Black Sun

Black Sun

In this game, you fly a space ship through an open world. Your sidekick is an AI assistant who understands your text-written commands and helps you to steer the ship, survive heavy space combat or to find the next gas station.

"Space is a terrible place. The kidnapping of my brother and the Captain’s death didn’t make it easier. Thank god, there is Hopper."

You play Eli, a young man stranded on the antique star freighter Lucky Beggar. You don’t like space yet here you are.

Features

  • Text freely in natural language with your AI assistant Hopper: let her fly the ship, get her help during combat or ask for a market analysis to maximise your trading profit. She knows a lot - including terrible space jokes.

  • A large 2D open-world universe containing numerous solar systems, space stations and ships to discover. Large means astronomical and impossible-to-fly-through. Be grateful if the jump engine works properly.

  • Find your kidnapped brother while making interstellar friends and enemies. An over 5-hours long cinematic storyline is waiting for you!

  • Enjoy epic space battles with hundreds of ships.

  • You decide how you pay the bills for fuel and supplies: be a smart trader, solve rewarding quests or take missions from shady people in the space pub.

  • Your ship is a temple. Repair it, get upgrades and don’t fly it into asteroid fields. Those dents stay.

  • Put on the headphones, fasten your seat belt and relax: one hour of orchestral soundtrack - originally composed just for this game!

  • Modding encouraged! Most of the game’s content is freely changeable by using a beginner-friendly script language and images. Add your own quests, ships or places. Teach new commands to the AI assistant.

Read More: Best Artificial Intelligence Space Games.

Black Sun on Steam

Essays on Empathy

Essays on Empathy

Incredible. I wholeheartedly recommend this release.

If you enjoyed The Red Strings Club, you will definitely love these as well.

They’re so much more than just games (maybe apart from Underground Hangovers, it’s the odd one out), they depict real, relevant issues, the characters feel so genuine and relatable; and the graphics together with the music and the sound design work together perfectly with the narratives.

Quoting the developers in reference to their style in one of the notes, you can expect “thought provoking concepts and stimulating questions and decisions”.

– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game

Read More: Best Artificial Intelligence Casual Games.

  • Short Review -

Essentially a collection of short stories that cover a wide range of topics.

I will say there are strong themes in most, if not all, of the games present in Essays on Empathy. There are warnings before you play each one so you will not be blindsided. A lot of these games hit close to home, so please play with care.

  • Toasty -

11.45 A Vivid Life

Eternal Home Floristry

Behind Every Great One

A Bookshelf Limbo

De Tres al Cuarto

Dear Substance of Kin

Supercontinent Ltd

  • Burnt -

– Real player with 12.2 hrs in game

Essays on Empathy on Steam

Event[0]

Event[0]

I’ll admit it: I fully bought the hype for Event[0]. It ticked off so many boxes for me: a (potentially) malevolent AI, a derelict spacecraft, beautiful graphics and design, a well written, alternate-history plot, and the ship AI responds coherently to things that you ask of it? By typing things to it? Does this game really have a semi-unscripted dialogue tree? I was sold.

In the end I did get all of these things with my purchase, but each to a lesser degree than I was hoping for. Things started off really well: the opening sequence of the game sets the stage, hinting at the world you’re about to enter and infusing your character with a bit of backstory. I was excited to start, and my first interaction with the AI was amazing: I typed something out into a terminal, and the world responded accordingly! Wonderful.

– Real player with 7.7 hrs in game

Read More: Best Artificial Intelligence Space Games.

I have won a giveaway contest with US$ 20 in steam credits, so I chose this game which was on my wishlist. Original idea with an AI interface, gorgeous graphics, and it had a Linux version! Bottom line though, it disappointed me on all these points.

Before I explain it, the summary:

PROS:

  • Gorgeous graphics

  • Good soundtrack

  • Original idea

  • Spacewalking is quite good

  • Comfortable typing interface

  • Moderately interesting puzzles

  • Good time-saving feature where the game writes down the passwords and important strings for you.

– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game

Event[0] on Steam