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[Mizhara]

So, who's tried it?

I'm just 70 minutes in and quite impressed. Granted, it's not much to base an opinion on, but my first impressions are good. Very space cowboy, great music, some interesting combat and it appears to have a decent story. I'm still figuring a lot of stuff out, but this feels very much like a third person X, combined a bit with STO combat, combined a bit with... well, there's a lot of things it reminds me of but doesn't feel derivative of if that makes sense.

Flak cannons blasting all around you as you fire your turrets at swarms of fighters and bombers, until you get into position to let the turrets be AI run and you yourself focus on firing broadsides at other capital ships, jockeying for good positions and trying to keep your damage on them while keeping your own shields going and god damnit I have work tomorrow!

All hype aside, it is a budget game and won't be as shiny as AAAs and such, but from what I can tell it's a work of love. So far.

So, who else tried it?

[Morwen Lagann]

Watched Braincage streaming a bit last night before it went live officially. Seemed interesting, but wallet is saying "plz no" for the moment.

[Nissui]

Hadn't heard of it, but it looks like fun. Will pop on a stream if I can tonight to check it out.

 

[Lyn Farel]

First time I hear of it, but the screeplay and overall feel look nice.

[Mizhara]

From everything I can tell so far (not much more than a couple of hours in), it doesn't look like it'll have any of the depth of X and so on, but frankly I'm cool with that. This is more my speed of quick and simple systems, letting me upgrade and customize my ship(s), take on jobs, follow the story missions -or- just go do whatever I want, trade or mine or whatever without having to get several doctorates just to figure out how the game works (X, however much I love you, you know what I'm talking about).

It's got little downtime and doesn't feel particularly complex, but it's deceptively so. Controlling different weapon systems for different purposes, timing deflector shields, maneuvering and having tactical awareness is surprisingly complex once you start thinking about it, but it still feels very smooth and forgiving at least to start with.

I do wish the UI was a bit better at telling you the status of your own ship though.

[Mizhara]

omfg my sides

The "alien" speech from various characters? I just met one who's speech was basically just his line google translated into Norwegian and spoken by someone who's never actually heard the language. This is the most hilarious alien language I've ever heard in my life and it works!

Brilliant.

[Mizhara]

The Soundtrack deserves special mention. A whole lot of country rock, garage blues, straight up delta blues and more somehow manages to perfectly fit the space cowboy aesthetic. Over a dozen hours in and I still love hitting warp, or falling out of warp and hear the music start.

There's not a lot of games out there where the music really takes the front stage like this, to the point where I once actually got into combat and just had to take five to ten seconds not actually doing anything but rock out a little before I remembered I should probably try not to explode gloriously.

I honestly don't know how to describe this game. It's all the stuff I've always loved about space games, minus one single thing (cockpit fighter view) which doesn't make sense when flying capital ships anyway. Developed by two people, it's obviously not a huge AAA production, but it's certainly a very high quality product given the production team's size.

The naval style combat where you manage positioning for broadsides, staying out of danger and even using the copious asteroids/structures/stuff to shield you from harm, skirting the outsides of a battle to whittle the enemies down to size or ramming your heavy frigate straight into a fleet and just fill the space with flak explosions, turret fire and blind broadsides to hopefully deliver a devastating blow to their strikecraft numbers is always enjoyable and satisfying.

And the thing is, this is one of the few games where I actually don't mind losing. I've blown up so many times and just grinned and gotten back in to try again and again, no rage or feeling bad about it. Perfect mix of casual and complexity in a universe where you can find yourself being a wildly overpowered god of destruction and suddenly being a gnat to be swatted out of the sky in the very same system, and both are fun!

I really recommend looking this up and supporting the devs, because this is what we need more of. Solid singleplayer space games that tickles both the casual and powergamer.

[Nissui]

Watching a few streams and the game looks pretty entertaining. Kind of an arcadey Elite, simplified, but with setting elements which feel more immediate. Probably a lot easier to pick up and play. I like the look of the ships I have seen, though I'm not versed in the nuances like loadouts and such.

Seems like it's worth a buy, so I'll likely pick it up. Good lookin' out.

[Mizhara]

So it took me a bit over 21 hours to get into a Dreadnought and finish the game. (Two separate milestones, just happened to coincide.)

The story is... lackluster. It's really not impressive. I honestly don't think I've seen a good singleplayer space combat game with a good story since Tachyon: The Fringe, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. Still, the gameplay is very solid and very enjoyable to me and I think I'll still keep scouring space for things to blow up and work towards the Blackgate dread which should be the next step up from my current Sorcerer class.

For the twenty bucks they wanted, this was a whole lot of game and it's going to be something I'll return to frequently to find really satisfying space pewpew. In a market that has lately seen a whole lot of space games, this is one of the few that stands out to me as a good product. It may not fill me with the same kind of joy I had in Tachyon: The Fringe and so on back in the day, but I guess we'll never see that kind of game again.