Void Sails

Threadbare stat system. Worldbuilding is barely explained. Ship handles like a drunken hippo. Only three distinct environments besides "generic ruins" and "generic asteroid field" (I will forgive this though since 3D modeling takes time and it's a small dev team). Devs engage in shameless self-promotion in the reviews (I will not forgive this). The 2-3 hours it takes to finish this aren't remotely worth your time or money.

OK so, it's a real shame that the negative reviews on this one are so prominent. I get the feeling there's a mismatch between expectations VS reality with this one that has caused that, which is a damn shame, because this game is really, really cool. Hopefully this review can bridge that gap a bit. The game is made up of different sections. - There's the ship sailing, which involves flying through the sky with the occasional bit of combat. The ship controls are exactly appropriate. It takes time to speed up and slow down, and combat is positional. In what is imo the best way to approach it, you fly around on a 2D plane, rather than full 3D. Kind of like Rebel Galaxy if you've played that. Anyway, in these parts of the game, you're mostly flying around to points of interest. - Those points of interest are story focused sections, where you will usually pick a branching narrative path and have a dice roll or two based on stats and items you have collected that determine pass/failure paths. These work really well, and the writing is quite good with an intruiging lore/world/backstory to get you hooked in. I have only just gotten up to The Man In Yellow and rested at the tavern, so I can't speak to the story overall, but I'm happy to see where this grand adventure takes me. It feels like a DM leading me through one particular story in an expansive world full of it's own characters that feel like they live there independently of you. - There are also sections where you travel a node based map, where some of those points contain points of interest to engage with as well. I just really like this so far, will definitely keep playing to see where it goes. A 4ish hour experience for this sounds just right imo - enough to get a cool story in but not too much to feel like it lags. I can understand some people might feel like the game was too short for the price it was released at. Value is a subjective thing so I can't speak to your idea of worth of a game in dollar value, and I got this game at 80% off AFTER the team cut that original price by half, but I would have paid it's current full price and been more than happy. I do feel for the devs here, they clearly made something they loved and it shines through in the game itself. Y'all should be proud of what you've made here.

This game is a promising concept but it's mostly what appears to be a simple Unity game, with maybe 4~5 hours of content? The little FTL style map segments are unbearingly slow. And the lack of any kind of visual upgrades is incredibly disappointed. I'd say this game plays much more like a demo then it does a finished released title. Someone could probably make this game or a better one within a week. And this isnt trying to be insulting. Thats just how little there is here.

Feels like an asset flip. The voice acting is good, the writing is... ok. But you will not experience any of what made the Treasure Planet so interesting. The aether/space is just a cloudy skybox, the islands in it look like bits of playdough up close, the combat is sluggish and uninteresting, there is no save feature (autosaves only), map or propper inventory in the game despite you collecting items and exploring often. the music you hear in the trailer is all you will hear for at least 30 minutes in the begining, on a short feeling loop, as you painfully slowly float through nothing to get to the next highlighted island.

this game looks like treasure planet on the screenshots but it looks like a basic unity game once you play it. it's basically a questing novel, it's slow, steering the ship is janky, the writing is poor and it's just not fun.

Basically, you sail around the map until you reach a settlement or an encounter of some kind. In settlements, there is some possible dialogue and then you move on. Nothing much seems to happen. Some scenes don't seem to pay off with anything meaningful. Upgrades to your ship don't give any real sense of progression. Ship controls can be described charitably as "janky." There are battles, but one of them has an incredibly high spike in difficulty. I've seen other people comment that they couldn't win a particular battle and that it didn't feel worth trying after awhile. I feel the same way. Furthermore, there is no way to adjust the difficulty if you have trouble. All in all, a major disappointment.

I put "yes" out of respect for the indy devs and their efforts, but I am not finding a whole lot about this game to recommend. I enjoyed my brief time with it and feel like I got my money's worth. With a few tweaks I think this game could be really engaging, but to me it was a LOT of slog for a handful of truly memorable moments. Some notes I had while playing: 1. I do NOT like the rolling system, and I do not trust it. Some of the numbers seem "fixed", auto succeed or auto fail, and if the outcome is fixed why have a roll? 2. The illusion of choice. Due to crashes and having to save and come back, I was able to experience some scenes both failing a check and succeeding. Every time, the story progressed to the same point. Most dialog options are also obviously the same no matter which tree you go down. It FEELS like a choose your own adventure story, but really it is a visual novel. Which I do not mind, but it feels like false advertising. 3. The Ship is boring. I have to say "The Ship" because it does not even have a name. The only interaction we get is moving, fighting, and a third-person view. The story seemed to bend itself to justify using the ship in some parts, and then did next to nothing with it. 4. Lack of Saving. I would love to replay certain combat sequences or make different choices, but the game has too much fluff to justify another replay just to make one or two changes. Not to mention that some of the things I want to see are what happens if I succeed (or fail) certain checks, which are not assured and take too long to get to. A system with manual saving and multiple save files would increase replayability. 5. "You're just not thinking 3rd Dimensionally!" For a game about a space ship with solar sails and rocket boosters it is odd that we cannot change our elevation or orientation along with our heading. This could easily be reskinned as an ocean-going game since all vessels are on the same 2d plane. It was a complaint I had about Battle at Procyon back in the day, and when I saw the trailer one I hoped Void Sails had fixed. 6. Lack of Direction/Limited Choice. I was very surprised at the end to learn I could have acquired an item to influence the outcome. I had no idea that was an option, and with every choice in the game being binary I cannot recall any choice I had to acquire/retain the item. The text-based binary choice system is incredibly limited, and I feel holds back the story I can sense the devs trying to tell. If there are 'secret' ways to do things, a few more hints might be helpful. 7. The Attributes. I failed nearly every one of my perception checks and almost half of my resolve checks in my initial playthrough. By the end of the game, I was incredibly frustrated with how low those stats had fallen. Many choices penalize you for failure, which creates a negative feedback loop as your low stat means you continue to fail checks and lose more stats. There were also times the "DC" I had to roll under was lower than the number of my skill. (A notable one in the final sequence was a knowledge check: I had a 97 in knowledge but had to roll below 69. I failed that check, but not by more than 97. I have no idea how that was calculated.) As a fan of Treasure Planet and Battle at Procyon since they came out, I was excited by the look of Void Sails. Unfortunately, it does not live up to the inspirational source. I got my money's worth, and I plan to revisit it again when I have time, but there is not a lot here to bring me back.

Maybe I had to high of hopes for this but it just doesn't hit the spot. Feels very unpolished; more akin to a CS Students final project with a bit more work put into art and writing. Had to check after I played for a bit to see if I missed that it was an early access title, as even the pause menu still shows "Wishlist now!", but, no, full release. Price point is a big ask for what it contains.

https://youtu.be/xI-5IzaeLv8 прокачка и диалоги в виде интерактивной книги. иногда подвисала и вылетала (при новом патче не знаю как ведёт себя). Очень интересная игра. Сильно затягивает. не советую тратить ходы просто так перемещаясь по карте ( позже ощущается дефицит провианта) плохо что только в новом патче добавили поддержку джойстиков. на релизе пришлось играть с клавомыши.

A fun little indie game that reminded me of Sunless Skies but in 3D. I got it on sale for about $5 which I feel is more than fair given the length of the game (3 hrs) and the amount of content. I would love to see a longer and more polished game by this dev in the future!