Evochron Mercenary

Sounds like this was abandoned when the developer started working on the Legacy version of the game. That has everything contained in this game, and more. It would have been nice if the developers allowed those of us who purchased this version to upgrade to the full version at a discount.

I really love what this game is about but I have to admit that it is hostile to the player and requires multiple google searches to understand the basic things of this game. For example, I still don't know how to save my progress. I thought I was saving, I was clicking save, I clicked a save slot, then when I reload, it didn't save and I'm back several hours of progress (turns out you can't save during a mission, makes sense, but not clear). Another example, I get a distress call, says it is at a particular coordinates. I type those into my nav console, hit autopilot and the ship just keeps jumping and jumping into nowhere land, is there someone out here? I waited about 15 jumps before I think maybe not? WTF is going on? I'll revise this comment if I change my mind, but the curve here is beyond punishing.

I can not recommend this game, due to that soon as this one was out. The development abandoned it for the successor: Evochron Legacy Pros: nice concept cons: abandonware at the early stages of life OVERALL: 5/10

Can't recommend this. Overall it was boring. Below are some thoughts. Being in space is great. Seeing planets, rings, etc. all look great. Good experience to just see the space visuals. However, the menu screens were not good. They seemed crowded and not well designed. The screens are clunky. Mining is boring. Multiple times I set my ship to mine an asteroid and I just got up an left my computer for a while. not very engaging. If mining went fast, that would be an improvement. There are different factions and a reputation level. Also, each star system is different, so you can be liked in one place and hated in another. This is a good idea, but there is a huge flaw. Trying to change your standing with the factions and your reputation takes far too long. It got so boring, after a long time making little progress, I gave up and went to another start system. The space physics is good. I like that inertia is a real thing. Sliding sideways, backwards, etc. More space flight games should work like this instead of acting like constant forward propulsion in necessary. I like that you can visit the planets you see. Overall, I spent too much time waiting to do something instead of actually being engaged with the game.

Originally liked it. 9 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ months later I get punished for being offline. ♥♥♥♥ you!

Good stuff for an old school space fans. There's a newer Evochron Legacy SE on Steam, with updated graphics engine and other stuff, so be sure to check it out too. Ships are very different in both versions in Evochrons though.

I wanted to like this game more, but the complexity and the number of commands and settings and gizmos and bells and whistles you have to manage to simply fly from A to B was too overwhelming for me. I like simpler star ship simulations, like Darkstar One, Galaxy on Fire 2, Starpoint Gemini 3 and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, so I guess it´s just a matter of taste. If you want an Elite Dangerous alternative, this might fit the bill. The graphics are pleasant, and there´s some background music going, which is always welcome.

Blast off into infinite space. Land on planets. I am talking about real descents on planets, no game controlled sequence. Thrust your way through planetary rings and look, at the millions of little specks of dust that the rings consist of. Be amazed by the beauty. Be amazed by the amount of detail put into the simulator elements, such as the exact amount of speed needed to break into the atmosphere of a planet. Enjoy a fantastic tutorial that blends the intricate controls of the game with easy to understand steps. This is the game, that I as a 11 year old boy playing Frontier (Elite 2) on Amiga would'nt believe I would be playing 28 years later.

You probably want Evochron Legacy now that it is out (E.L. is made by the same guy, but is a game like this on steroids). Still, there's really nothing else quite like this that can also be done either just Single player or just multi player. The fact that there are no loading screens as you travel from place to place is just amazing.

Re-installed that game recently and gave it a new try. Still unimpressed. The inertia flight is good, and I mean, really good. THIS is exactly how flying a spacecraft should feel, not like in so many games where it feels exactly like you're flying a plane. Aside from that ? Nothing to see. The interface is basically a spreadsheet, except that in a spreadsheet software I can rearrange columns and lines, move things around to compare them, filter things out, and enlarge the cells if I don't have enough room to spell a whole word. In this game, I'm harvesting "watr" and "metl" because apparently things can't be named with more than 4 characters. About harvesting, I hope you like it, because at first that's all you're going to do, and it... is... so... very... slow. The interface is a chore by itself. Even X3 seems user-friendly compared to this. It has all the functions you might want, and more that you need but didn't even know you needed... So that's good... But every single function requires you to memorise a key on your keyboard, and almost all keys are used. Which wouldn't be so bad if you could rebind them at will. Well, you CAN rebind them, but if you use anything but a qwerty keyboard, good luck. Whether you rebind it manually or keep the default setting, it doesn't matter, it will always display the key that is in that place on a qwerty layout. As I use a non-qwerty keyboard, I litteraly had to play with a picture of an english-language keyboard to which I could alt-tab when I was checking my key bindings. And even that wasn't always enough. I once accidentally target a nearby ship, and the game kept pointing my view in its direction, to the point it would mask the HUD entirely at some point because I wasn't looking at the front of my ship, which I simply couldn't avoid. I have tried to find a way to un-target a ship, but... There seems to be none. You have FOUR keys for different tagetting options, but none for "stop targetting". I tried porting half a sector away, and even then I'd still track the ship. The only way I found was alt+F4. Figures. Aside from that, the game is somewhat ugly, which is to be expected considering when it came out, and I'm still a bit salty that the devs decided to make a new game instead of expanding on this one, effectively making it an abandonware. If you'd like a game with a proper inertial piloting of a spaceship and don't mind an extremely tedious interface, go for the new game in the series instead, at least it's still supported.