Games of Stellaris can go on for a long time. Conquering the galaxy requires patience. But not so much in Stellaris Nexus, a brisk spin-off developed by Whatboy Games and published by Paradox. The hook is that you can complete a game in around an hour. So how, you might be wondering, has the studio managed to condense all of Stellaris's novelties and complexities and roleplaying shenanigans into such short games? That answer, unfortunately, is that it hasn't.
Stellaris Nexus's connection to the original game is extremely thin. The art, language and premade empires do evoke its progenitor, but mechanically this is an entirely different style of 4X—like a very trimmed down Twilight Imperium with big board game vibes—focused largely on conquest where you'll make a small number of decisions per turn.
