Drone Swarm
Not really swarming with fun…
I like the upgrading of your ship and all the new abilities that you acquire, and I like the graphics too… and the gimmick in the main-menu is fun to play with for all of 2 minutes… but yeah man, other than those points, I just didn’t really find the game to be fun. I mean, it’s certainly not anti-fun or a fun-vampire at all, but I just kinda found myself plodding along doing mission after mission and watching cinematics for a story that I didn’t really care for. But the game is pretty high quality and it certainly has a lot of redeeming qualities so I’ll give it a recommended. I do however think the $25 price tag is slightly too high and the fact that the game has the Deadnuvo virus is almost enough basis on its own to not recommend the game… guess I’m feeling generous today, but seriously: Deadnuvo is a bag of Meekrob..
– Real player with 111.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Sci-fi Combat Games.
**This is an excerpt of my much more detailed review and analysis, that you can find here (ENG & DE) and also as Video below.
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Opinion and conclusion**
Drone Swarm has a very original and unique concept that can be really fun if you like the setting and controls. The drone controls are usually very catchy and the fights are strategically scattered between easy and super tricky. But here you sometimes wonder if you could get some additional explanations.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Shadoworlds
Deafening silence in the deep darkness of space.
The Magna 6 system is home to the most advanced weapons lab the universe has ever known. Two months ago, communications with the orbiting facility mysteriously went dead without any warning. If the cutting edge weapons in the station were to fall into the wrong hands, the results would be cataclysmic. Knowing that quick action is necessary, but unaware of what terrors might have caused the break in communication, you are called in to lead a small team of brave but expendable explorers through the imperiled space station with a mission to ascertain the fate of its crew.
Krisalis Software and Teque London’s gripping isometric squad-based sci-fi action RPG follows your team of four explorers as they trek through the dark environments of the Weapons Research Facility to uncover the mystery of what went wrong. Each member of the team is chosen by the player based on their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their personality and individual history. As the leader of the unit, you have full control over the inventories and actions of your squad, even down to deciding when to use headlamps to illuminate the darkness. But watch out – the inky blackness of space hides friend and foe alike.
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Traverse the dimly lit corridors of the Weapons Research Facility and beam down to the planet surface for terrestrial excursions.
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Craft weapons by combining interchangeable items found on your mission and use them to battle against hostile defense robots and other menacing threats.
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Marvel at the real-time dynamic lighting powered by impressive Super Photoscaping lighting techniques. Watch lamps and explosions cast lights and shadows on the environment, and use your squad’s headlamps to illuminate puzzles along your route.
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Take full control of your team of explorers as you manage their inventories, guide their individual actions, and keep tabs on their life-giving fluid levels.
Read More: Best Sci-fi Exploration Games.
Sublunar
YOU WILL BE THE GUY , IN FUTURES , IN SPACE I MEAN SUBLUNAR. AWESOME.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Sci-fi Puzzle Games.
The interface makes the text-based Sublunar more confusing than it needed to be, but once you know your way around it’s a pretty average ‘risk management’ game. In order to complete the level, you have to dominate the region with your faction by completing quests, and as you progress the game will introduce more randomized elements. The tutorial is not very helpful which is part of the problem, I would recommend highlighting the buttons for the player because they are hard to find on your own. Generally speaking, to play the game you have to go to any city, select a quest, and then you have to make sure that your crew meets the stat requirements, including potentially mandatory gear and weapons. Some of the missions have an element of “luck” because you can’t see the secondary phase, but you can eliminate it by asking people in towns for information, assuming the city is under your alignment. When you start a mission you will have a choice of a faction, it’s not purely cosmetic, it affects the frequency of certain events and items in the store.
– Real player with 4.7 hrs in game
Fantasy Royal VR
Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2
You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/xtIL3e1TfQs
I got this game when it was a Free to Play title in Early Access back in November. It then released out of Early Access in February 2021 as a paid game. I don’t really know if there are any differences between the version I played and what was released out of Early Access, but I don’t see any updates on the Steam store page.
This is very simple, arcade-like, strategy game. You’re basically in a 4 minute timed battle to try to take out as many Enemy bases as possible, while protecting your own. You have a disc where you have different troops with different mana costs. You basically want to watch your mana so you can either start an offensive attack or blunt the attack from your opponent.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
You don’t expect much from “Free to Play”. The gameplay is pretty much terrible, and would only be worth a playthrough for those who have a lot of free time. And I honestly can’t see myself spending more than 10-15 min..
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Final Frontier
The design brief for this game was quite simple: ‘Create the most advanced strategy game yet seen on a home computer’.
The scenario was unimportant - game play was all that mattered, the computer opponent had to be the most intelligent.
The controls: Total simplicity.
The players learning curve: Steep.
Addiction factor: High.
Visual appeal: Vital.
Possible strategies: Endless
The result: FINAL FRONTIER.
Quick to learn but hard to master, FINAL FRONTIER is a fast, full icon operated 1 player vs computer strategy simulation not unlike a real time chess game where the player can design his own pieces and structure his own moves.
Ground Control Anthology
One of my all time favorites; I come back to it about once a year.
The Good: The game has lots of innovative features, even by comparison to today.
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Armor values depend on facing and can render something immune to shots too low to pierce that armor
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Tactics over strategy (no base building, no economy, etc)
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Good difficulty and gives you the ability to challenge yourself if you want; you’re usually not dictated to but rather you can play the game your way. For example, Mission 2 or 3 they tell you you have a 95% or higher chance of destruction, but you can in fact kill all of the opposing units and I usually make it a mission to do so
– Real player with 146.2 hrs in game
Hit and miss… The game is an RTS focused on combat. That means no base building or management of resources. You have a limited amount of troops for each mission and maybe some reinforcements in some missions. So you must cure and repair. The story is ok, nothing special but keeps ya interested. Music is also ok. Graphics are old but kinda nice for a game that was released almost 20 years ago. Along with the Dark Conspiracy expansion, there are 45 missions to play and it took me around 52 hours to finish it, so good length. Decent voice acting.
– Real player with 52.3 hrs in game
Space Reign
In the near future, as the crucial supply of deep space natural resources is controlled by several megacorporations, take command of a fleet as a private military contractor and complete security tasks for a corporation that suits you the best.
Establish your Company
Start with a single, smaller-sized ship, pledge your allegiance to one of the corporations, earn their trust by completing contracts and receive access to a unique, corporation-specific arsenal of ships and weapons.
Customize the Fleet
Each ship, ranging from smaller, deployable fighters to large cruisers, can be outfitted according to your needs, weapon by weapon, compartment by compartment, which allows you to tailor every vessel to a specific task - be it a recon corvette, close-combat cruiser, long-range missile destroyer, and so on.
Directly control any vessel in your fleet
Apart from manually controlling the designated flagship of your fleet, you have the option to jump in and out of any unit anytime, making sure to make the best use of it’s potential.
Conventional Weaponry
No lasers, no shields, no teleportation or time-travel. Just the power of pure fuel-based thrusters, armored hulls and conventional, near-future like weaponry based around kinetic projectiles and missiles.
Modular damage
Every module and compartment have their specific impact on the performance and capabilities of a vessel, therefore, ships do not have to be destroyed completely in order to win a battle. With the right weapon and a bit of luck, it is possible to disable critical modules, such as engines or main reactor, thus making them combat ineffective.
Sensors and detection
Before you go weapons hot, intel and reconnaissance is just as important as your arsenal. Without the proper use of sensors and detection mechanics, the enemy can easily have the upper hand, even in lower numbers and with inferior equipment.
Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War
Descent: FreeSpace was - for pretty much two decades - the start of the best space combat simulation ever developed. I probably spent several years of my childhood playing FreeSpace 1 and 2 and to this day there is no other game which I will get back to every few years and then play it for months on end because it is that good.
Never before have I played a game which utilizes almost all keyboard buttons, some of them even twice or thrice with button combinations. It takes days to get used to the controls and to remember all of them in the heat of battle, but after having learned them once, I never forgot them again. I can boot up any FreeSpace game after 5 years without having played it and the controls will come back to me within 5 minutes. No other game has ever managed to do that. No other game has ever managed to entertain me to that degree even although I can still remember every single mission, every enemy wave, every plot twist and all and any scripted events.
– Real player with 198.1 hrs in game
Descent | Freespace: The Great War is a 3D space craft action simulator. You are a recruit pilot who just joined the Galactic Terran Alliance in its age-long war against the Parliamentary Vasudan Empire, but the war takes a different turn when an unknown threat makes its appearance with the sole purpose of exterminating both races.
Pros: You get to live the war and the events through the eyes of a pilot, and the whole story is detailed through mission briefings and in-game events. Different levels of success in a mission may affect the following mission, even open entire branching side-missions. The voice acting does a good job a delivering the humane yet rigid tone of a military situation, something you’ll rely on for immersion as there is little to no cut scenes. Action is great, and often allows creative thinking to resolve an issue, succeed in a mission and achieve bonus goals. The missions themselves are very varied, rivaling and often surpassing classics of the genre like the Wing Commander series. Control is spot-on, although optimized for mouse-less keyboard. As you progress, you get more and more flexibility in how you want to set and arm your squads.
– Real player with 27.3 hrs in game
Solaris
So fun! If you like games like Risk or Chess you will love this game. But instead of turns its all in real time just really slow, like make your move to set up what you want your ships to do, then come back and check it hours later when they are there. Or you can set your ships to loop, so they pick up and drop off troops where you want them FOREVER. I just started playing and entered like 15 games at once and I spend all day playing it without having to wait haha. Addicting, fast and great learning curve, and good replay value (harder for me to claim this latter one as I’ve only put in 40 hrs so far, just seems like a game I will always come back to).
– Real player with 124.6 hrs in game
The only negative reviews about this game are people who are mad because there are no tutorials and don’t know how to play. I mean… I was in the same boat but I had no problem learning, it is actually really easy to learn and only took a couple minutes, so I’m not sure what the problem really is. There is a wiki tab right in the game to help learn and beginner games.
I like it because it doesn’t need my full attention. I can play another game and have this up on my other monitor. Only have to play a few minutes each day and you can have multiple games going at once.
– Real player with 83.0 hrs in game
Edge Of Galaxy
On the main menu screen there’s New Game, Tutorial, Settings, Achievements, Statistics and Exit. The tutorial will take you over the basics of the game and isn’t very long. There are two game modes: Sandbox and Explorer. Sandbox is where you’ll make your way through a galaxy which is divided into sectors. Each sector consists of multiple coordinates and is controlled by one of the five factions: Mercenary, Federation, Ocrons, Krios and Raiders.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Today, a short look at the Edge of Galaxy space strategy in early access.
Early Access success
Currently, the best-implemented part of the game is fighting. Battles are dynamic and short. At the same time, proper mercenary management and equipment improvement have great importance. The development of the armada was interestingly solved after each skirmish, we have a choice of who get the spoils “mercenaries” or commander. This is not an easy decision: we buy ship upgrades and equipment from the fleet budget, but it is money for ship crews that enables them to grow. Just traveling from system to system and increasing your fleet’s battle potential can give you a lot of satisfaction. A very interesting aspect of the game are also enemy special forces, which actively hunt your fleet on the main map, putting some pressure on the player. Five different factions to choose from also increase the potential replayability of this title.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game