge, which goes away eventually and is an annoying and un-fun experience at the beginning.

Despite the many issues I have, there is still fun to be had. When it clicks, it’s a fun time. The constant juggling of having to pay attention of each sector’s needs and balance out the population count, then go to the system view and send a probe to get a resource, then check the fleet manager and see if the right mining ship and cargo ship are collecting the resource you want, then deal with the random events that pop up back within the rings of the Tiqqun, and then figure out if it’s the right time to move the ship to a different planet, and then deal with the quest chain from the science ship. Juggling all that and more as its moment-to-moment gameplay, knowing that one little mistake or missed information could set you back to ruin, is awesome. The first 10 or so hours of this game is like that, and that’s where Ixion shines.
There’s also another gimmick near the end of the story, which will get you back on the defence and micromanage the Tiqqun to avoid certain doom. Having to actually move the Tiqqun around not for strategic reasons, but for your very survival, really spiced things up in a good way. Things get dicey and serious when your objective just reads “Survive”, and Ixion delivered that moment in the later chapters amazingly well.
All in all, Ixion’s gameplay isn’t as prim and polished as you might expect some survival city-builders to be, and some of its quirks may or may not drive you crazy. But it can be engaging and deliver some great moments that test your management ability.
Content
I completed my playthrough of Ixion close to 30 hours. There’s only five chapters, plus one tutorial chapter, but you can take your time to progress through them, which I did.
Ixion’s story is linear, but there are at least two endings you can pursue.
There’s no endless mode, at least not yet, so all you have is that linear campaign. It’s less than what you expect from a city-builder, sure, but that’s because we’re comparing a 30-hour campaign with an infinity game that can be played forever. As far as content goes, you do get a lot of game for what you’re paying for. Maybe not enough variety yet.

Personal Enjoyment
I want to like Ixion, and I do. I just don’t love it enough. The presentation aspect is amazingly well put together, and I am in love with the music the game has. But there are so many aspects of the city-building that irritates me, as explained earlier.
It has memorable moments in this space voyage that I will remember fondly, but not enough for a second playthrough.
Verdict
Ixion has some flaws as a survival city-builder. But every other aspect that surrounds the core gameplay is great enough to warrant this a try for those seeking a space adventure. It’s an interesting take on a settlement builder with a focus on a linear story campaign, and the game delivered that experience with great style and aplomb.
Reviewed on PC. Review key provided by the publisher
Ixion
Ixion has some flaws as a survival city-builder. But every other aspect that surrounds the core gameplay is great enough to warrant this a try for those seeking a space adventure. It's an interesting take on a settlement builder with a focus on a linear story campaign, and the game delivered that experience with great style and aplomb.
- Presentation 9
- Gameplay 6.5
- Content 8
- Personal Enjoyment 7