Image: Konfa Games & tinyBuild

The core theme of the Despot's Game series is that humanity is endlessly expendable, at least when they take the form of cute pixel-art stickmen. That gleefully grim message remains unchanged in Hull Rupture, the fourth game in the series, even if almost everything else has changed. You're still playing as an evil despotic AI, but this time on a pilgrimage across the galaxy, trying to stay ahead of all the people you've upset in a fully customizable starship.

What you've got here is a mixture of space colony management roguelite, tower defense and FTL. Pick a destination on the galactic map, travel there, ideally gain resources, invest that into upgrading your ship and place defences - both external and internal - in order to hold off the waves of alien invaders that want to eat your delicious human crew. You can't allow that, because you need those humans to feed to your own bio-reactors, research labs and other unethical devices.

This is by far the most complex and technical game in the series, asking you to juggle several intersecting sets of mechanics. Your ship needs to grow ant-farm style, with each new chamber (filled with gorgeous little stickman animation) expanding the outer hull of the ship and requiring more resources to defend. Turrets and traps will thin out enemies as they land on the hull, but you'll also have to keep ahead of the tech requirements of keeping an effective standing army able to repel boarders.

All of this mixed in with FTL-inspired multiple choice events at the many alien planets you'll visit, deciding how you'll deal with the less immediately hostile aliens you'll meet, although playing as an unhinged evil computer, you'll still have the option to cause trouble and attack just about anything you encounter. It's easier to be the bad guy when all your minions are just faceless little stickmen, bred/cloned/replicated to be nothing more than fuel and parts for your space travel ambitions.

While sadly now delisted, there was a demo during the Next Fest, and it was a fun, compelling time. Just enough plates to spin to make it an engagingly complex experience without getting into the dry spreadsheet shenanigans of serious management games. I've some minor concerns that runs might end up being a bit long in the full game (when I finally get to trying it), but at least there's fast-forward buttons to speed through the quieter moments and skip to the big decisions.

Hull Rupture is out now for £12.39/$15, with a 10% launch discount running until November 18th. There's also a steep discount on a bundle of the entire Despot's Game series, including light resource management game Despotism 3k, auto-battling roguelike Despot's Game and the Survivors-like Slime 3k.