What are space strategies? Usually, there are fantastic (sci-fi) games about space civilizations or about people in far or near future. The main aims of such games usually are to adapt, fight with enemies, and conquer the planets, stellar systems, and the whole universe of the game. In general, it is a strategy, but with elements of different genres: business simulation, tower defense (RTC), and construction simulation. Al usually generates random both unpredictable and routine events, such as meteorites, conflicts, etc, so you need to analyze a reason for every trouble and solve it, even it is just psychological distress of the settlers. Don’t forget that you have restrictions and limits, related to food, water, and other resources.
Despite the single genre, every game in our choice has some features that make it unique. So, we tried to choose the most breathtaking space strategy games in our opinion that are also playable on Mac. You should try, but be aware: good strategies are highly addictive!
Stellaris
Stellaris is a grand strategy game that was published by Paradox Development Studios in 2016. The game has both single-player and multiplayer mode, a “volcanic” alternative universe, where you will compete with enemies for resources, planets, and star systems. Space exploration is exciting and relatively difficult, be ready that Al can pounce you from nebulas or steal your rings of power. You should show your skills in the role of a general and in diplomacy. Another goal is to grow strong economics by collecting and generating resources: energy, credits, minerals, food, consumer goods, metals and to build a powerful space fleet. One of the important elements of Stellaris is technological development and investigations. Only by constant development, you can build different modern spaceships that will be able to stop enemies’ attacks when they will try to bomb your planets and launch missiles to your bases and stations. The planets are also important: you begin from one planet with no shipyards and may force with riots of unemployed workers. Despite the graphics are usually not the main feature of grand strategies, Stellaris has an acceptable resolution, and its universe and fights look really good. Also, there are a great number of DLCs that make the game more varied. Fortunately for owners of new Macs/MacBooks, Stellaris runs well on Mac M1 processors (sometimes with help of Rosetta 2 app), so you must try it on your Mac as soon as possible.
Details
System Requirements
| Minimal | Recommended |
|---|---|
| OS: MacOS 10.11 (El Capitan) | OS: MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra) |
| Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-4570S | Processor: Intel® iCore™ i5-4670 |
| RAM: 8 GB | RAM: 12 GB |
| Video card: Nvidia® GeForce™ GT 750M or equivalent AMD® card with 1GB Vram | Video card: Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 780M with 4GB Vram or AMD® Radeon™ R7 370 (2 GB VRAM) |
| Disc space: 10 GB | Disc space: 10 GB |
M1 support: Rosetta 2 needed
Endless Space 2
Endless Space 2 is another strategy that was developed by Amplitude Studios in 2017. Like Stellaris, it is a 4x grand strategy, where you can lead your space colonies to glory! There are many features and options here that are the same, but instead of Stellaris, there are 12 bright and completely different main factions: the peaceful Sophons, an aggressive half-insects Cravers, United Empire, The Horatio with cloning labs and also many secondary others. You also can create your own faction with individual skills, and scenarios and choose the difficulty of the game.
When you start to expand your colonies, you can find not only habitable planets, or resources, but also remnants of ancient civilizations, and meet the pirates. Be ready for war and diplomacy with other empires. You should use your fleet and resources as carefully and precisive as possible, it helps you survive and win! Every ship design and weapon can be changed easily. All fights in space and on planets are going automatically, but you can choose the weapons before every clash. In our opinion, it does not make the game worse, vice versa the game universe looks and sounds fresh and the gameplay is really perfect! Like the first part, Endless Space 2 runs on Mac natively. If you use Mac M1 processor, it requires Rosetta 2 app, but the game can run on the highest resolution.
Details
System Requirements
| Minimal | Recommended |
|---|---|
| OS: MacOS 10.14 (Mojave); MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) | OS: MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) |
| Processor: Intel Core i5 2.7Ghz | Processor: Intel Core i5 (8th Generation) |
| RAM: 6 GB | RAM: 12 GB |
| Video card: GeForce 775M | Radeon HD 6970 | Intel Iris Pro | Video card: AMD Radeon Pro 560 |
| Disc space: 8 GB | Disc space: 8 GB |
M1 support: Rosetta 2 needed
RimWorld
RimWorld is a single-player simulator of a sci-fi colony. In general, it is a strategy, but with elements of life sims, management and construction. The main aim is to survive, build a spaceship and leave the planet. But instead of other games, Rimworld is very focused on characters, their traits, skills, mood, and also on all usual social aspects. (In general, developers refer to Maslow’s diagram). The strong part of the game is a story generator, there are three main scenarios, but millions of events inside. Most of the colonists are not professional astronauts or constructors, so they haven’t sophisticated skills for spaceship development, but their knowledge can allow for example make good wines. After a time they develop new skills but can forget old ones. At first glance, the game’s graphics look out of date. Every character looks like a cartoon from South Park. But as in other games on our list, graphics is not the main advantage of this great videogame. 97% of positive reviews on Steam speak for themselves. Rimworld is compatible with Mac (with resolution up to 2560 × 1600), including M1 processors. If the game does not start, just use Rosetta 2.
Details
System Requirements
| Minimal | Recommended |
|---|---|
| OS: macOS 10.12 | OS: MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) |
| Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (3rd Generation) | Processor: Intel Core i3 |
| RAM: 4 GB | RAM: 8 GB |
| Video card: Intel HD Graphics 4000 or other shader model 4.0 | Video card: Intel HD Graphics 4000 or other shader model 4.0 |
| Disc space: 1 GB | Disc space: 1 GB |
M1 support: Rosetta 2 needed
Other Strategies
You can also try other strategies. Galactic Civilizations III, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, Distant Worlds are no less exciting but haven’t native Mac version. It means that they can be run only by third-party emulators, or on cloud gaming services. Follow our updates, to learn how.