Star Dynasties

After playing Star Dynasties for 62 hours I can definitely recommend this hidden gem. Other players often describe it as Crusader Kings in space, but there are many differences. It's turn-based and it's much less complicated. In my opinion it's more like a political sim. The gameplay itself is quite simple: each turn you get a string of events and then you use your action points to appoint your house members to various tasks. The game became one of my all time favorites. It's even more impressing once you know the game was made by just one guy. But I understand it might not be for everyone, cause the strict moral system is very challenging.

Amazing game... a hidden gem! If you think you might like it... you will!
However... (there's always a "but")... this game rewards a particular play style one might call "deep contemplation." What is "deep contemplation?" Well, after playing my fair share of different kinds of strategy games over the decades, I have found that there are certain games where a not-so-insignificant amount of the pleasure actually comes from allowing yourself to get lost in the narrative that you are essentially creating turn-by-turn. This is kind of like "role playing," but it's also kind of more than that: you aren't just playing a role, but actually enjoying the aesthetics of the game world that you have helped to craft, turn-by-turn, as story lines evolve and decisions branch out in interesting ways... does that make sense? It may not, probably, to some of you, and that's fine. No judgment here and by no means am I saying that this is the only way to play this or any other game.
I find that a lot of my favorite war games (hex-based, operational level war) have this aspect of deep contemplation, where -- in later turns -- it becomes fun to simply look at the map and think about all the decisions, battles, etc. that got you to where you are. The cool thing about this "vibe" is that: it's kind of fun regardless of whether you are "winning" or "losing." When a game is memorable and fun even in stalemate or defeat, folks, that's a gem of a game right there. Anyway, this game rewards making careful decisions and taking advantage of opportunities. This makes the journey fun, no matter the destination. I like games like that.
Last thing I'll say: a big thing this game gets right is that, while all the decisions bear upon your House's fortunes to one extent or another, the "big" decisions are never too big in their consequences -- you can try things! You can recover from some slip-ups. Similarly, you might have a few big triumphs -- ok, awesome -- but it doesn't mean that the rest of the way will be a pushover. Far from it! You will still need to pay attention, manage your House's affairs, and keep going.
TL;DR: Get it but be patient; this one is not a sprint but a slow build.

Star Dynasties is a space empire-building strategy game. I really like it.
Let's make one thing clear: when people hear about space empire-building games they envision some sort of spiritual successor to Master of Orion or Civilization, what you call a 4X game. This one isn't that at all and you'd better not come here with preconceived notions of what such a game should contain. It's also not a huge sprawling game with 10 DLCs trying to be infinitely replayable. It is a focused, polished, well-thought-out game with elegant mechanics, great UI. Everything comes together in it.
The closest comparison is the Crusader Kings series, but in a way it's even more CK than CK itself. It doesn't need a lot of the fluff necessary for a historical game - it doesn't have religion and church, different cultures, and the mechanics aren't bound by history. Here the mechanics come first, and the setting adds a little flavor and justifies those mechanics. You control a specific person in a galactic human-only society at some point in the future where most technologies were lost, but people can still travel in space and wage war. Dune is an obvious inspiration. The galaxy is organized as a feudal society and the goal is to control more than half of the galaxy by diplomacy or conquest - in that order. You only directly control a single star system/colony, everything else is controlled by vassal "barons" or (if you're an "archon", or space king) "dukes" . Every ruler and everyone in their court has stats and traits and participates in events and diplomacy. The focus of the game becomes its greatest boon: we deal with a single specific culture and it's a culture of interesting mechanics. The map variety is guaranteed, with every star system only having pre-existing buildings you can "repair", so every colony is unique. You get natural borders and varied regions of space because fleets can only travel close to their home system, and any battle means only using what nearby colonies can provide (and mercenaries, but they cost a lot). There's no succession partition like you'd expect in a historical setting - but on the other hand, there's no way for the sovereign to ban vassals from waging war on each other or outward, and rules like that make for really interesting gameplay. The game is extremely dynamic. In many games like this, colony trading or demanding vassalage is extremely limited so as not to be exploited, and the empires stay static and boring, but here actors do it all the time, and the galaxy feels alive. There's a system of laws codifying transgressions and demands, resulting in interesting situations – if your liege has wronged you, then you're justified in, say, not answering the call to support them in battle, or your rebellion might be semi-justified and not affect your reputation as much. It's all a beautiful complex machine.
The game looks and feels decent, the UI is great. I can see why people might have issues with its turn-based nature. Every new turn start makes you acknowledge what happens around you and demands your reaction to many events, which might feel frustrating if you don't have much to do on your own turn. However, I find that it benefits the pacing: in similar games I feel like I'm missing what's happening around the world unless I force myself to slow down and look around, but here you effortlessly consume the galactic drama and become familiar with all the houses and important characters.
So far I've only had one full campaign in the game and I can clearly see that while there's a lot of variety in how you can approach it (space geography is done very well, maps are randomly generated and you can choose some transformative traits for your starting character and dynasty), it's obviously not as replayable as less deep and wider games. Still, even a single playthrough felt wonderful. I highly recommend it.

Despite how simple Star Dynasties is, it's one of the best strategy games I've ever played. People often compare it to Crusader Kings and there is some of that in this game, such as the political system. But, there's also a kind of random story generator which mostly generates events across the turns of other empires. It's not AI-generated or anything like that.
I like to create a basic family of my own and start out as an upstart ruler. Which is a ruler who illegitimately gained control of their territory. It makes it a little harder starting out, as the rulers in your territory generally don't like you much, but it also gives you some extra points for customizing your leader/faction.
I could go on and on about the game, but I don't really want to spoil anything for those who are interested. Just know that this game doesn't revolve around pure military might. Individually, each star system is severely limited, in terms of military might, compared to 2+ other star systems attacking it. Most star systems will have single digit numbers for building its fleet of star ships. Some will get over 10 and some can even host upward of around 20 when all of their installations have been repaired.
In other words, you might not be as successful as you'd hope if you're solely relying on military might. Assuming you aren't massively outnumbering your enemy, your fleet will suffer significant losses with each battle. On top of that, when forming an empire of star systems to rule over, you are only ever able to summon fleets within so much star lanes of the battle. The radius is a decent enough size so that you can summon all of the star systems nearby. You can even ask the rulers of star systems who belong to other empires and leagues to join you without any repercussion. If your relations are good, they'll likely accept unless they're honor-bound or related to your enemy. Even then, depending on the character, you may still be able to get them to turn on, say, their empire's leader or even have a whole empire betray the league it's in to side with you.
There's arguably far more ways to win by subterfuge and politics than there are simply by attacking all of your enemies. Instead of being outright aggressive with your ruling Archon, send your security specialists to build a spy network to learn the dirty secrets of them or their faction leaders. Use those secrets to gain more power for yourself by blackmailing those people and forcing them to do things which put you into a better position when it eventually comes to challenging your ruling Archon.
You can also send your security specialists in to assassinate that Archon, or any other person in the game. A well loved Archon can be hard to depose. Even when you're pushing propaganda to defame them. Often times, simply taking them out of the picture is the best option. Just don't forget to set one of your security specialists on covering up the fact that you just ordered someone's murder.
Another path altogether is marriage. Assuming your faction holds a higher position in the political hierarchy, such as being a Duke and ruling over other star system in your empire, or being an Archon and ruling over your own empire of star systems AND other empires of star systems with their own rulers. Like vassal states.
Assume you're an Archon? And let's assume your ruler is eligible for marriage. Now let's say there's another empire near you that you want. It's just a normal empire, not the Archon of a league of empires. It can even be a normal empire IN a League that's ruled by some other empire. It can even be an empire in your own League that you're the Archon of. Say that empire in question has an heir your ruler can marry. As your faction holds a higher political authority than the empire you're looking to marry into, the character you're trying to marry will join your faction. When their parent/guardian dies, assuming they aren't removed as heir, the empire you married into will be handed over to you. Not as a vassal, but all of its star systems will be added directly to your own faction's control.
If you wanted to be devious, you could marry someone like I just described and then use one of your security specialists to assassinate the leader of the faction you just married into. Once successful, the faction will be handed over to you immediately. Beware doing something like this, though, and not covering the secret up that gets created from assassinating someone. If made public, it could turn all or most of the star systems you just acquired against you.
These are just some of the things you can do in this amazing game.

This is a deceptively difficult game, its a good mix of stellaris and CK2 but with all the grind taken out of it, and none of the annoying paid for DLC, the base game works fine without bloodlines but the bloodlines DLC is both cheap and adds something genuinely helpful in the game. It is rare to find a game that encourages patience in todays market but this game does. Go to fast and your empire WILL collapse. You must wait and play slow, you must scheme and plot, you must keep everyone happy. Sometime you must shrink to grow again, playing the longest game is the way to win. I like how you win when you have half the galaxy under your control but have the option to keep playing to see if you can conquer the rest.

A game i will replay many times. First run was false start and ended badly, second run took 25hrs to complete, by year 50, after 2 rulers, Father and granddaughter.

A bargain at the current sale price, but worth it at full price, dont hesitate to buy. Then enjoy.

I've seen so little movement on this I am beginning to wonder if it was abandoned. There's a lot of potential here.

It's no Crusader Kings, and it's a bit rough around the edges, but it has a certain charm. For an indie game, I would say it is pretty well done. The setting is very similar to the Mechwarrior or Dune universe where interstellar travel and technology exist, but they are in a state of stagnation or decline and the government has devolved back into feudalism.
The game doesn't do anything incredibly revolutionary, but it is competent. If you like these kinds of games, it's definitely worth getting on sale.