Stars! is one of those conquer-the-galaxy games where you use resource management and strategy rather than brute force to win.  Those of you who have played VGA Planets and Master of Orion are already familiar with the style of Stars!, which runs from Windows and begins the player with one planet, a scout ship and a colony ship.  Through using the resources of the one planet, the player builds more ships, colonizes more planets, fights the enemy and so on until they are either ruler of the galaxy or humiliated in defeat. One of the biggest things I noticed about Stars! is that while the big games like Master of Orion focus mostly on macro-management of your fleet to conquer the galaxy, Stars! incorporates more of a micro-management approach.  Although the concept is far from original, Stars! has just enough twists in it to make it worth checking out.

	There's a lot of stuff to keep up with in Stars! and the interface doesn't help things at all, but I'll get to that in a bit.  Fortunately, Stars! includes a great tutorial which takes you through each part of the game to familiarize the player with the interface and all of the functions of the game.  However, the tutorial is quite lengthy, and the pace is slow.  Most players will probably soon grow tired of it and go off on their own before finishing.  However, those that have the patience to go through the whole thing will be much better off in the long run.

	The player starts off with the meager assets of one planet, a scout ship and a colony ship.  Each planet has four different minerals, each having a different purpose, which have to be mined.  Through mining these minerals and building factories, the player can start producing things like more ships, starbases and  planetary defenses.  The player must reach out into the galaxy and colonize other planets which fall within the survival range of their particular race, based on the radiation, gravity and temperature levels.  Eventually, opposing empires will start infringing on each other and war will break out.  It is possible for the computer to form alliances, but diplomacy is not as big a factor in Stars! as some other games.  But the game goes on turn after turn, with the players exploring, building and conquering until one player controls the whole ball o' wax.

	Stars! had some really nice surprises in it. One of my favorite features is the ability to assign routes and assignments to your ships.  For example, when mining your planets, it's possible to totally mine all of a certain mineral.  However, without that mineral, you might not be able to continue production, so you have to transport it in from another planet.  But here's the good part:  Instead of having to manually assign a ship every three turns or so to do this, you can assign a ship a route to go to a planet, load a certain mineral, head back to the other planet, drop off the cargo, and head back for more.  It'll continue going  back and forth until you give it new orders, or it can't continue its old orders.  Even better, you can assign any number of tasks in whatever order you want.  So a ship can be assigned to pick up colonists from planet A, go to planet B and pick up a cargo of minerals, go to planet C and drop off the colonists and the minerals while loading up on fuel, then head on back to planet A to start the whole thing over again.  All of the cargo can be controlled through either setting a specific amount to be carried, or choosing a quick-set option like assigning the ship to pick up all of a certain type of cargo available.  This feature of assigning routes and assignments to ships really gives the game added depth.

	Now comes the bad part - mainly the interface - which will definitely turn a lot of folks off.  It's recommended to play Stars! in 1024x768 mode, and believe me, if you can run it in this mode, do it.  Stars! is controlled through a set of collapsible windows, but the trouble is that there are so many different windows, the screen simply isn't big enough to hold it all unless you're playing in 1024x768.  If you're like me, you want to be able to see as much information as you can at one time, but at least one window will have to be closed all the time in order make enough room.  It was frustrating to have to spend time opening and closing certain windows rather than planning my strategy.  This style of multi-window control makes it extremely confusing to remember which windows you use to give certain orders or gain certain information.  Even after playing for a while, I still had trouble using this interface.  

	Other parts of the game are laid out better than the main screen, though.  The process of designing ships is one of the easiest I've used.  All of the technology available to the player is in a scrolling box on the left of the screen, and a representation of the ship's hull on the right side.  The hull is represented by a set of boxes which have specified what type of technology can go in each space.  All a player has to do is click and drag whatever technological item they want into the appropriate space.  If they want to get rid of something off of the ship, the player simply clicks and drags it out of the space.

	Of course, the player does not start out with all of the technology available.  Resources can be set aside for research in several different areas like propulsion, weapons, energy, etc.  This, also, is very simple to accomplish.  Each planet can be modified to give a certain of amount of resources to research, but the amounts from all of the planets are funneled only into one specific area of study.  The area of study is set by clicking on the desired area of research from a menu screen, which shows all of the areas of research and the current level of technology in each area.

	Stars! is not very graphically advanced but, after all, this is a hard-core strategy game which doesn't require 3D rendering or SGI graphics.  However, the graphics that are included are nicely done and keep it from being too visually boring. However, when compared again to something like Master of Orion, which is very colorful and has nice graphic representations of the ships, Stars! does come up short.

	One of the big selling points of Stars! is its multiplayer capability, of which there are a couple of ways to play the game.  Since Stars! is a turn-based game, if all of the players want to play at the same time, it's no problem - the game advances as fast as the players complete their turns.  But games can also be set up which are played through submitting turns through files.  It's kinda like playing chess by mail, except you're sending files of your turn.  When all of the player's files are turned in the game advances to the next turn.  Games done in this manner will go extremely slow, but it's a great way to play a game with a bunch of people who can't play all at the same time.

	Stars! very easily could have been just another forgettable galactic strategy game, but it comes through in just enough areas to make it different.  A lot of people will surely find the Windows style of interface friendly and comfortable, but the clunkiness really makes it difficult to fully enjoy.  I realize that a lot of games are difficult to get to know, but most of those usually get easier to use as time goes on.  Stars!, however, really never gets to that point.  Unfortunately for Stars!, it's a really fun game to play, but actually playing it becomes a hassle.  If you can work around this difficult interface you'll have a great time.  If this is something that would really bug you, however, you'd be better off buying something else.  And if you already own a conquer-the-galaxy game you're happy with, unless you really, really want multiplayer capabilities, you won't find anything in Stars! worth adding another title of this genre to your collection.