A Minute to Learn, a Lifetime to Master
Playing this game reminds me a bit of the tagline for the board game Othello. Maybe there's not quite the same level of strategy involved in Galcon Fusion, but the game is extraordinarily easy to pick up, yet I still think I have a lot to learn to be a decent player. The game is played on a galactic map, with the player starting in control of a small number of planets, each of which can generate ships at various predetermined rate. Ships can be used to conquer other planets, which can then spawn more ships, which can be used to take over more planets. The game isn't much more complicated than that.
There are usually many neutral planets that can be conquered , but the goal is generally to take out the other player or players. Combat occurs by sending out waves of ships from planets under the player's control, and is resolved in a fairly simple fashion. It's extremely intuitive to pick up the game mechanics and control scheme, so it shouldn't take long for a new player to internalize these mechanisms and be able instead to focus on the best tactics for taking out the enemy.
The graphics are fairly stripped down, but not in an unappealing way. Ships are designated by triangles, planets by large orbs the color of the party controlling it. In general, everything still looks pretty nice (sort of in like Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved). This isn't a knock against the game, but the developer clearly chose to focus on the core gameplay mechanics rather than the visuals.
This game's potential is most obvious in online play. Unfortunately, it was no all that easy to find games to play in online (perhaps because of the limited number of users). Also, because it's a relatively small market game, none of my friends have it at this point, so I can't tell how easy it is to start a game with a buddy. However, to make another comparison to a board game, the several matches I played online flowed a lot like Risk. Because invading other planets can quickly deplete one's ship totals, the tides can turn quickly. In a three player game, an apparently dominant player can easily find himself overstretched, and then have many planets quickly taken over by another player. So it's worth it for a losing player to play the game to the end, because of the ever-present chance to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.