Tycoon Games has released Supernova 2: Spacewar for Mac. The turn-based simulation title that packs some war game elements too has players controlling an empire based on spacefaring. As such, you must be a good manager of resources to succeed, but also to carry out research to develop new technologies.

Don't worry though, this isn't one of those boring simulation games where you just build something and then watch the time fly by. As soon as you build your very own space fleet, you will be able to engage in space combat.

"After the first title, I wanted to shift genre completely, making a turn-based space wargame, integrated with a resource macromanagement part," sais Riva Celso, programmer/designer over at Tycoon Games. "I wanted to keep the management part simple, with global variables affecting your whole empire rather than managing every single planet. It is my first game for the Tycoon Games website, which will feature exclusively strategy, simulation and war games," he added.

The sci-fi strategy game features a main part based on the macromanagement of your space empire. The classical turn based wargame part emerges when a fight occurs. But, as noted above, you will have to carefully manage resources while balancing several other aspects, such as researching new technologies, increasing the loyalty of the people in your empire, training better troops, and building the ultimate fleet to conquer the galaxy!

Supernova 2: Spacewar is currently at version 1.0.2, which includes quite a lot of features as well as fixes. For example, the developers have added the possibility to save your game during the wargame battles, as well as confirmation pop-up windows for exiting the game or overwriting old savegames. The Research Lab technologies will shorten research times considerably, while the cost of some initial techs has been lowered to reduce startup time on the game.

The bug that used to enable players to discover alien technologies without first conquering the starsystems containing the alien relics has been fixed. However, if you like the bug, no one's forcing you to install the update.

Supernova 2: Spacewar costs $25 to buy. A demo version is also available.