Destination Ares

A good concept but the irritating mini game for decision making lets it down, for me, it doesnt feel like it fits in with the game. The mini game you move your mouse though a invisible maze in a limit time, every time you hit the side you restart and you lose seconds out of your 10 second timer.

Tiny game but delivering what's on the box. The chore idea of the game is to build a ship so that it is the fittest to make a long journey (30 minutes). The build phase (unlocked after the first games) is pretty simple and will ask you to allocate points / space and weight for what matters the most to you. A balance to find between crew, modules, quality of modules, abilities to transform one resource to another or do you prefer to pack a lot of each at the beginning of the journey, up to you. Most of the times, if one resource comes to lack, you're dead : Oxygen, parts, material, food, waste, fuel, energy. The second part of the game is not really difficult, start the journey, set some priorities, activate or spare some modules, react to random events (often leading to a minigame that is a bit annoying though). And fail, fail, fail, fail, until you manage to unlock some improvements for the ship so that you can rethink your blueprint and finaly make that journey. Cute, interface sometimes a bit clunky because things are not obvious on the screen but overall a good experience. Might lead to some quite a few blueprint rework loops that I'm not super fond though. Keep in mind though that the lifespan of this game is probably rather short and you might get bored quickly but worth a shot !

Imagine if you took FTL, but could only tell the crew what you wanted them to do. It oddly becomes even more engaging as you fret over what your crew is doing and sometimes want to scream in exasperation as they don't do what's in their own best interest. I haven't managed a win yet, but do see an unlock system that may give me some better systems to improve my chances. Part puzzle, part simulation, part psychological experiment, Destination Ares is a bunch of fun!

From the hilarious character dialogue, to the ship crafting, to the great replayability - Destination Ares has it all. Incredibly difficult, but you learn from your mistakes and get better after each try.

If you liked FTL or space simulator type games then this one is pretty sweet. It's very hard not to compare it to FTL because it's identicle in presentation and in having a random encounter system. It's still a very early, simple version but I enjoyed it. Kudos to the devs for presenting the core of the game and making it playable right now as some Early Access games have some serious derp-level unplayability. Already has a ship-building system which is pretty sweet, many people will enjoy this; efficient ship design is rewarding. For what it is I think it's respectable and is one to keep an eye on as it develops. It's not as hardcore as FTL right now and it's still fairly simple. I played it for a few hours and completed it, replayability will be a thing, similar to FTL. A core feature being the random events system has very little variety and should be something which is expanded upon as there are only several different types of events and that's very repetitive. Early Access and indie games seem to be very expensive for what they are at the moment, £10 is in the middle of the Indie/EA range. For the game I am given I think it's a bit high, but after playing it and thinking about it, I have faith it will live up to that price should the current features be refined and expanded upon. My main disappointment is the art style. It could use more vibrant colours as everything is is grey, white, and just pale upon space's black backdrop. Maybe there will be more additions to spruce things up a bit but it's not visually impressive at all. It's getting increasingly difficult to pull off the pixel look as it becomes more popular in the Indie game culture. The description mentions "candy colours are for candy games", but quite frankly, you are significantly reducing your capabilities by choosing the pixel style and then choosing this colour scheme along with that is very risky. If you have nothing to contrast the greys then the greys are super grey and you are looking a grey game and that's not appealing, regardless of any reason. A fellow artist once told me that if you have to justify to someone why your style is the way it is, then it hasn't been pulled off. It's a very grey game in an era where colour and visuals is ball-bustingly good, and competitive. I feel this is a very risky move that must be pulled off perfectly, and I believe it hasn't and so it takes a big hit from the visual perspective. Space ships IRL are actually very colourful because of colour coding. Important things are vibrant blues, reds, greens etc and so they should be and so I think this style is unjustified and needs work if not reconsideration. It's also strange/annoying how the game kind of tilts like it's on a pane that can rotate slightly left and right; I'm pretty sure I wasn't high when I played this. There was no explanation in-game and it just looks weird and brings the visuals down more. Aesthetic - 2/10 it just doesn't work for me and as an aspiring CGI artist, it's painful. As a concept, imagining what it could be on release - 8/10 an expansion to the delight of the FTL experience, and perhaps a fresh take on a concept we love. As a game to play right now - 5/10 it will need a lot more content to be interesting enough to want to maintain playing beyond the first short playthrough. All in all it's a game for the fans of this genre, as they will be able to see what it's capable of becoming. If you are a fan of the genre but sceptical then I would advise not purchasing until it's further down the production line; it's still raw and only has its core right now. I hope the game can be conceptually appreciated and I wonder what others will think of the aesthetics.

Very fun game! semi-simple in it's graphics, and a great chill game to hang out and play but also extremely challenging at times. It takes strategy, and an ability to multi-task. didn't get through a single game in nearly 4 hours without murdering my whole crew! Still loved it, and will definitely be playing again!

Destination Ares is pretty unique in its kind, and even if it sometimes can be unfair and hard to understand, I can only encourage you to try it and see for yourself. Cause when it goes right, it feels so good. Plus, there is a free version on the creator's site.

Pretty poor. UI needs a lot of polish; I shouldn't be having trouble just clicking the buttons. The events that pop up are repetitive, and most of them require you to do a minigame that isn't any good - it's sort of like minesweeper, but with a floaty spaceship as a cursor so you just stumble in to the mines unless you tap the buttons and go really slow - but why not just make the movement tile-based if you're gonna make me do that? And then even if you succeed in the minigame it looks like (never failed it...) it just enables you to roll a die to see if your choice succeeded instead of success being based on your performance in the game. The main part of the game is about managing the ship's systems, but all it is is turning power-consuming things off when the power gets low, then turning them back on when it builds back up again. If something breaks, you can prioritize it, but the crew will get to it anyway so it doesn't really make much difference. I can see that more mechanics unlock as you play, but, uh, I'm not gonna play a game with the promise that I'll be rewarded with compelling gameplay _later_. You can never tell what's going on - for example, if you put an alert on something so a character will go repair it, if he fails, he just walks away as if he succeeded. I get that you're supposed to pay attention, but I really think it'd be better to have, like, little sparks come out of the thing so you can see what's going on. At least don't clear the alert if the thing isn't actually fixed!