Ferion, as the story goes, is a supremely powerful race with a bad history. As soon as the Ferion began their space faring adventure, another race was there and did not want to share. From a neighboring galaxy, the Karions began their quest for galactic domination. And the Ferion were the only real impediment.

A war spanning galaxies and pushing technology to its limits ensued, in which the Ferion finally triumphed, but at great cost to their souls. They could no longer live together as a unified people. They had seen conquest and war, and now it was fascinating to them. They needed a new and even more challenging enemy or they would tear themselves apart.

So they invented the Arenas. They sectioned off the decimated homeland of their former Karion enemy, and filled each Arena with developing species. If you want yourself and your species to survive, your only hope is to win the Arena. It was a game so carnally erotic that the now bloodthirsty Ferion were intrigued and pacified.

Ferion is a simple browser game taken to about the highest level of complexity. The initial learning curve is very steep, and may put off some people who expect to enter and start winning. If Ferion is your thing though, you’ll be up and running in no time. The game is free, but in order to get to the higher levels of technology, you will need to purchase “keys” from them and use them to unlock each Arena you play in.

Every player arrives in an Arena with a single planet and the same starting resources. Only their positioning is different. Position on the map, of course, can make all the difference to how well you do.

From your one planet your only viable strategy is to expand as quickly as possible. Even the manual suggests you worry about defense after you have taken as much space as possible. As expected, the more planets you have, the more (and faster) science and production you can get.

Ferion has a pretty good technology tree. The early inventions are key to expanding faster and have little military significance. Later on the technology shifts to heavy production and military goals. An interesting later technology is the ability to make a solar system into a Nivenesque ringworld.

Ore resources are only marginally useful in the game. You mine, refine, and combine them to make a great end product. But in the long run, the only purpose for mineral resources is to trade with the Ferion empire or your neighbors.

Gameplay in Ferion is complicated. The interface leaves something to be desired in clarity…often the most simple action takes negotiating several screens of ill-labeled buttons, pull-downs, and fields. The basic functions are already daunting looking; starting in an array of 16 buttons: Solar, Planet, Recon, Scanning, News, Government, Politics, Alliance, Ships, Research, Trade, Ore, Arena Map, Game Stats, Preferences, and Highscore.

From that point on, you need to setup your research with queues, set up your planetary manufacturing with queues, set up your shipyard with queues…are you getting the picture here? The more you can automate the system, the better, because things are only going to get more monotonous, and the big kicker is still coming.

The entire game is turn based. Each turn lasts an hour. You can do whatever you like in that hour, and set things up to barrel on ahead. But nothing will actually happen until the next tick. You may be done in two minutes. Or it may take you the entire hour to figure out your strategy. But you can only access sixteen hours in a day. So…pre-planning, queues, and automation are the only way to go. And that’s the kicker. If you don’t plan ahead and schedule everything, you’ll leave your empire sitting still until the next time you can log in. Sitting still is ill advised in this type of free-for-all game.

I did find in my playing that my neighbors were all mostly peaceful. Things apparently get a little more heated in the higher ranking Arenas. The worst enemy I had was finding time to mind my empire and those dang piwates. Arrrrr! They stole me planet.

Although I have played several browser games in the past, Ferion really wasn’t my thing. I’m not saying it won’t be yours…I’m just not very big into pvp—and most of Ferion is built around it. I wholeheartedly recommend it for someone stuck in a boring desk job. Especially for someone who likes to play chess with sharpened swords on their pawns.