Pixel Privateers

The game has some nuances, seemed a little short to me, and the difficulty was a little odd (the first big boss of the game nearly rekt me, yet I was able to face tank the final boss in the game barely taking any damage). But otherwise, I had quite a bit of fun and safely recommend this game. Pros: +Sense of Humor +[b]This is not Pixel Pirates in space.[/b] Made by the same author(s), there are some small similarities.. but the game plays completely different. +A good selection of unit types, and multiple ways to set up your platoon +Tons of random loot +Space booze +[spoiler]Vanguard Mecha-Suits[/spoiler] +Giant Bosses +I liked that every class seemed to have it's own niche, although there is some overlap. Cons: -Too much loot causing too much item management. Others have mentioned it, and it's true. I ended up cranking my auto-recycler up to the highest level, and still had plenty of loot to equip and sell. -NO AUTO ATTACK! This game could desperately use it, as you're forced to micro every single enemy in every single fight, even if you choose to not use abilities and pick equipment with passive bonuses. -Kinda short. I have 25 hours at the time of writing this, beat the game (as far as I know, don't wanna spoil anything), and did a lot of side fighting for the lulz along the way. And I've played 2 play throughs, one hardcore that I lost, and one normal that beat it. -Control system and menus take some "learnin'". The tutorial does a decent job explaining it, but lots to remember/figure out. -[spoiler]Can't kill the flying bunny[/spoiler] -Can get repetitious. Gameplay consists of doing missions on planets (that are always kill missions or item pickup missions) with occaisional random events in between. It's not terrible and didn't bother me much, but the last 1/4 of my playthrough I found myself skipping missions as much as possible and wasting money on fuel, just to go for main objectives. [i]Edited for typos and a couple things I forgot to add[/i]

The creating company (Quadro Delta) went bankrupt on September 4th (9/4/2017). which is unfortunate because they were about to push a pretty big update that would add a lot of things, like auto combat. I would recommend, but the current amount of content, and knowing that there won't be anymore, is saddening.

Pixel Privateers is in no way a bad game, however there are issues with the gameplay and mechanics that let it down as a whole. Disclaimer: I do not hate this game, I actually quite like it, however I feel that 87% is too high for what this game offers so I'm writing a review explaining my opinion. Pros: +ART: Some of the pixel artwork is pretty lovely, the bases and planets are well detailed and beautiful +WORLD: The world and concept is nice, it stays pretty consistant with races and characters; There are cyborgs in this galaxy that have spread out over countless worlds, as well as a race of bio-monsters that want to turn all genetics into their fleshy masses of DNA, and you're trying to get technology from these worlds for The Company. It gets a bit more advanced later on, but stays at the 'passable' stages and never quite overtakes a lush and consistent sci-fi world like say FTL +LOOT: There is plenty of Borderlands-esque loot; I also like that what look you equip determines their class. Every character has 4 slots and you can spend ages just fitting out your guys after a couple missions of loot. +TECH TREES: I like the researching mechanic in the game, despite its simplicity; You just pick up items and they gain research points over time which you can spend on identifying rares or upgrading a crew-wide research tree. Cons: -BUGS: Could not use an elevator and had to force quit the game. Melee units would not attack certain enemies. Units would sometimes walk back and forth in the middle of combat and doing nothing. Hold position button does nothing. Right clicking to attack enemies as they beam into your ship causes all your units to move to it. Can cheese losing situations by quitting the game and everybody gets max halth again. Game breaking framerate at some boss levels. Sold all my inventory, went back to crew tab and it was still there. That's just a handful of the ones I remember right now. -SIMPLICITY: At the start, when you have 2-3 guys, combat requires thought, and pausing it with the spacebar. However, late game is just a grind of taking your 8 man squad of level 26 guys with guns, selecting them all, and right clicking every enemy in order until they're all dead. This plays into my next point... -NO AUTO ATTACK!?: Yours guys do not auto attack. This is a huge, huge problem and reduces incentive for using strategic attacks, and encourages just using your entire squad to attack one enemy. Say there's a group of three enemies; if they kill the first one, if you do nothing they just won't attack; they would all die before attacking by themself. This seems to also include turrets and drones. This can be fixed, I'm sure, but it's a massive gaping problem that encourages zerg rushing, and unfortunately the game is still very possible using that strategy. Another problem with this is there is LITERALLY A HOLD-POSITION BUTTON that says "Will attack enemies in range" and it just doesn't! They still suffer from the same auto-attack issue. -VARIETY: There are plenty of enemy types in this game, don't get me wrong. But, as a whole, there seems to be 3 races: Two robots and a zerg-equivalent. The problem with this is that, using the zerg rush tactic explained above, they all have the same tactic to kill them, select everyone, right click, zerg rush, win. Very rarely do you need to, for example, move your guys out of enemy fire, get on either side of an enemy to flank, use abilities to stun or put in stasis.... Coz you just right click them all to death. To put it into perspective, I used exactly the same tactic on the bosses, including final boss; right click it to death and occasionally right click a spawned minion. The healers heal automatically so I don't need to do anything. -SHIP INVASIONS: When you're travelling around on the map, random events can occur, normally being attacked by an enemy ship. This is, without a doubt, the worst (purposely programmed) part of the game. You just walk around your ship, wait for enemies to teleport into the room, and kill them. There's no 'defense' part about it whatsoever, it's just a boring time waster that gives barely any reward. The devs must know this because there's a perk at the start AND a research tree item to lower the chance of it happening. -STORY: The 'story' itself is pretty generic; however my issue is that it drags on for so long. There is absolutely no reason this game needs to go for 12-18 hours. You'll enjoy your first 6 for sure, but the lack of variety in the late game leads to tedium and total boredom. Even the regular missions become a total chore (which you need to do a certain amount of to unlock more missions) of just blasting through 90% of a map. And, I'll put it here; two of the boss stages featured game-breaking framerate issues (The second robot boss and the first zerg boss) where my game slowed down to 10 fps. This is a pixel game. I have no idea why this happens but for lower end computers I can imagine those levels would be a total pain. -PIXEL PIRATES: You've probably realized by now that this game is developed by the same people who made Pixel pirates. Whilst not a bad game in itself, that game lacked a real driving force to grind through its countless bugs and far-too-long campaign. Privateers is better, by a long way (At least I only discovered a handful of bugs with this and not a thousand game breaking ones), it benefits from a more direct approach. However, the late stages feel like a chore with collecting 5 Macguffins, and then in true No Man's Sky fashion, the game just ends and starts you again with a different map but the same characters. If you have never played Pixel Pirates and you like the idea, you will definitely enjoy this game more than Pirates, but understand these games are not perfect. It's a meal-priced RPG strategy-lite. CONCLUSION: If you came to this game looking for an exploration game, you should try Starbound. If you came to this game looking for a space roguelike, you should try FTL. If you came to this game looking for a strategy game, try.... I dunno, Battle Brothers is pretty good lol. And if you came because "It's by the Terraria guys!" no, it's just published by them. If you are really digging for a good strategy-building space game, then you should 100% definitely try Rimworld instead. 6/10: Game is functional but lacks a lot of stuff that makes a strategy-roguelike engaging for longer periods of time.

A great concept, rough around the edges. I am writing this as a family man with very limited time to sit down and immerse myself in games. As such my leanings lately (2015 - 2017) are games that follow this criteria (This is not exhaustive but I hope I can convey the gist) 1. Inexpensive but with good value. pricing is subjective, but some games need the base game plus 4+ extra DLC in order to 'enjoy proper', I avoid this more often than not. 2. Playable for minutes or hours but feels like I'm making progress no matter what. Open World games usually suceed at this, MMORPGS however not so much. When I can play in long bursts, Its because I'm enjoying the game not because I need to in order to, Save or progress. Interesting aside, I love Soulsborn because progress happens everytime you play, even if it is minute. 3. Ability to Pause for long periods while I chase my toddler down, cook, run an errand etc 4. Production Value, Mobile games and free to play usually lack this; there are exceptions like Warframe. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above mentioned list demonstrates my situation fairly clearly I hope, I need a game that I can play within my hectic life, a game with quality that doesn't demand 4 hours at a time minimum in order to feel like that game session was worth it. Pixel Privateers fits this bill for me perfectly. It's playable in 8 hour bursts of for a quick 20 minute mission. So for my lifestyle and if you are in a similar situation to me, it's a candidate for Daddy's 45 minute breathing time until Saul, Underwood and Bojack come back... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As a game does it hold up?? I love the idea. It's a little bit of a few genres I am endeared wtih. I love the ability to name my squaddies. My kids love hearing the stories of their little pixels saving the group or wiping out the bad guys with that new flamethrower. The gameplay is fine, but I find that larger squads require a bit micro management that I am simply not good at. There is a quality of life issue I have; My squad won't attack unless I order them to. I've had situations where I'm in a fight and my squad fights the boss, once the boss dies or explodes into a horde, I have to manually target the lesser enemies, which are small that feels like an extra step that isn't fun. The larger engagements are usually fine, but my squad not defending itself because I can't find the enemy or I'm looking up from my screen for real life issues. It's nothing major but is apparent. The style and presentation are good, Tongue in cheek full of references and I must say, almost obligatory nowadays. There is also alot of downtime between missions as you consider resources, fuel and weapon loadouts. I love it, each mission yields a surplus of items that you can sell for credits, which are used for ship upgrades, having more control on the loot you have via being abe to purchase from the shop or buying more squaddies. The other options are like the Kanai cube/Hordordic cube from Diablo to reroll 4 item types, rarity for different items or rarities and finally broken down into matter, which is used for teleporting your squad to missions and reviving the little buggers should you die on normal mode. All in all, this game is fun, engaging and with its own flaws (That could be patched out easily.... please turn on auto fire!) Thank you for your time in reading this

Games like this just suck me in. Pixel in the title? Check Tons of items? Check Roguelike in feel? Check SUPER FREAKING REPETITIVE? Check. The core concept and game flow exist. It's nice. But this game seriously lacks any depth and replayability. You will get bored fast, unless you just love item collecting games! If so, you might love this. You will find there are certain builds and items that just completely dominate anything else, however. That takes a lot of fun out of the game. Update: It seems the developer has gone bankrupt - no further updates to the game. Bummer.

Good, but.... The game really needs an option to increase the size of the text on higher resolutions. The text is so small and hard to read that it causes a lot of eye strain and headaches. I'm not even one to be prone to these sort of things, as i have good eyesight and don't wear glasses. Please add this function, Relogic. Edit: Quadro Delta is the one i should be asking, not Relogic.

A fun loot-gathering game with a ton of options regarding party-comp and character customization. Two characters of the same class need not be the same stat/skill wise, and there are a ton of weapons to choose from (there are no class/weapon restrictions). As an example, my medic uses hammers and gets bonus heals for every attack he does. He beats enemies in the face and heals while he does so. Gameplay is interesting, albeit a bit uninvolved in the early game. Planets tend to be varied and there are a few different objectives that you may receive upon landing. Gameplay consists of the loop of: Prepare party -> go to planet and get loot -> go to galaxy map -> prepare party -> repeat It's simple, but it's addicting and the varied loot keeps me coming back for more. I recommend it if you're into games like Diablo, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, etc. My biggest gripe, aside from a lack of truly varied objectives, is that controlling five characters is tedious, thus leading me to leave most of them on auto while I control my tank and engineer. I would like to see more viability for having fewer than five characters in a party (three would be my sweet spot between interesting gameplay/party comp and reasonable micro-management). The game does allow you to pause mid-combat to issue orders, which helps with this; think Baldur's Gate or Pillars of Eternity. Overall, the game is quite fun and offers a really addicting loot-loop that I think will be enticing to many players.

I bought this game when it first came out. I had high hopes for this and thoroughly enjoyed it when it came out. Sadly as you all know, the company went bankrupt and the game it no longer being worked on. This left a sour taste in my mouth for 2 reasons. 1) They updated the game to a more unfun state, then it was from release and 2) They have no mod support, so the worse state is permanent, and there is nothing you do to change it. I very much loved this game when it first came out and thoroughly enjoyed it, but its current state isnt great, also it dead, and the company went bankrupt + ratio

It was abandoned.

A fun little loot gathering game, with a large amount of variety in enemies and planets. Good amount of customisation in regards to itemisation and character stat progression. You can have two characters of the same class, but their stats could be completely different. Moderately addictive in the way that you will keep wanting to do more planets to try and find the best loot. I have a few gripes with the game; - The main one being that text size can't be scaled up at higher resolutions, makes it a little hard to read quest text. - Another thing is the lack of auto-attack, for me personally having to click for every single attack seems a little spammy and not enjoyable. Overall I would recommend people to buy the game and see for themselves if they enjoy it, the minor problems I had with the game could easily be fixed by the devs. I don't regret my purchase, its a great little game to pass the time. For anyone who is interested, I did a play through of the tutorial and the first few planets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGPsj7MTdUU