Star Nomad

As someone already said in the forum section: WOW! If you like sandboxy space games you should give this little gem a try, why? Simple reason is that it looks nice, it plays nice, it sounds nice and it costs... nice. :) The Dev (yes it's just one person) is extremely active, responsive and with an amazing attitude, and that's something not always easy to find. It clearly is a "love letter" to old space sims as the description states, just do not expect a flight sim, this is not Elite or Privateer, this is Star Nomad, a fun arcade space sandbox.

Just another bad touch-screen game that someone thought would be worthwhile to port to PC. Avoid this game, and wait for a deal on the far superior Space Pirates and Zombies. This is basically Space Rangers with one button. That'll teach me to buy a game with woman plastered all over it, like some kind of browser-based monstrosity. I really think it's some kind of law of gaming: If a product is draped with women (as sex objects, not people) all over, it will be bad. The less clothing the women have, the worse it will be. If the clothing makes no sense (eg boob chainmail) you would get more enjoyment out of your money by burning it. I've been calling it the boobmail law, but whatever. It's my fault for buying this hot mess.

A game whose tedium makes tooth extraction without pain killers look like the best time you'll ever have. You start with a ship that is as tough as wet tissue paper, and every ship after the fact is just a slightly higher grade of wet paper that costs more in time and effort than they really should. Combat lacks any degree of finesse or preciseness; you click on a vague area of space and your ship just putters along without giving you any means of making sudden course corrections to avoid fire. Combat is something to be avoided... if you can manage it. Be sure to always pack an EMP, because there's no other way to outrun your enemies. Of course, if you don't have one, expect to have your ship destroyed, lose whatever secondary weapons you do have, all of your missiles and get stuck back in the starter ship, losing whatever modules it can't equip. My only regret is that it took me too long to finally get around to playing this, because I cannot get a refund. Don't make the same mistake I did; avoid at all costs and find a better, much more fun space sim that doesn't go out of its way to punish you for daring to try and play it as anything more than a trading/mining sim where combat is something you should never try, because all your ships and options suck.

The Game is in one word; Crap The combat part of the game is silly; as you a single ship with basic shields and weapons travel towards your story quest you get blown to bits; missions for 8000 credits or so makes you face a minimum of 3 enemy ships. A few missiles and you are blown out of the sky. So instead I decided to make a fortune before attempting combat; I traded with the start ship for hours without buying shields or weapons, just bought and traded goods and saved up enough for the 2nd ship with all weapon, shield and defensive options of mk 1 and it went quite well for some time that was until my ship got blown up. Instead of continuing with the ship, weapons and shields I currently had spendt hours acquiring I was reverted into the first ship, i still had the upgrades the ship could handle but lost the second missile launcher. I got about 2/3 of the cost of the ship back, and forced to start all over again selling food and fuel rods to various stations. In short the game is not fun when the combat part is so cruel towards the player; you cannot leave the white sectors with the first ship because a single missile from a Pirate Frigate will blow your shield to hell, and when you face 2 of those and 2 fighters you have no hope as they in total unload not 1 but 8 such missiles. I did not bother attempting to play further into the game; it is simply to unforgiving to deaths and without a save/load function aside from continue your game it isnt a way to prevent the silly deaths. I might just be to impaitent to get to the story and missing out on a great Space sandbox game but I doubt it. The story cannot compansate for any of the messy combat in the game so If you decide to try this game make sure you are a sucker for punishment, otherwise it will be boring.

The Good -For a space trader it is fairly easy top throw a half hour at here and there. -upgrading is easy once you get the hang of it. -lots of little details are pretty cool. Like people talking about the Iowa vs. The Yamato kind of clevar. The Bad -you tend to have to grind a lot at the beginning. Early on you basically need to find a safe route to either mine or trade until you can get some decent gear. -no real faction choice to my understanding. I had a chance to join the pirates for a moment there but no real choice. -the police in this game are insane: I am smuggling drugs and there are 6 ships right behind me destroying ships (potentially murdering people) for money and suddenly I am public enemy number 1? what this hell is in these drugs!?! -almost no customization: you have almost no choice to upgrade your ship in specialized ways. You can chose to make your missiles hit harder or your beams hit harder and that’s about it. -there is no choice to stand down your weapons or surrender. I am playing a smuggler not a murderer. I don't want to have a shootout with the cops until I can leave the system. I would rather stand down my own weapons and divert power to shields or speed to get away. -space stations don't care about pirates or smugglers? Here I am being shot at by pirates I dock at a station and they just let them blow me up? By the same token I am running from the police because they spot me with drugs but the station just lets me dock? I can't fathom a universe where the ships have weapons but the space stations don't who is asleep at the switch? Things I Would Change -Give the ships 2 to 5 modification modals and add more than just missile power and beam power to it. It could have the weapon boosts but also extra storage adding an extra 4 slots, a temporary cloak costing power (preferably called a Fader :) ), extra shields, shield mods that increase effectiveness against beams or ballistic respectively, crew pods for extra crew (see below) -more detailed mining add a scanner to increase the chances of getting certain resources over others. -more weapon types please. We have an EMP that jams weapons can we have one that stalls engines? Maybe mine layers, how about a machine gun stile gun that fires smaller weaker beads of energy fires faster but hurts less maybe a tractor beam that slows and eventually stops ships to force a boarding rather than destroying ships. -crew customization. Give each ship a crew capacity 2 to 6 each crew man can do different jobs on the ship such as work the engines, weapons, and shield to make the work better, the ability to navigate and increase maneuverability, or simply board/ repel boarders. -random mission offers. Passing ships give me all sorts of messages (including quite often the cops telling me how to break the law and expunge my criminal record lol) I think it would be cool if ships randomly offered me a job to protect them or deliver something or even kill someone. -gear/ships you can't buy. I would love to have experimental gear you have to find and earn rather than buy. -buy hanger space. I have built up my bad ass ship just the way I like it. Now what? Story missions? Personally I would like to buy a hanger slot and start building up another ship. It would also be more realistic to me than them just handing me a new ship every time I blow one up. -radar mini map. Down in the corner a tiny map that shows what ships are in the area upgrades and or crewmen could tag patrol ships or pirates or both. All and all all and all this game is fun! It could be more fun but it is fun, but at the end of the day I am happy with what I spent on it. I know the developer is working on a sequel so I hope they read this and take these suggestions to heart, but right now the game is fun and worth more than I spent on it.

A little rough around the edges, but overall a pretty entertaining game.

There ought to be something wrong with a game if you don't feel bad resorting to infinite money cheats after just a couple of hours. Why? Because this game can, by and large, be characterized as Farmville in space. You need money to buy expensive ships and weapons to do story missions, but the only way to get it reliably is by mining asteroids and trading, which have about the same degree of complexity and player's involvement as Cookie Clicker. Now, do it again, again, and again for several hours. You can also grind the same 5 mercenary missions over, and over, and over again, or just fly around and shoot other ships, but that will be just as much of an underwhelming and repetitive chore. Also, if your ship does get taken down (usually by a group of pirates suddenly appearing out of nowhere and catching you unawares, sleepy or AFK after several minutes of flying through empty Space with nothing happening), you'll lose some of your precious equipment. Star Nomad is not atrocious, and could be an OK distraction if you're listening to music, or thinking about something, but that's about it it. It is also true that the game harkens back to other space sims like Elite and Star Control, but it has so little variety, and the combat system is so simplistic that it fails to keep one's attention for any significant period of time. (the realisation that you've got nothing else to do in the game happened in Elite as well, mind you, but it came much, much later than here). Bland writing, lame, sometimes sexual, jokes and no memorable characters does not help the case, either. Sexy (if not sexist) art tho.

One man made this? Thumbs up! Even though visual, audio and mechanical parts of the game are simple, the game can be challenging. The game reminds of simplefied 2D hybrid of Freelancer, Darkstar One and Space Rangers. Give it a try.