Starcom: Unknown Space
Starcom: Unknown Space is an action RPG of space exploration and adventure. Build your own starship while discovering an epic story in a universe of strange mysteries, alien factions and uncharted worlds.
Starcom: Unknown Space is a space, exploration and open world game
developed and published by Wx3 Labs and LLC.
Released on September 02nd 2024 is available only on Windows
in 2 languages: English and German.
It has received 2,067 reviews of which 1,915 were positive and 152 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.8 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 18.37€ on Steam and has a 25% discount.
The Steam community has classified Starcom: Unknown Space into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 8/10/11
- Processor: Core i5 2.3 GHz+
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: 2 GB Direct3D 11 Capable video card or better (see additional notes)
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 3 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Some users have reported issues with older, integrated Intel laptop GPUs. Dedicated GPU recommended. Installing to SSD recommended.
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is the best Star Trek game of all time. Okay, no, it's not actually licensed as Star Trek, but this game checks every single box. You are a starship captain, with your first mate and a randomly generated crew, you slide around a 2-D Universe reminiscent of old flash games, but with so much... more. The game is NOT a sandbox (although it is quite open), a trucking sim (although there is resource management and trading), or a bounty hunting game (although there is combat). You interact with this universe through 4 main avenues, and all must be utilized to progress: Exploration: You predominantly interact with the universe by flinging yourself through the void and seeing what's out there. Sometimes you use warp gates to teleport, or "flingers" to literally launch yourself to a new system, and sometimes you just point your engines in a direction and go. Mechanically, exploration is simple: push the scan button when you're in scanning range, and sometimes you find an anomaly that rewards research points, resources, or quests. I saw someone describe this as a "divorced dad game", and I kind of get it. It's quiet, quaint, almost meditative. The main story involves good amount of exploring, scanning, researching, and puzzle-solving too. It's a Voyager-esque "How do we get home?" story, but with plenty of twists and turns to make the story interesting and engaging. Combat: There are dangers in the galaxy, of course. Your ship has many systems (shields, countermeasures, reactors and batteries, etc) and weapons (pew-pew lasers, freeeem lasers, missiles, etc) that let you destroy obstacles in a satisfying way. Hits damage individual modules, which can break down and detach from enemy ships. Remove enough parts, or break through to destroy their bridge to destroy the entire ship. The early game is a matter of careful positioning, so incoming fire hits deflectors and bulkheads as you whittle down your opponent's components. As your ship gets bigger and better, combat (for me, at least) is an explosive wall of plasma fire and dozens of attack drones, tearing through the heart of an enemy fleet. Ship Building: You technically only have the one ship, but the game includes a rather robust ship-building and upgrading system. A grid of hexes, limits on ship size (depending on the size of bridge you have available), and resource cost for parts (which can be dismantled 1:1, letting you experiment with lots of different configurations) all allow for varied, fun, and impressive vessels to let you cruise the universe in style. Well, if you are willing to forego "optimal" engine placement or energy output, at least. In my eyes, looking good always trumps min-maxing, but on normal difficulty this has never been an issue for me. Researching anomalies and discovering alien artifacts also grant Research Points, with a hefty research tree to unlock bigger and better modules for your ship. Role-playing Game: Combining all of these systems is an admittedly thin RPG mechanic. You have your captain, Insert-Name-Here. Then you have a randomly generated bridge crew, with a few points in one of 6 skills. As you land on planets, research technology, make discoveries, and complete quests, your crew gains XP which you can use to level them up to become capable of anything. Xenoculture, Biomedics, Tactics, and other fun made-up words await you in the "Crew" tab. These skills grant passives on board your ship, but are more critical in away missions. Found a planet with a forced labor camp on it? Send down your shuttle with your Tactics officer. Roll a d100, add their skill, and read the result. As mentioned above, success grants you XP, and often resources, puzzle pieces, or questlines. Fail, and suffer a consequence; either 'nothing happens' and you try again after docking with your home station, or suffer injuries that debuff the relevant crew member's stats for a while, or worse. Aside from a simple level-up system, though, the crew is talkative. They converse with you, aliens, and each other in a way that feels very sincere and fun. My biggest problem with games like Rebel Galaxy is that you wind up feeling like a sole person on a massive capital ship, but here my dreadnought feels very alive. The dialogue boxes respect not only the names of my crew, but also their specialization. If my CO at the base has something to say about a stellar anomaly, they will specifically bring up Ensign Pirx, my astroscientist. Sometimes, Pirx even has a witty retort. I have found myself very attached to the bridge crew, and constantly fear the day I may lose Lt. Cygnus-Lee in an away mission turned bad. Some things that could be a little better: I do wish I had more options for customizing my crew, besides just renaming them. The ship-building also has a few noticeable seams, such as parts overlapping oddly or heat management being a little bit fiddly. It's irritating when you accidentally delete and entire bank of cannons with a misclick, and there is no "undo" option. Some components (ie, attack drones) seem so much more impactful and useful than others (ie, havoc defenses). By far, though, the most difficult-to-grapple system is the Missions. Exploring, thinking outside the box, and brute-force are all fun, but sometimes the answers are quite obtuse. I have a scepter in my cargo hold, and a mission in my log that alerts me that I have found a scepter, and still no idea what to actually do with it. The crew does sometimes chirp in with hints, but if you miss a hint you wind up scrubbing through your comms log, looking for any mention of the "unstable cores" you need to complete your current quest. Oftentimes, if I find myself at a wall, I just kinda zoom around for a while until I blunder into an answer via exploration. With the game being a small, indie affair, answers online are sparse at best. Besides missions and some minor complaints, though, it is important to remember this very important fact about the making of this game: This is made by a singular developer. One person. Kevin, I think? Seems nice and communicative, though I haven't spoken with them personally. It just boggles my mind. I can barely cook one complete meal on my own, but to make an entire video game of this caliber? Loads of tight, fun, sometimes funny writing? A big universe to explore, enemies to fight, traders and factions to deal with? Politicking with aliens at war in a strange universe? The ability to build my own space ship? If you meet this game on its terms, take your time and smell the roses along the way, approach it as the Star Trek game I see it as, there are dozens of engaging hours to be had here. Again, this is not an open sandbox or in-depth realism combat simulator, nor is it polished to a mirror-sheen. But, for one person to have made it, this is one of the best space games I've played in years.
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You've played Stellaris, right? Fun, isn't it? But isn't the best part of the game always exploring a new galaxy? Sending out your exploration ships and seeing all the weird things you find, and maybe even getting caught up in some bigger plots here and there? And of course, sometimes running into things that want you extremely dead. Have you ever thought "I'm kinda bored with all that empire building stuff. Wouldn't it be better if I could just play as the exploration ship instead" ? If so, this game was made for you. Click the "add to cart" button.
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With strategy games, there is a term for the more casual style called beer and pretzel strategy. Games that are fun but not overly complicated. Games that can be played pretty quickly and will leave you wanting to play again because you're not burned out. This is a beer and pretzels space exploration/adventure game. It's not overly complicated and that's part of the charm. You fly around discovering new worlds, sending down away teams, and running through text based events. There are some minor issues with the trying to figure out what triggers what quest, and sometimes stumbling across what you need to get done feels like luck, but the developer is working to fix those issues and has been working to correct those problems up to the release date. That would be my one con for the game, outside of wishing there was more story to it, but for the 20+ hours I put into it from start to finish, I'm more than happy with what I got for what I paid for. Looking forward to the next one already and keeping my eye on future updates for this one.
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If you love exploration, trading, slowly building up to a dreadnought ship, researching technologies, and blasting hostile aliens, then this game series is for you. Keep it going and thank you for this game!
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Good stuff, a relaxing and interestingly written starship/crew game with exploration and light RPG elements. The ship builder is cool and intuitive, the planet graphics are good, the writing is good, the combat is pretty good, and the universe is reasonably interesting. This isn't going to amaze anyone but it's a solid and worthwhile indie space game. Kudos to the developer, and he deserves the support of a purchase for this one.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 20 November 2024 11:19 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 23 December 2024 13:37 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:24 |
| Steam reviews | 21 December 2024 19:59 |
Online players
114
Developer
Wx3 Labs, LLC
Publisher
Wx3 Labs, LLC
Release
02 Sep 2024
Platforms