Starcom: Unknown Space

Well. I loved this game for a few hours. There is lots to explore and see. Unfortunately you reach a point where there is a race that is way more powerful then you and everything seems blocked off. This would be ok, since I have missions in my mission screen, but that screen is useless. I have a few outstanding missions but their descriptions on the Mission screen are so high level as to be useless. I have several things that are marked as further interaction on the map but those are not progressing things either. Not sure why, they just aren't. So overall, it was great fun for a bit but I got totally blocked out of continuing. If they had any sort of decent mission tracker this might not be an issue, but they don't. It's really unfortunate. I great premise with overall great execution struck down by an extremely useless mission tracker. I've scoured my current universe, and am stuck. Sucks. I only recommend it if you only need a few hours out of it or are an incredible note taker.

Nice little space exploring game with RPG elements

Mega nice

build a ship and fly.

This proved to be a good bit of fun - an alternate take on the Star Control recipe, if you will. It offers a decent story and satisfying combat, supported by a forgiving repair system. Ship progression was quite satisfying, though I would've liked more options to try different types of ship tech earlier on. There's an option to reset your tech later, but by then it feels more like an expensive experiment than A/B testing your build. Actually building the ship was a key part of keeping my interest. You have to prioritise a few resources - and trade for them if need be - to get the exact parts you need for certain modules. Where you lay those modules out matters too. Heat, reinforcement, engines, armour, energy... it's not just a matter of slapping on more guns and going. The impact of this becomes more important late-game, when your ships are big enough to start having heating issues. Early on, you're more constrained by power and resources. In my playthrough, this transition was very smooth. It always felt like optimisation rather than being shoe-horned into a specific design. The main grind is exploring planets, but it's clearly indicated on the map which ones have yet to be scanned or otherwise actioned, and there's just enough variety to keep it interesting. In between, there are a few puzzles and discoverable points of interest that add some story to the vast emptiness of space that this game quite effectively fills. Shout out to the Void system too. That transition in speed makes everything feel closer than you'd normally find them in other titles, adds some variety to combat, and gave me a reason to add wings to a spaceship. If you're not familiar with it, the Void basically allows you to fly significantly faster away from large gravity wells. This is in addition to jumps and slips. Jumps make returning to an area cheap, while slips are more of a trick to keep you on track by limiting your navigation choices and guiding you down the right path, while still keeping that feeling of freedom of choice. As for the story, it doesn't feel quite as alive as my memories of Star Control 2. There's plenty of information and tonnes of races out there, but none of my interactions felt quite as impactful. Perhaps I missed something, but even though there was definitely an impact on the ships and factions on the map, there's no real sphere of influence that puts much weight behind how those powers are spread across the map. That said, it's enough to cause people to shoot at each other instead of just at me. The war(s) felt real enough, and the game convinced me that I had picked sides at key points. And honestly, that's probably all it needed to do.

great game!!!!

wenn du scifi magst wirst du es lieben.