Star Valor
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Superb feel, responsive controls, pleasant visuals with a good use of color, and (mostly) intuitive UI. Nice physics model.
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Transparent mechanics. If something on your ship isn’t working, you’ll know why.
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Decent balance, especially for this stage of development.
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Ship-building through component selection and upgrades is very satisfying.
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Perfectly stable for me. No crashes, no lag, no freezes, nothing. The few bugs that do exist usually have workarounds. On this score, it’s already better in EA than most AAA games in full release.
– Real player with 328.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Sandbox Games.
First off- this game is fantastic.
Addictive, even.
It fills a niche I’ve been dying to satisfy for ages; mining, fighting, trade, transport in a top-down space pilot sim.
Every ship has strengths, and weaknesses, as well as implicit faction stats. You can find ships with horrible, boat-ish mass but enormous storage and equipment capacities, you can find fighters deficient in those categories that more than make up for it in agility and handling, and anything in between. There are ships geared to transporting materials, warping between different sectors at much greater range, mining faster, extending stealth, increasing critical damage, increasing trade values, decreasing repair costs and so on. Every single deficiency you might encounter has some cure or other in the form of equipable components that alter almost any stat you can think of, or add special abilities such as cloaking, tractor beams, energy boosters, etc.
– Real player with 302.3 hrs in game
Drox Operative
Update 25/11/2016: Nominated for my “Just 5 More Minutes” Award.
I saw some footage of this game in January 2013 which was enough to tempt me into trying the free demo. My curiosity was piqued but I wasn’t expecting much - just a bit of a time killer to tap away at and fill up a bit of the afternoon. I came away several hours later with the music stuck in my head, feeling as if very little time had passed, then went on to have a dream about Drox Operative that same night. I bought the game from Soldak’s site the next day and have been playing Drox on and off since then without ever having cause to regret the puchase.
– Real player with 71.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Sci-fi Games.
Drox Operative can be described as an Action RPG. It has all the elements of an action rpg, for example you have a character(ship) who has attributes that both increase the overall stats of the ships in obvious categories, such as damage, or speed, and which allows you to equip the items you loot from the dead, provided you reach the minimum level in the required stat. The items you collect from the vanquished correlate in many ways with the types of items you would find in an average RPG sporting a normal human(or whatever) character. You have weapons and armour. However, the ship nature of your main character quickly makes its presence known because you have alot of item types which you will not usually find in an average RPG sporting a humanoid.
– Real player with 57.3 hrs in game
Supernova Tactics
An alien invasion seeks to destroy the star in your home system. Assemble an army and do your best to protect your homeworld. Strengthen your group by upgrading your units, equipping them with items you earn and additional rare items you may come across.
Key Features
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Permadeath - You’ve got one chance to lead your people to safety. One wrong move and your civilization will be lost forever.
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Random Battles & Loot - No two playthroughs will be exactly the same. The enemies you face and the items you receive will vary with each encounter.
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Hidden Monsters - Every round has a Hidden Monster that has a small chance of appearing. If slain, this Hidden Monster has a chance to drop a special item specific to that monster.
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Upgrade Your Units - Use your gold to buy units from the shop, acquiring three of the same unit will upgrade it to the next tier!
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Compete on the Leaderboard - Compete with other players on the leaderboard, Supernova Tactics features an endless mode. See how far you and your army can reach!
Read More: Best Space Perma Death Games.
Drox Operative 2
Drox Operative 2 is an Action-RPG on top of a background of AI-controlled 4X sectors.
You can influence, beg, threaten and bribe endless races into situations, trades and treaties more beneficial for your guild (and most importantly yourself) but never have to worry about actually running things as you tend to your own business as the captain of your own ship.
A game loop (or “Sector”) consist of completing quests, killing monsters, hunting, destroying or rescuing various targets while exploring your sector which is made up of many solar systems. Said solar systems are joined together by jump gates and wormholes. Sectors make up galaxies whose main elements persist between your adventures. Your galaxies can be visited by any of your characters. Winning a sector consist of reaching one of many win conditions; a new sector is then created to your specifications, such as size.
– Real player with 416.6 hrs in game
- TL;DR: As with every Soldak game review i posted before i would strongly advice anyone reading this to at least give the demo a try. Soldak titles lack the triple-a quality graphics other titles have, but this is entirely offset by offering great gameplay experience.
Soldak Entertainment is a bit of an anomaly in my game collection.
I have been buying Soldak games for nearly a decade now, and during that time i purchased virtually every game and expansion pack made. What makes these games anomalous is that each and every single one of them ended up in my “100+ hours played” list. And to add some context to this: Less than 10% of the 600 or so games in library meet that criteria. That of course isn’t exactly an objective metric that clearly proves the quality of these games, but if nothing else it should at least hint they are fun for some people.
– Real player with 187.8 hrs in game
Watch Your Helmet
You still could not even imagine how difficult it is to control a spacesuit with a jet engine in space. Thanks to this game, you will realize how interesting and exciting it is, especially if you need to escape from moving asteroids, dodge moving planets, collect fuel and minerals, and complete a rescue mission.
Test and then improve your spatial awareness and rocket management skills in zero gravity at 45 levels full of minerals, dangerous asteroids, planets and abandoned cats in space that need rescue.
Zigfrak
GET THIS GAME! Unless you’re Maverick.
Zigfrak is a pretty awesome game. It’s amazingly beautiful, but for reasons I can’t begin to fathom it has never overheated my laptop. Not even when I accidentally left it running paused and the temperature in my room was in the mid-80s during the afternoon hours (my room sadly faces west). Even games that are 3D only as window dressing tend to overheat my laptop (RTS games, XCOM Enemy Unknown, and many others). This game I could probably leave running for a week.
– Real player with 98.2 hrs in game
I love this game, sure its not perfect but iv had a lot of fun with it.
Ill start with the bad bits,
Graphics are a bit on the poor side, textures are low quality, there are a few artifacts with the effect.
The missions are all pretty basic, go here, get this, click that, kill them all. though some are dressed up pretty well (the one where you have to kill a station while it dances to dub step was fun :) )
Combat can be a bit too simple at times, especial when taking down larger ships, they mostly just sit there while you circle strife around them till they die or simply sit behind their engines in a blind spot.
– Real player with 36.6 hrs in game
Beacon
Updated Added 3/24/2019
Keep in mind this is a game still in beta phase, so it’s not quite finished. I’ll likely update my review as Beacon continues development.
I absolutely love top-down shooters and Beacon is no exception, in fact, it makes me appreciate them more. I’ve stuck around playing since it was released on Itch. It’s changed quite a lot, such as additions of enemies and bosses, loot areas, and of course all the bug-squashing, both technical and literal. It’s a little terrifying that there’ll be even more enemies and bosses later, which means plenty more ways to die, but hey, mutations are a thing.
– Real player with 68.5 hrs in game
Beacon has a nice low-poly artsyle, a pretty good soundtrack, and interesting writing and ideas. It has some weird design choices regarding weapons and enemies, but is over-all rewarding, if not occasionally frustrating due to a few enemies.
The gameplay is pretty typical: you can use 2 guns, have 1 equipment, 1 consumable/held passive, a grenade type, and as many passive non-held items as you want. You can smack things and dodge-roll, too.
The big game idea is that, when you die, you use DNA pickups you collect from enemies and can “mutate” next run… Or you can do what I did and beat it without mutating, which is pretty doable. Mutations change how the character looks/acts/stats and how the character reacts to items and story elements.
– Real player with 48.6 hrs in game
Gangs of Space
[Will edit this in the future if I ever see problems with the game arising.]
Solid game; one of the two games I’m playing on a regular basis & don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.
It’s a lot of fun if you’re into challenging games, you might think that you’ve got it on lock and you won’t die anymore but it only takes one mistake to ruin your run and lose all them rare items that you had. It gets quite emotional.
What I want to shed light on the most is that only two people made this game & they’re doing a splendid job communicating with their players; logging in regularly and talking in global chat, often answering a lot of the questions that the players have. They’re even on Discord answering questions there and making announcements so that you’re always kept up to date. I’m worried that in the future they may start succumbing to the demands of noobs but we shall see. It is permadeath so they’re bound to get loads of negativity from those who can’t git gud.
– Real player with 410.1 hrs in game
A really nice addicting game, but you have to check your ping.
Currently a #8 ladder, solo T6 boss and farming in T6.
A really nice addicting game, but you have to check your ping.
Currently a #8 ladder, solo T6 boss and farming in T6.
But its bad when lag strikes and skills dont register properly and cause you to lose your ship.
Yes it is a perma death game, once you lose your ship, it is gone forever. After the new patch, pings get very high to almost unplayable
Naturally i will recommend this game, but make sure you have good pings before investing more time into this game.
– Real player with 193.4 hrs in game
SPL: Skilled Pilots Live
This game is some straight forward honest arcade shooting fun with some nice features thrown in to keep it interesting; weapon choices , ship enhancements, crafting, loot (new), allied wingmen (new) and a ring flying game. I get my my fix of it in an 30 mins to an hour a play which is perfect for me as time is hard to come by for me . I found the game to have medium/hard difficulty, but the difficulty scales based on how you play the game and you are rewarded with a higher score and rewards etc. Too easy then go for the 100%+ encounters too hard stay around 50% and grind a bit until you get better gear. The bosses tend to be the hardest part,but all good boss battles are :) I think of it as if R type had a 3d baby with Doom, and Souls :) In its state now I would rate it above average ,but with the potential to be a great game with more guidance from the community and hard work from the developer.
– Real player with 24.9 hrs in game
A little rough around the edges, and a bit light handed on the tutorial however this game grows on you very quickly.
The combat is different from most 4x style games there is a lot of control over the ship. There are a few things I have noticed that I am sure will be fixed my biggest problem is when enemy ships are close together your ship does not seem to know who to lock onto. ( but there is a weapon type that does take care of this. ) My biggest issue with the game would be even thou it controls very nice an fluid there is a lack of feeling. (( what i mean by a lack of feeling is that it feels like your not moving. If it was not for the wave like field that is around your ship when moving i would think i was sitting still. )) All in All I would rate this game a solid 7 out of 10. An with that bottom line is the game is FUN, FLUID,EASY TO LEARN.
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
EVERSPACE™ 2
This is of course a review of the Early Access version, so some of the cons I find with the game, might disappear with the final version.
*If you like Space Simulators, this is a game for you.
THE GOOD
• Lots of fun, although, (and this is probably related to it being early access) things get repetitive very fast.
• Controls are fine, you get the hang of everything rather quickly.
• For those of us who enjoyed games like Tie Fighter, Descent and FREESPACE, this is our type of game.
– Real player with 251.0 hrs in game
It has been 18 years since Microsoft released the game Freelancer. In that time, no other game/developer has succeeded in capturing what made that game great, and brought us a game like it. You can find many space games that have failed to bring us that genre properly. Many times people saying things like “Closest thing to Freelancer, best since Freelancer.” However, it’s always known that they aren’t actually that close, or nearly as good. This game however, is hitting ALL the right check boxes for being a PROPER Freelancer successor.
– Real player with 96.5 hrs in game