Star Hammer II a single player turn-based tactical naval combat game in 3D space. You take the role of the underachieving daughter of the first game’s hero as she’s thrust early into the role of fleet commander when a race of gigantic alien squid monsters attacks their colony a second time. Gameplay consists of a long campaign of scripted missions with your surviving ships gaining veterancy between missions, as well as random skirmish matches.

You control your ships by dragging a ghost image inside a movement arc to where you want the ship to be at the end of next round. You can also adjust energy levels, transfer shield energy, designate preferred targets and deploy limited ammo systems like torpedoes and countermeasures. This game makes Z-axis movement much simpler than Homeworld by dividing height into seven distinct planes that ships move between.

Being a singleplayer-only game, the two factions are wildly different. I really like that every ship in the human fleet serves a specific purpose, from the swift corvette to the defensive frigate to the hangar dreadnought. The aliens, on the other hand, usually outnumber the human fleet by a huge scale and their function serve to force you to keep moving and repositioning your firing lines. Spitters shoot lines of liquid that hang in space and disrupt your shields, disruptors fire spherical blasts that sap your powerplant, and sentinels act like living minefields.

The soundtrack just about trips over itself to bring the epic military excitement. In game graphics aren’t state of the art, but I like the look. Character portraits in plot moments are shockingly bad.

I recommend this game for its clever gameplay innovations, great music, and the satisfaction of wading into a swarm of hostile aliens and taking it apart piece-by-piece with T-crossing positional tactics until all that remains is your fleet and a messy cloud of dead squids.

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Mischief Maker