faetal on 15/8/2016 at 17:10

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That post has made me want to progress. I still think it can go either way. I may be making a mistake playing it on my laptop rather than on the home computer, but that's hundreds of miles away right now.

nicked on 16/8/2016 at 05:56

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I'm finding it fills a sorely-needed niche - it's a relaxing, casual space game. In my experience, most space games are hardcore, mega-learning-curve simulators vomiting spreadsheets at you. This is just totally chilled out by comparison.

WingedKagouti on 16/8/2016 at 13:39

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That was perfect.

Starker on 16/8/2016 at 18:39

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Played about 8 hours and so far I'm not really feeling it. Doesn't help that the gameplay is very clunky with plenty of annoyances, big and small. All in all, it feels like a 20 dollar indie game priced and hyped like a triple-A game.

The inventory system is probably the most irritating and actively works against exploration -- you find something cool but then you can't keep it because it would take up a slot. And everything competes for the same small amount of space -- equipment, equipment upgrades, life support/hazard suit fuel, crafting materials, the items that you craft.

Then there's the fact that you can't really explore a place other than stumble around and hope to find something good. As far as I saw, there are no unique landmarks to serve as reference points. Oh yes, there are the beacons/waypoints to guide you to a few places of interest, but if you happen to find an interesting place on your own, there's no easy way you can mark it on your map and return to it later (unless I'm missing something).

Furthermore, for me the survival aspects/resource management are rather annoying. It's not difficult to find the materials to keep your stuff going, but they run out so fast that you can't really concentrate on any one task without regular interruptions. For example, you can't just mine a pillar, you also have to stop every so often and go to your inventory to fuel your mining laser.

Oh, and the combat also sucks, but I didn't care about that anyway.

The alien encounters are interesting, although I'm finding that the CYOA aspect of the game isn't really as well done as, say, in King of Dragon Pass. The monolith ones are probably the best so far, but the NPCs are somewhat underwhelming, especially the ones in the ships. You meet an alien and all you can do is trade? No gossip? No chance to learn about the culture? This would probably have been the cheapest part of the game to make and it would have helped to flesh out the races quite a bit more. And it could have even tied into the gameplay -- for example, learning that a certain gesture is offensive or that a particular food is considered to be a delicacy might have helped you get a more positive reaction in future encounters.

Also, I like the language learning a lot, although I feel that they could've done a bit more here as well. Something like the lizardman language in Ultima Underworld or Gostakian English would probably have been too hardcore, but just collecting words is perhaps a bit too simple. Maybe there could've been something like a vocabulary list or conversation library where you attempt to match/guess the words yourself.

Starker on 16/8/2016 at 20:00

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Well, there's Star Control 2. Also, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rangers_%28video_game%29) Space Rangers, but it's very badly translated.