This game scratches an itch I've been trying to scratch with other games for years. I gravitated to it because aspects of it reminded me of other games like Galaxy on Fire 2, Rebel Galaxy, Sins of a Solar Empire, Star Trek Aramada, Starmade, Star Trek Online, SPAZ, etc etc. The exploring, the interactions with aliens, the (albeit limited) trading, the (again limited) diplomacy, the building, the combat, the tech tree, the story - all of it is familiar from my other favourite games but its been brought together in to something else that tickles that little bit of my brain just right and makes me love the game. The combat isn't as it might appear in the videos/screenshots - it is not an auto-shooter, twin stick, or a bullet hell game. The combat is very much like SPAZ and requires the player to aim the plasma turrets and lock the lasers/missiles while you manoeuvre your ship to avoid being swarmed or hit at close range too much. Because all ships are made from modules, you have the option of targeting specific parts (You have to do this manually with the plasma turrets, you cannot target lasers or missiles in this way) of an enemy ship like its weapons/engines/shields/etc to degrade its defences before you cause enough overall damage or manage to burrow in to the bridge and kill it. This means that you're able to take on some of the more powerful enemies quite early providing you're careful and use hit-and-run to take out their engines and/or weapons before finishing them off. The second game expands on the combat by allow you to target specific modules with all weapons instead of just manually aimed plasma turrets. The trading is pretty basic but functional, with different aliens using different raw materials as currencies and valuing other raw materials differently to their alien neighbours, there is no universal currency. Some races are just not worth trading with at all because their prices for all resources are too high to make it worth trading with them unless you can't find a cheaper or alternative source. It would have been nice to be able to buy some of the tech like the lasers, but just defending yourself and playing the game makes it so you'll find most blueprints naturally as you explore and progress the story. The story is familiar if you're a Scifi fan, especially stuff like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, Battle Star Galactica, etc. You're sucked through a rift and dumped somewhere/somewhen and have to figure out how you got there and how you get back. You interact with aliens, search planets/wrecks/derelicts, and find sources of information that teach you the lore and help you understand why the place is the way it is. I appreciated that the game didn't just make me learn everything through dialogues, which I found mostly using to clarify or expand on things I'd learned from exploring a random ruin on an abandoned planet. I also appreciated the log which allows you to look back through your interactions, messages, and notifications about new information, allowing you to piece together discoveries that lead you to rewards or other discoveries without always giving you a marker that screams "GO HERE FOR EXTRA PERK". Building is limited but fun. My biggest gripe with it, and a gripe that carries through to the second game, is the extremely limited engine situation. There is only one engine option, and the placement restrictions make it so that there are basically only a couple of configurations that amount to 'big line of engines at the back' or 'big wedge shape of engines at the back'. The kinds of shapes you can have can be limiting as well if you're bothered about armour/how much damage you take, but you can usually build something familiar to your favourite scifc ship design. Other than the engines, everything else is just about having enough reactors to power your engines/basic modules/chosen weapons, and then enough armour to keep you alive. I would have liked a wider variety of modules and weapons, and would have liked to have had hull pieces that let me change the shape/outline of the ship. The second game adds hull pieces and colour customisation which was a good step forward but takes two steps back by adding heat management which further restricts your build. The game's biggest strength is exploration. From the very first moments you're on the other side of the rift you can technically visit literally any location in the galaxy, but you'd have to do it by randomly flying off in different directions with a single engine ship and no map. As you progress, the game actually encourages you to fly off the beaten path with hints you find with clues to hidden systems/locations (Sometimes log entries, sometimes through conversations, sometimes just implied by environmental clues) or through the sensors picking up things you missed or wouldn't have seen before because your sensor range increases as you upgrade. The game's main way of holding your hand through exploration is the slingshot and gates system. Most systems have slingshots that take them to between one and three other systems and a much smaller number of systems have jump gates that allow you to jump to any other jump gate system. The way these slingshots are laid out takes the player through a pretty linear path that is broken up in to segments of the galaxy's spiral arms that are connected through jump gates. You find the locations of far off jump gates not connected to other slingshot systems by exploring and interacting with aliens, resulting in you finding coordinates or clues that lead to coordinates. You use all of this to explore what each system has to offer from different kinds of planet with various kinds of encounters/quests/resources/dangers, different factions of aliens, new information and lore, and new technology or useful relics. Highly recommend this and the second game, and cannot wait for more from this developer.
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