T w e n t y S i d e d

There the rules are pretty sketchy for what it takes to qualify for “Early Access” on Steam. I don’t know that there can be such a rule in a black-and-white, qualify-or-not sense of things. But in my own sense of what I expect from an alpha, I’d say “more than this”.

Basically what we have here is a really great ship builder and a marginally successful system for test-driving your design.

This is something I’ve always wanted in a space game. Very few of them seem to wrap their heads around this idea that the ship is the avatar. Instead, somewhere buried on a tab of a dialog I never look at is a picture of my pilot, and that’s supposed to be “me”. But from a gameplay standpoint it’s much more useful to think of “me” as the thing in the middle of the screen: The ship. That’s what I’m looking at. (Assuming the game is third person.) That’s what gets damaged, upgraded, or killed by my actions. That’s the thing I want to name, personalize, and look at in dramatic camera views.

So I dislike the usual system of progression in these games where you upgrade from one fixed design to another. It’s like playing Diablo II and “upgrading” your necromancer into a sorceress, and then later trading her in for a barbarian. It just feels wrong. Maybe ship A has the stats that I really want, but it’s got wings and pointy bits on it that I dislike for aesthetic reasons. Ship B has a form I find appealing, but the stats are geared for (say) mining while I’m more interested in combat. In a genre so focused on freedom, I’ve always found this annoying.

A lot of games focus on letting you amass and command fleets. That’s nice, but rather than commanding a dozen fixed ships I’d much rather fly one really cool one. Even if I’m the only person who thinks it’s cool. I want to command the Enterprise, not the Federation, and I want to explore the galaxy, not run an intergalactic trucking company. But that’s just me.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sandbox Space Sim: Kinetic Void”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Previously, I asked about sandbox space sims. You had a lot of suggestions for me on what’s out there, what’s good, and what’s worth a look at this point in time. I took your advice – or some of it – and for the next few entries I’m going to write about what I played and what I thought about it.

This is a strange genre. Everyone has their own idea about what features really define it. Combat? Asteroid mining? Trade? Exploration? Fleet command? Ship design? Factions and interplanetary politics? Smuggling? Landing on planets? Character growth, leveling, and skill trees? Diplomacy with aliens? Commanding capital ships? Crew management? Piloting fighters? I dunno. No game does all of these, but a sandbox space sim does some subset of them.

We had nothing in this genre for years, and now there are a dozen of them on the horizon. We’re up to our asses in astronavigation at this point, and it’s only going to get worse* as the various early access / kickstarted prototypes grow up and become Actual Games.

* By which I mean “more awesome”.

Obviously one week is not nearly enough time to even begin to scratch the surface of one of these games, much less play a half dozen of them. So these are going to be drive-by reviews, quick looks and first impressions. Also, I’m not an expert on this genre (whatever that means) so if I complain about something then “But all the games do that!” is not a meaningful defense. Actually, that’s probably never a good defense anyway.

Let’s talk about the first of these things I ever played: Starflight.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sandbox Space Sims: Starflight”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.