Space Rogue

A SECOND LOOK AT THE REQUEST OF THE DEVELOPER: I am leaving the original review below, so that you can compare for yourself, if you'd like. While the changes are really nice, I have to give a reluctant maybe to this one. If you're REALLY into rogue-like games, then you'd probably enjoy the punishment you need to endure to get up to a high enough level to be able to tweak things like difficulty level, but for myself I'm not really willing to invest that amount of time beating myself up so that I can get beat up a little less. My main enjoyment with a game is being able to go through the content. I'm going to address my commented items below, in order, for clarity's sake: Mining: They have made one large improvement to mining that I think is quite good - your ship no longer takes hull damage EVERY drone that hits an event. It takes three events for this to happen now. While a vast improvement, I am still confused how my ship in space takes hull damage from planet-based mining. (Developer: An easy workaround here is to a) do shipboard systems damage related to drone work, like the main computer, and the engines, or b) have a large credit expenditure for the retrieval and repair of said broken/exploded drones; if no money is available, they lose the drone and it's drilling chance for a number of turns until your engines make another). I still lost 8 hull to a mining incident, which made me hesitant to continue mining, even though it was my main source up upgradable parts. Away Teams: Despite efforts, I never ran into an away team dialogue. I can't comment on this one, sorry! Jumping to Planets: Happily, this seems to be fixed! I jumped to a dozen different places and wasn't damaged for simply moving myself along! Yay! Ship Combat: This is the big sinker/floater, still. While I wasn't destroyed on my first encounter I was destroyed on my second encounter. And, after restarting I was destroyed again on my first encounter by... Psionics. A giant space squid? Great... but don't make it the damned spaghetti monster with shield-penetrating triple wave psionic beams at literally the second planet I fly to! Also, while I'm on space combat: Boarding parties should scale with my crew/ship abilities. I don't know, maybe make an algorithm based on the level of my ship's systems for toughness of boarding parties? And, if there is already something like that, please dial it back a touch. I had to continuously repair this one open gash in my ship hull in a tiny 2-slot room while trying to defend my ship from another ship while trying to beat down a boarding party. Moving crew between my (destroyed, and still trying to fix that, too) healing room, and the hull rupture at the very furthest point of my ship was infuriatingly slow... no sense of urgency from my crewmembers who seemed to think that walking is about as brisk a pace as is possible. While this whole way of combat is fun sometimes, it's not fun when you know you're just really slowly losing the fight. If this was simply a review of combat it'd be a solid thumbs down. Pop Up Dialogues: They didn't kill me every time, or cost me money. So, that's quite a bit better! Other things I noticed: Damage indicators have been VASTLY improved. The captain still appears to be the only one that doesn't just stand around when put on a station; but, I'm still not certain if he's doing anything to give a positive benefit or stat to the station he's on. I also noticed many little changes here and there that have added to the ambience of the game, however, they aren't game changers in and of themselves. Overall: The game is definitely getting to where it needs to go, and while this is a vast improvement on the previous iterations it's still not really hitting the mark at the core of it's gameplay. With some more combat improvements the game could definitely be a hard hitter. (Developers: If you want me input on those items, you can feel free to contact me directly.) It's getting there, it really is. I wrote this review on May 5th, 2016. Almost exactly one year after the previous review. And, still: Hopefully in a few months when you read this they'll have a playable game out there, and my opinion will be outdated, again! Until then, happy gaming in whatever game you choose! TL:DR Much has changed, combat still frustrates, ship go boom, crew go poof, shinier game, buy it? maybe, devs working hard, captain is a mad scientist. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PREVIOUS REVIEW You're going to want to hold off on buying this one... I think I'd really like this game a LOT more than Faster Than Light if it wasn't so damnably annoying. You want to mine the planet? Don't... you'll somehow get hull damage, even though you sent a mining drone to the surface. You want to send an away team to that ship with no life signs? Don't... you'll lose a crew member. You want to jump to the next planet? Don't... you'll once again get hull damage. I've travelled through about 5-6 different "sectors" of 12-15 "systems" so far, and I've had to Alt + F4 the game because I got a random shipboard fire (from who the hell knows where...) and it wouldn't zoom in on my ship, so I couldn't assign crew to fix it. It doesn't matter, though. I was about to close it out anyway. Every single move you make in this game is infuriating, annoying, and irritating. Let's take mining for example... you have four SEPARATE drones you send down, but if just one of them hits some event your ship WAY up in orbit takes hull damage, and you lose everything you've mined from previous drones in that encounter. Let's take ship combat... my first time playing the first ship I encounted used psionics on my crew, pierced my shields, and used hull breaches to destroy me in about 15 seconds. My VERY first encounter... A little excessive for my weak shields and 2 weak weapons... How about pop up dialogs? You will (90% of the time) lose out on these. You'll lose credits, crew, or hull. Usually hull... they LOVE destroying your hull in this game. This game DOES have the ability to be good... even better than Faster Than Light (which it seems to be a glossy version of), but they'll need to add configurable ships, better ship damage feedback (instead of that silly wheel on the ground to tell you how damaged your components are), and make it so that ANY crew can take a station... not just your captain. They also need to make the game 250% less irritating (hull damage, drone mining, crew deaths, etc, etc, etc). BUT! If they can fix it... and I realize it's (incredibly) early alpha... maybe they can pull a game off. I bought this knowing that the 5 thumbs ups before me were all from developers. They always pull that crap with their own games... so I decided to take one for the team. I wrote this review on May 14th, 2015. Hopefully in a few months when you read this they'll have a playable game out there, and my opinion will be outdated. Until then, happy gaming in whatever game you choose.

Comparissons to FTL are going to happen with this one as honestly, the combat is basically the same. Turn based with pause. Send crew to various stations as they are needed (sometimes to man them, sometimes to repair a system). Target your weapons on the various enemy systems to take out the ones you think will be most advantageous to take out, then wait for them to recharge and do it again. That system worked for FTL and works fine here. The main difference gameplay wise is that there is no pursuit here, you are pretty much free to explore at will and the map is more open and diverse than the FLT one. Lots of random events that are all reasonably interesting, and 5 main scenarios you can choose from at the beginning of each game. The scenarios will give you overall direction, but you are still free to explore withiout pressure. In fact I recommend levelling up your crew and ship a bit before pursuing the main quest. Your crew gain XP and level up and you can choose what areas they are going to improve with each level, or leave it on auto. At level 3 you can specialize in a skill so you can end up having people expert in shields, engines, weapons, etc. You also collect resources in the form of tritanium, which you use to improve your ship systems, such as shields, engines and weapons. Improving weapons for example will increase the amount of weapon slots available and the amount of energy they can draw. Improving the ships computer will increase the amount of modules you can have installed. These do various things such as set fires on the enemy ship, or make weapons temporarilly do extra damage to an area of the enemy ship. New weapons, modules and drones can be found as spoils of war or bought from various space stations. There is a fair variety so you can pretty much tailor your ship to your play style. One interesting thing is that after each playthrough finishes, you get a certain amount of "Space Points" depending on how well your last run went. These are permanent and add up over consecutive plays. Get enough and you go up a level which will unlock new ships, new starting perks, and new starting scenarios for the game, which you will then have access to on sunsequent playthroughs. You can only have two perks equipped at once, but some of the later ones are quite powerful and very useful in facing the difficulty of the later scenarions. The scenarios are all multi part and reasonably long for this style of game. There are 5 in all and they scale in difficulty. All up its a really solid space exploration rogue like that does enough different from FTL to actually feel like its own thing in the end. The character levelling and ship upgrades have a decent depth and the "Space Points" that carry on from game to game unlocking new content the more you play is an interesting concept. I realise FTL had unlockable ships too, but some of the ways of unlocking them were quite random and convoluted. Here, so long as you keep plugging away, you will keep getting new unlocks. It's worth noting that the graphics are really quite good compared to FTL's basic streamlined graphics. The music is quite nice too. Nothing incredible but some nice laid back ambient music that compliments the space exploration on offer. Recommended. Especially for fans of FTL.

This game wants to be FTL & fails miserably. I realize it is early access but like so many EA games it seems to have gotten of track early and doesn't show signs of getting back on track. Just a of the things that make the game less than enjoyable. Too many choices without information as to the outcome. Upgrading crew offers no choices so it should be automatic. Why waste the player's time? Very cute graphics that obscure rather than reveal what the player is to do. For instance, weapon targets are not highlighted on the primary enemy graphic. Damaged systems are indicated by tiny icons in upper left screen instead of on primary graphic. No sense of progress. Neither is there the conflict of resource management that underlies FTL. Crew merely repair damage and fight boarders. No specialized skills. No crew posts so no real reason to choose any one over another Too much focus on graphics at cost of game play. There is no sense of progress. No meaningful upgrades.

Its a fun game, very much like FTL with better graphics and without the hurry to exit the sector. In this game, you are going through a simple story line which probably took 1 hour to code, but can take you several hours to play through. As with many Russian games, the game pings their servers. This is something I don't like much at all, and is a negative, who knows what data is being exchanged. And what happens when the servers all go down? I guess you will not be able to play the game anymore. The game has an in-game editor (they call it a workshop, don't get confused about the naming choice). The editor allows you to make your own missions and rewards which sounds great! Unfortunately, you cannot play these missions until you upload them to the server, and the developers have to approve and make it available to players in-game. Since the game appears to have been abandoned, that never happens. So you will only be wasting many hours of your time making cool missions that you can never play. There are a whopping 2 missions in English that were made by the developers available after a year of the 'workshop' being released. On occassion, the game will 'bug out'. The only thing you can do is quit and exit the game, then restart it, and hope your last save is good. Otherwise, your SOL on that play through. For me, the saves were always good. Since the game is abandoned, there will be no fixes to that bug. At this time, I cannot recommend this game, unless you get it on a very good sale. And even then, don't expect too much from the game. About 10 of the hours I have in the game was making a bunch of missions in the 'workshop', only to realize they are completely unplayable for the above mentioned reasons. And I get no response at all from the developers or moderators on their forum, which is completely devoid of life.

This game has a lot of undeserved negative reviews. Here's what I hope is something a little more impartial. Space Rogue is an obviously FTL-inspired game in the same genre. However, this game is not, nor does it try to be, "FTL, but better". If that's what you're expecting, you WILL be disappointed (and that's likely the source of the negative reviews). Instead, Space Rogue should be recognized as being "Kinda like FTL, but different in almost every aspect". So, aside from cosmetic changes, what's different? It's quite a long list. First, here are things that were removed: - You have no Fuel count, no Missile count, and no Drone count. The related systems are always usable. - There are no Doors, Cameras, or Piloting subsystems. Your ship is always able to jump/evade, you can always see inside both ships, and the doors always permit passage. - On the default difficulty you have no time limit and can jump around between systems all you want. (Higher/custom difficulties can impose a time limit for a more FTL-ish experience.) Here are things that were added: - Monster fights, where instead of an enemy ship, you fight some tentacle monster, crystalline creature, or whatever. - A new section, the Main Computer, and its associated Battle Cartridges. These give short-term boosts with a cooldown on them such as cloaking, shield boosting, setting fires in the enemy ship, instant repairs, etc. This replaces systems like the Cloaking and Mind Control systems from FTL with something more flexible. - A new section, Life Support, which is a combination of the Oxygen and Medbay sections from FTL. - The ship's hull is now an upgradeable ship section. Upgrading it increases the ship's max HP. - Persistent events that occur at random and have a global effect (both you and enemies) for some number of jumps. - A new currency/resource, Tritanium. Credits are used to buy weapons, drones, and repairs; Tritanium is used to buy Battle Cartridges and to upgrade/install ship systems. You don't buy systems, you just install them into your ship when you have enough Tritanium. - A new enemy-only section, the cargo hold. Destroy it during the battle and the ship dumps the cargo in it, which results in bonus rewards after the battle ends. - One of your starting units is designated as the Captain; if they get killed, this is a game over. - Units come in different classes (engineer, navigator, or warrior). Engineers repair stuff and can man specific systems to make them more effective. The navigator (who is your captain) can man any system. The warriors fight well but can't man systems. - Units gain EXP and levels. At a level-up you can choose a bonus to one of their stats (HP, damage, repair speed). Level 3 engineers pick a system that they can man. - Roaming ships can appear on the map, resulting in an extra event if you arrive at a system with one still in it. - There are multiple missions. - An extremely intricate custom difficulty option has been added. You can tweak almost anything in the game to make it harder or easier, and you get more in-game experience for harder games. You can also make the galaxy bigger for a longer game. Here's stuff that's been changed: - Ship sections have HP counts that are typically multiples of 50, and weapons do numeric damage as well. - Your shield's value is also numeric. - When shields are brought down, some of the leftover damage punches through and damages the targeted ship system. - Missile weapons have a salvo size. Once you fire all the missiles in the salvo, the salvo has to be reloaded, which usually takes about 4x longer than a normal cooldown. - You still have a certain number of weapon/drone slots, but these go up as you upgrade the corresponding system. - All battles start paused, and all your weapons are ready to fire immediately. Your opening salvo can count for a lot. - As long as your teleporter is online, your crew will automatically be brought back upon destruction of an enemy ship, even if the teleporter is still recharging. This allows for more aggressive teleporter usage. - New content is unlocked just by playing the game. Whether you win or lose, as long as you make progress, you gain experience. When a game ends for good (you win, or you lose and do NOT load the last save) that experience is cashed in and you unlock new ships, new missions, new perks (basically, permanent bonuses that lead to a specific play style). Finally, here's stuff that's exactly the same as it is in FTL: - Missiles ignore shields. - Shields block energy weapons and flak ("cannon", in Space Rogue) weapons. - There are different races that do different things, though Space Rogue obviously has its own unique set of races (plus, of course, the common and uninteresting humans). - You can win by killing all the enemy crew (BUT - and I think this is a bug, not an intended mechanic - if your teleporter is offline when this happens, you lose your boarding party as if the ship had been destroyed!) - Hull breaches suck oxygen out of a room and get repaired before any other systems in the room. - Fires can start in a room and must be put out by the crew. - You can't jump out of a system until your engines charge. The enemy must do the same if they want to try and flee. - An in-game tutorial does an excellent job of showing you the ropes. - Shops are your friend, and can repair you too. So! Ultimately, the real question here isn't how Space Rogue matches up to FTL, but whether or not Space Rogue is fun. And I think that yes, it is, as long as you take it on its own value and don't try to make apples-to-oranges comparisons to other games. It has lots of replay value, and if you're bored of FTL, it's a good way to re-experience the genre. Whether it's better or worse is purely subjective, but the one thing you can say with 100% certainty is that it's different. And that's a good thing.

If we look at FTL, and then at Convoy, we see that the developers took the parts that worked and were fun, and tried to switch out everything else, to great success. If we look at Space Rogue, we see that the developers took the parts that worked and were fun, and tried to switch out some other things, and failed. The result is that this game is two parts FTL, but it misses what made FTL fun. It's limited, confusing, with odd controls and loads of game-breaking bugs. Right now, my captain is invisible, and all of my crew members refuse to move, making the game impossible.

I'm gonna sum this up based on how it feels to me: This is FTL casual edition. It has the basic concept of FTL where you take your ship, jump from point to point through random generated systems, encounter random events and so on. But what it lacks is the time pressure. In FTL you have the constant threat of the enemy forces looming over you and you are forced to speed rush through and get to the end or be over run. In space rogue you are taking a leisurely stroll through the galaxy at your own pace, you are the captain of your ship and your time is your own. Sure there's missions you can do and jobs you can take, but you can move back and forth through the systems, even revisiting old systems to make sure you didn't miss anything, or to visit a shop for something you couldn't afford before. The game can have it's challenging moments, and after you've beaten the game you unlock a host of customizable difficulty settings; but no matter what you make the settings, you never have that looming pressure of being forced to advance. In FTL you can lose simply by not jumping forward fast enough. In Space Rogue if you are losing, it's likely because you jumped ahead too soon and didn't fully explore the early systems. If you've ever played FTL and thought "I want to take my time and explore everything!", you will probably enjoy this game. If you haven't ever played FTL… yea go buy that first… Combat is very similar, though space rogue is a lot less micro management. In FTL you had to micromanage power issues and pay attention to things like teleporting your crew back before the enemy blows up. In space rogue your power is pretty much handled for you, systems are either on or they aren't and even your crew is auto teleported back when the enemy blows up. You still need to prioritize room targets and direct your crews actions, but again there's less pressure and fewer tedious systems to ponder over. I love FTL, but there's definitely room for Space Rogue in my game rotation for when I'm just not feeling that hardcore. Side note: I have encountered a few game breaking bugs, [strike]but the devs are still active and were very interested in examining the issue (they asked for save files), so the game is still being worked on and patched, which is a plus. They seem to be talking about adding more content as well. There's a decent game here already, and it seems likely to keep improving a little.[/strike] EDIT: At some point after this review was written, the devs seem to have stopped updating the game and it's been a few years. It's mostly functional, it's fun enough if you get it on a discounted sale price. But unfortunately, if you do encounter any more bugs, they probably won't be fixed anymore. --- [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38232109/]While you are here, would you consider following my curator page?[/url] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/kunovega/recommended/]Want to read all of my reviews and not just the curated ones?[/url]

See this is having mixed reviews so figured I'd throw in my oppinion. This is a "first impression" if you will, I just picked it up in the winter sale and have only played though one run so far (~3 hours in). First: This is not FTL, it's very much a "FTL-like" though, it copy a lot of things from FTL, like the combat system and so on, but the overall game still play different. One of the things is does not copy from FTL is the sense of urgency and scavenging your way. It's a lot more laid-back. There is no time pressure and no fuel to worry about, you can backtrack as much as you want and visit every single node on every map at your leisure and fly back to a station to repair as often as you want. Drones and missile weapons also have unlimited ammo, and just do a little less damage and have a bit higher cooldowns to compensate. This does make the game considerably easyer than FTL (my first run was a win, and it wasn't even close except one seemingly unkillable space monster I just ran away from). A nice little "quality of life" change is that your boarding party is automatically beamed back to your ship when the enemy ship explode (as long as your teleporter is not offline), so you can be a bit more reckless with boarding. [strike]You do unlock higher difficulty levels as your main profile level up though so there may still be some challenge to the game later on.[/strike] [Edit:] Seem I misunderstood, all difficulty settings, including the ability to customize difficulty is available from the start, you only unlock ships, perks and scenarios. Progression is pretty straight forward. At the end of a run you get "experience" based on quests completed, ships destroyed and various other goals and then your main profile level up, winning my first run got me to level 3 which unlocked a new ship and a higher difficulty setting. This makes progression quite liniar, you just have to keep playing, no convoluted random quests you have to complete during a run to unlock a particular ship, on the flip side it means you can't rush to unlock any particular ship, you just get them at the level they unlock at. To help with re-playability you also unlock more scenarios as you level up, where FTL always have the same main quest (get to the last sector and kill the boss), there are several different ones to choose from (once they are unlocked). The starter quest involve finding a kidnapped scientist (with some twists), later ones have more epic threats. Overall I'd say it's a fairly competent FTL-like that should appeal especially to those who find FTL too punishing with it's time pressure. There are higher challenge levels available, but you can always play on easy and indulge your power fantasy blowing away enemy (or neutral) ships left and right as well.

Being a big FTL fan, I liked the idea of Space Rogue. However, the game is very unbalanced and prone to frequent game-breaking bugs and glitches. I've had six or seven playthroughs and three of them had to be aborted because of bugs. Feels like an alpha release, not a finished game.

Abandoned game! Mine freezes in the tutorial. It's a known, reported bug back to 2018, but apparently the developers had abandoned it by then. Save your money and time. Avoid this. (Why does Steam still sell it?!?!)