Space Battlecruiser

The game looks good. I tried it for almost 1 hour and it seems like it would be a fun game. However the controls cannot be customised and I found the ship hard to control because I could not set the keys the way I like them. There is no reason a game in the 21st century can't have the keyboard customised the way you want. One other thing I did not like was that although you were supposed to be flying through space, there was no feeling that you were moving. Other games use particles or slight background movement to indicate that you are moving. The only way I could tell I was moving was a red circle around the combat area approaching when I was about to leave the area.

Good idea, poor execution. Your space ship is far too slow and it feels like it's stuck in the mud making any sort of manouvre a tedious task. The turrets also turn incredibly slow and there's a lot of leading to be done when it comes to targets so you'll be constantly trying to get the cursor on point. I'm kind of surprised you can actually shoot things down the way the ship behaves but that's only because enemies are even slower than you are. You can not move the three types of turrets independently from one another (or I haven't figured out how to do so) which means every fight just turns into a sort of catch-up and spray-and-pray kind of deal. You're provided with a directional shield that you can move by using Q and E but recharge time is long and the only other way to mitigate damage is by repairing yourself with the scrap you find. Unfortunately, you also need that for upgrades. The game consists out of you piloting the slowest star ship known fighting your way to the 'overlord' by traversing a hexagon-grid filled with encounters. The encounters might consist of a starbase, a fleet or a convoy that brings resources to the enemy which in turn allow the enemy to grow stronger. An indicator on the world map tells you just how strong the enemy is. Sabotaging him is key in making the enemy manageable enough to get to the end fight. You can upgrade your ship by finding two elements: scrap and some kind of purple artifact. After each mission, you're given the opportunity to go into the parts store. It is unclear what some of these upgrades do exactly as they only give you a general description without any statistics to back them up. The mission areas are very small and going outside of the circle leads to you being turned around 180 degrees. It also does this when you're in a fight, giving the enemies a cheap shot at your health bar. Particularly annoying during destroy-the-escort missions. And what's with the sound levels? I've been adjusting my speakers throughout my play time constantly.

Space Battlecruiser (SB) has a generic name, but it's actually an XCOM-like roguelite where the enemy has its own agenda and your job is to disrupt it, while they react to your attacks. Unfortunatley, the difficulty curve was not tuned properly, the game's just too hard, and the end boss too tough to be an enjoyable game. As a single battlecruiser that escaped the alien attack, you have survived. Now it is time to strike back by taking out the enemy HQ. However, it will not be easy. Enemy HQ is heavily defended. You probably have better chance attacking the outposts and the sector defense fleets, but you cannot dawdle either, as the enemy convoy is carrying material to the shipyard and they are building new strike fleets coming after you. If you have the firepower you can go after the convoys, or the mines, but it is up to you. Jump from system to system, attack enemy fleet, attack starbase, raid enemy convoy, repel enemy attack, retreat if necessary. It is up to you. In actual combat, you control a lumbering battlecruiser that are definitely not nimble. You have 3 weapon systems: the short range defense (usually slug thrower), the long range shooter, and the heavy artillery. (Defaults are point defense, laser, and artillery, but you will find tech later to upgrade them to flak, guided missile, and semi-guided rockets, and beyond). Primary fire controls the first two, secondary fire control the heavy weapons. And yes, they must be aimed. Enemies may be fighters, ships, defense sats, or bases. All enemies may carry either direct-fire weapons or seeking/guided weapons. While you do have shields, they are of very limited duration before they need to recharge, and it is not 100% coverage so you have to rotate it into place to cover hemisphere you want. The idea obviously is to take out all the enemies in the sector... eventually, with a lot of hit-and-run attacks. The problem is the game feels very... grind-y, and the mothership represents such a tech level leap that you have to grind for a LONG TIME in order to afford the weapons that can take her down, even if you can defeat anything ELSE she can throw at you, such as bases and fleets. For example, I've obtained torpedo upgrades, which means I can take out a starbase, defended by satellites, in roughly 1 minute. Apporach, blast my way through the first defense sat, launch fighters to keep everything else busy, launch 3 salvoes of torpedoes I have which not only obliterates the "wing" of the starbase I'm facing, it'll either destroy an adjacent wing or the core directly, then the base is over. But that's because the base doesn't move. I can stop the range closure. NOT with the mothership. Yes, the mothership MOVES. What's worse, it has a fleet of ships that always accompany it, NO MATTER how many you destroy and it is down to NEGATIVE resources, and a ring of TOUGH defense satellites that can take a beating. And 3 torpedo salvos didn't even take out a section of the ship. What's more, it's chasing me down, and it has this super-beam that lasts a lot longer than my shields. I can't make a dent in it, after repeated tries, even though I've destroyed every single fleet and other starbase in the sector. In fact, the mothership is spitting out a new starbase EVERY TURN, despite having NO mines, NO convoys, and NO shipyard! The game confirms that the enemy is at -42 resources (yes, NEGATIVE), because I've been destroying one starbase per turn for more than 20 turns! Now that's just outright cheating. The costs of the weapon and ship upgrades goes up dramatically in the subsequent level upgrades. First upgrade may be 15 scrap, but the next upgrade can be 30 scrap, and so on. Given that you do NOT earn more scrap in battle as you level up, this makes upgrades EXTREMELY slow and tedious, and the dream of affording the "superweapon" (which is 100 scrap, and 75 components, even though you usually get 10 scrap for every component you recover) which may or may not be suitable of bringing down the mothership. The in mission salvage mechanism is interesting, in that destroyed enemy ships, bases, and defense sats, and so on (not fighters, too small) can leave behind scrap or components, and you can send out your "salvagers" to retrieve them. But they don't fly very fast, and they don't survive being hit by the enemy. What's worse, if the object is a bit far, they just come back and redock, So you have to turn and get closer, THEN send them out and they may cooperate. Doing this in combat is problematic, to put it mildly. Yet if you defeat the enemy (wipe out the starbase, for example), you get *most* of the loot on the map... except for 15% that was "lost to the void") For example. So you basically have to fly around, NOT shoot at enemy but to soak up any shots aimed at your salvagers, and let it collect everything BEFORE autoloot at mission end kicks in to maximize salvage. Keep in mind that the upgrade prices are already kooky and grindy. This makes it worse. All in all, while the price is cheap ($5), and the game overall design is good, the actual gameplay needs some tweaking before I can recommend it.

Eh, this game is fine. It works, only slowdown on some levels (Mining base) that I've seen. I just can't bring myself to figure out how to beat the Mining base. I know there's some specific set of weapons that I probably need, or some long tedious technique to defang the base, but I've been bashing my head against it for at least half of my playtime across two games, and just can't beat it. So I give up. Controls are fine, the ship is as ponderous as it should be, the effects are good, and not overdone. NEED KEYBOARD CONTROL MAPPING!

Space Battlecruiser is a top-down tactical ship battle game, something like a simulation. I have to admit that at first I wasn't quite sure how to approach this game, but after a few tries getting my ship blown to bits I learned that the greatest asset to have here is patience and awareness. You are going to need patience because the ship, the whole game, is very slow-paced. Your ship, a massive battle cruiser, and several other enemy capital ships, move ponderously slow over the battlefield. You are harassed by smaller fighters and corvettes, and shot at by larger ships and starbases. However, all heavy weapons are equally slow and cumbersome, giving you plenty of opportunity to "dodge" between them like an iceberg navigating ocean currents. That will be your key skill: to learn to move correctly, and with enough forethought to predict and avoid the many threats all around you and further your goal to defeat the enemy armada. Now, awareness comes in a close second because in addition to being able to move correctly, you have to move based on the information you have on the main screen and the larger tactical minimap you have available to you. The easiest battles are one-on-one against a single capital ship, which is easy to move around and into good position. But things are rarely that easy. You have to watch out for small fighter craft with missiles or big cannons, other smaller escort and support ships, and the bases themselves, all of which are gunning out for you in a limited battle field with ponderously slow but lethal weapons. Once you have the hang of movement and awareness, you can begin to fight with confidence, pick your battles in the right order, and defeat even hard to break-down bases. It is all a matter of being patient and going with the openings in the fight. There are several technologies to explore and improve. You will have to improve your ship if you hope to defeat the final starbase-boss, and you will have to learn how to use all of the pieces available to you appropriately, including the shield (a short term one-directional force screen you rotate around your ship), missiles, huge torpedoes, mine fields, and various forms of short and long range weaponry. Your style may vary, but you will have to learn how to use them well, and how to maneuver based on your weapon's range, damage output and turret tracking speed. Once you have it all down, battles will become easier. Don't worry if at first you don't succeed. The enemy builds up relatively fast, and you may find yourself having to scavenge, hit-and-run, and frequently grab what you can and flee. Fortunately, your ship is fully repaired between engagements, so don't think twice about a tactical retreat. It is a very viable survival and improvement option which may be, at times, the only option available to you. Finally, don't despair. The game can be slow, but if you keep building and improving your ship's technology, you will eventually be able to take on a much stronger fleet with just a few scratches. Just remember your maneuvering and your awareness.

Interesting concept, with simple and clear mechanics, makes the initial experience quite gripping, but eventually the difficulty spikes, and it's unclear what are the weak point of some of the enemies. After a couple of ours there's a clear difficulty cliff, and the game becomes much less fun.

grindy as h*ll. ok enough but grindy grindy grindy

Un petit jeu sympathique et pas cher.

VERY light tactical ship combat, with no straffing, which is fine. Just plan your moves as best you can, and you can actually avoid some of the more powerful shots, at least for a time. I need to get this out of the way first. There is one VERY annoying bug that I've encountered and don't know how to fix. If you are on the strategic map for a few minutes, the entire screen will turn much darker. It resets upon entering a tactical combat mission, but it also has the same problem, where everything becomes very dark and at least somewhat difficult to see, and resets upon going back to the strategic map. I also ended up selecting a screen resolution in the VERY limited options (no key rebinding, no visual settings beyond fullscreen and the resolution), but that caused it to go from filling the fullscreen, to having thick black bars on the left and right sides, and I can't get it to go back, even upon relaunching the game. It's fun for a little bit, but I only have as many hours as I do because I didn't finish one game, and then I forgot how to play, so I started a new campaign. Each "Captain" (think single player offline account, or like a local computer account) only saves the most recent completed strategic move, so you can't save scum and try a totally different approach from several turns ago, but on normal, it's not so bad. Unfortunately, while somewhat replayable, I don't see myself coming back to this once I've played through one campaign. It feels like it could have a decent number of additional mechanics added to feel comfortably complete. The number of different weapons is okay, though I do kind of wish the heavy guided missile was something else, as there is already a missile weapon for your medium guns. I think the biggest thing it could use more of is features in the strategic move turn section of gameplay, like a few more types of missions, some more information. Something more to add a LITTLE bit more depth to the strategic planning and play. As it is, there are a few very reliable strategies, and anything else is only to make things more challenging for yourself. This greatly limits its replay value, despite each campaign's strategic map being proceduraly or randomly generated. It could also use some more variety in tactical combat, though there are a decent number of different enemies, and I'm sure I haven't seen them all yet. On the other hand, this relative lack of significant depth makes it easy to pick up and play all the way through, even as a "beginner" to naval ship like controls. Also, the tactical combat areas are rather small, but still take two or more minutes to cross due to the sluggishness of the ship (which is appropriate. You are flying a battle cruiser, a capital ship, not a corvette or fighter/bomber). So it's probably for the best that the areas aren't any bigger. Unfortunately that also leads into a another annoyance when dealing with carriers. They like to run away from you and keep some distance, and can leave the red ring of the area, far enough to be outside your effective firing range, so you need to kit them back into the ring, and then charge full throttle back at them from across the map to catch them before they leave the ring again. If you leave the ring, the screen goes black for a split second, and it reorients you to face toward the center of the ring and places you on the edge of the ring where you exited. As it is, I'd probably buy it for full price or a -10-20% sale. It's okay, a bit enjoyable, but not for an extreme amount of time.

Suffers from terrible optimization issues on some machines. I have 3080TI and the game consumes 100% of GPU and framerate looks like it's around 10. The game is also very slow.