Freespace 2
There are no words in the English language (or any other, for that matter), to describe how much I loved Freespace 2. Especially Free Space Open from the modding community of the Hard-Light Project, which is basically the definitive edition of freespace, enhanced to todays graphical standards and featuring hundreds of hours of very high quality user made content they could actually charge money for. Writing, voice acting etc. the modding community did a better job at those than many AAA titles within the industry.
– Real player with 36354.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Sci-fi Games.
Why I recommend this game
This game is what made me the gamer I am today. I bought it back when it first came out, I bought it on Good Old Games and now I’ve bought it on Steam. Why? I’ll tell you why - I believe it’s the greatest game ever made.
Why this game is awesome and deserves your attention;
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The original graphics were fantastic back at release in 1999.
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You won’t be using the original graphics when playing the game.
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The story was - and still is - amazing. Far better than the usual tripe.
– Real player with 412.8 hrs in game
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
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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.
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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.
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Find your kidnapped brother while making interstellar friends and enemies. An over 5-hours long cinematic storyline is waiting for you!
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Enjoy epic space battles with hundreds of ships.
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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.
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Your ship is a temple. Repair it, get upgrades and don’t fly it into asteroid fields. Those dents stay.
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Put on the headphones, fasten your seat belt and relax: one hour of orchestral soundtrack - originally composed just for this game!
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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 Space Open World Games.
Kerbal Space Program
I kind of feel it’s late to post a review for KSP at this time as I think that anyone who would be interested in such a game has heard about it by now, but hey, you never know.
For me, KSP is more than a game, it is more like a hobby. You spend hours building your ship, you fill it up with little green Kerbals and then actually fly it to space!
Every milestone you achieve feels extremely satisfying. You feel proud of yourself for every new goal you reach, and not in the way you do in other games, it’s not that you had good reflexes, or that you killed some big boss. You actually designed, built and flew a spaceship! And you did all that using realistic rocket parts, and realistic, unforgiving Physics. No clicking “launch” and poof you’re in space in this game.
– Real player with 2380.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Space Sandbox Games.
Well, actually, this test flight was not my idea…
…doesn’t matter now anyway!
After years of “test flying” I have solid ground under my feet again thanks to the Almighty!Where this uselessness of Jeb is hiding? He really tell me, “Just travel to the moon and back,with his best apprentice till now. No big deal!”. I should have told his grandma about the idea, after all, she would have told me something! Why i was so dumb to agree this flight?
When I get him in my fingers. Believe me! ..Oh..
– Real player with 2033.8 hrs in game
Gratuitous Space Battles 2
UPDATE 04-07-15 : I wish to redact “eye-watering” level of bugs - en lieu: “massive congestive heart attack”…
I do love the ideas in this game, it’s one of the few I have on my Mac, I spent hours designing ships, however I can ignore its terminal cancer no longer…
This game has so much potential, but it is like the grand ship rusting on the ocean floor for a ha’porth of tar…
The developer(s) have been so busy caught up in the far more creatively enjoyable process (for themselves as programmers and/or dreamers) of coming up with ideas for stuff to stick on deck: You know, metaphorical tennis courts, getting excited over the idea of having bubbles in the swimming pool…
– Real player with 1745.2 hrs in game
UPDATE on review: Up to ver.1.39 as of 8/7/15 and I’ve not crashed in a long time. Those folks who had issues, should revisit the game. The latest tweaks are mostly graphical re: shields. I am updating this review to let people know the developer has consistently worked to fix bugs and add tweaks and even content, since the release. If you were on the fence about this game, or you were initially disappointed with glitches, play the updated game with a fresh outlook and I think you be pleasantly pleased.
– Real player with 187.6 hrs in game
STAR WARS™ Empire at War - Gold Pack
Empire at War
Forces of Corruption
Empire at War is a Real Time Strategy game on a galactic scale.
How you can play:
🔸 1 x Empire Campaign
🔹 1 x Rebel Campaign
🔸 1 x Zann Consortium Campaign [Forces of Corruption]
🔹 Galactic Conquest (sandbox on some or all of the ~70 systems)
🔸 Skirmish missions set on unique Ground or Space maps (many options)
What kind of RTS ?:
As there are many variants of RTS games, this is a brief overview:
🔸 Space looks 3D, (some units can pass over others) but expect 2D,
– Real player with 924.1 hrs in game
In my opinion, I would recommend that you should buy this game if your considering to buy it. The game is pretty fun, considering that its graphics and everything are like pretty old but I like it. Also, If your considering to buy it and not sure, well make sure that you want to spend $20 and also to make sure that you like Star Wars or you just wanna play this because it looks fun (Which it is). Some things I suggest though when you buy the game.
Suggestions -
- EAW (Empire At War)
Once bought the game “STAR WARS™ Empire at War - Gold Pack”, you will see either EAW (Empire At War) or FOC (Forces Of Corruption). Since you have bought the game just now, your experience might not be the best. Consider that you load into Empire At War, have some practice or do the campaign if you want, it was pretty good in my opinion. Skirmish Battles or Galactic Conquest in #Single-Player is pretty much your options to practice in EAW (Empire At War)
– Real player with 544.4 hrs in game
Starpoint Gemini 2
Update : Now LIVE V1.400 (Internal Test build)
I myself have been playing since Alpha (September 2013 release) and I have seen SPG2 come along in strides. Below is a basic list of what is in-game and can be done whilst playing. SPG2 brings back many memories of quite a few spaces games I have played since the mid 80’s onwards.
Star Point Gemini 2!
DLC - Secrets of Aethera - Adds in new ships, new storyline arc, tweaks and updates to game systems.
Riftways - Oh my, something to experience yourself! - Rollercoaster rides in Space.
– Real player with 223.6 hrs in game
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Starpoint Gemini 2
(Updated review!)
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Don’t Forget to Nominate this Game for the Steam Awards!
LGM Games’ successful debut title, Starpoint Gemini, an RPG tactical sim set in a unique SciFi setting was released in 2010. It was a great learning experience for them and it paved the way for their next game - Starpoint Gemini 2, the sequel. It entered Steam Early Access program in September 2013, and a year later after what most would consider one of the best Early Access communities on Steam, Starpoint Gemini 2 hit the shelves on Steam in Sep 26, 2014.
– Real player with 85.3 hrs in game
Stellaris
Stellaris is a fantastic game.
I have seen thousands of stories unfold during my playtime. I’ve watched humanity bloom into a galaxy-spanning civilisation. I’ve watched megacorporations be seized by fanatic communists. I’ve seen weapons created that span the circumference of quasars and watched them wipe away entire solar clusters. I’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe again and again, scoured the galaxy for relics and found stories spanning universes in scale, stories that go beyond the beginning and the end of what we would conventionally call a universe. I held the line against an extra-galactic threat while the galaxy crumbled around me, a threat that had followed the Prethoryn Scourge to our local cluster and fed on our galaxy as a cow would a field. My empires proved and disproved the false vacuum theory again and again, and when that empire eventually fell; futurespawns travelled back in time to warn the past against the coming storm. A revolt against fate itself had formed, and after swiftly taking over the galaxy through diplomacy it found itself fronting that storm yet again. This time it was ready.
– Real player with 1967.2 hrs in game
This review is difficult to leave as I have lots of great memories with this game. Its unique approach to RTS Space Strategy is incomparable to anything else on steam at this time. Which is a real shame because Paradox Interactive continues to fail with DLC updates and constant redesigns.
The game has been practically remade at least twice. Entire game feels more like a beta with constant major changes to core gameplay, to fix things that should have been fixed before release. Which ironically, PDX Interactive fails at almost every, single time. Every update that “fixes” bugs only temporarily patches them or just changes them to be slightly more bearable. For instance, every claim of late game lag being fixed might as well be ignored. You can choose a tiny galaxy, and you’ll still have lag in the late game. Pop changes or whatever other crap they’ve put it in hasn’t fixed much of anything. But what it has done is break mods, introduce new & more upsetting bugs, and piss off the community. They also released some stupid launcher so they could shove ads in my face when I launch the game, but in doing so also broke mods by introducing frustrating & upsetting mod order issues. Literally never was an issue before the launcher, now I have to shuffle mods around to hopefully not crash when loading saves. Which you might as well just delete your old saves if the devs release an update, because its going to break.
– Real player with 700.2 hrs in game
VoidExpanse
I can’t really speak to multiplayer as I haven’t gotten into it yet but my solo experience thus far has been a lot of fun.
I started out as a fighter, I knew that combat was going to be prevalent no matter where I went so I wanted a little head start in that department. After taking a good look at the skill trees I decided that I actually wanted most if not all of them so throughout my playtime I have been carefully managing what I invest in next. The game can be a little grindy, especially if you’ve chosen to grind as I have, but it’s always felt rewarding. Getting that next skill, being able to buy and then use that shiny new hull or weapon or ship upgrade is satisfying.
– Real player with 180.3 hrs in game
I’m currently 12 hours in, and I have no idea why the reviews for are “Mixed.” I am in love with this game!
Please note that my review is for single player only. This review won’t do you much good if you want this game for multiplayher
So many of the reviewers are reviewing this as if it’s a AAA game with AAA production values and money. It’s not. It’s $15. However, if the idea of a top-down 2D Freelancer-style game appeals to you, in which you can feel awesome by controlling a spaceship using WASD and the mouse, then this is definitely a good buy.
– Real player with 50.5 hrs in game
Starpoint Gemini Warlords
Starpoint Gemini Warlords updated review Current 23rd Nov 2017 - Latest DLC -Cycle of Warfare.
LGM are a small 15 – 20 staff development team, been making the SPG series now for quite some years, and Warlords is the third incarnation of the series. Warlords is a culmination of developer and community coming together with ideas to make what Warlords is currently. (I thank our community for being such a decent group of players with feedback, good bad and ugly in professional manor).
SPG Warlords is a capital ship combat and trade game with some side elements of a 4X game, in resource management to create fleets, build ore mining stations, gas mining stations, junk reclaimers and research further equipment, upgrades for your fleet and mines, and upgrades to your Head Quarters to improve all facets of your game play.
– Real player with 520.5 hrs in game
This will be my first in-depth review of the videogame that I’ve ever done. It may seem a little unpolished but for the sake of Starpoint Gemini and the potential that it has, and does have, I found it best to do this.
If you want to know if you should get this game or not the answer will be yes. This game has the potential to be the Skyrim of space exploration, battles, and trade.
Graphics.
The graphics in this game are spot on. It will be very hard to find other space games that have the amount of detail that this game has when it comes to space specific things such as asteroids nebulas planets and the ships themselves. So visually speaking if you want that kind of visual stimulation so you feel relaxed when you’re traveling and it feels like you are traveling in space this is the game to get. I suggest that you go online and look at some of the images themselves because what you will see in the Google search or whatever search you use you will also find in this game as well.
– Real player with 197.0 hrs in game
Distant Worlds: Universe
This game should be fun, it looks like great fun and will lead you to expect that true enjoyment is just around the corner. However the fun you are anticipating will always be just beyond your fingertips until you finally get fed up and learn to stop trying, because in the end, there really isn’t any, just frustration at how this game could of been awesome.
1. The Crashes: This game crashes a lot, but only starts doing so after you have invested so much time into your save that you’re faced with abandoning an empire you have spent hours cultivating, or routinely losing 20-30 mins of progress or more depending on how long you set your autosaves to be. You may think the solution is to make autosaves more frequent, but once your game get’s to that point, it’s now taking 5+ minutes to save your game every time. If you can mke it to some real endgame points where you really are invested and theres multiple large, well developed empires that can truly challenge you, prepare for that to take even longer. Even better, reloading saves seems to randomly reset the enemy AI in certain ways that are difficult to immediately decipher but will become apparent eventually. For example, one game I manage to start getting friendly with a lot of empires that I had been trying to open free trade agreements with and suddenly they sort of cascade to where I want them to be, one after the other. Ok, not sure why but cool. Whoops, game crashed, reload autosave. Now all of a sudden, even though I followed the same actions I did last time, they’re all imposing trade sanctions and moving to war decing. Cool.
– Real player with 564.9 hrs in game
An incredibly deep and rewarding game which has some of the deepest and advanced AI you may ever witness in a game, especially one of this scope. It’s clear the developers focused near purely on content over most other things for this game and unfortunately that comes at the cost of having a game that’s imposes a significant learning curve. Getting to grips with the UI will be a difficult romp, and the mass amount of options given to you will both satisfy veteran 4X players and discourage most beginners.
– Real player with 463.9 hrs in game