Totally. Epic should be more like Steam and only host games without bugs and questionable design choices.
The fact that 2 of your games are locking up is starting to make it sound like a “your computer” problem. I was about to comment on the Observation thread that I haven’t had a single lock up on that game.
Can’t comment on this one as I play it on Xbox. But I haven’t seen widespread reports of issues either in the reviews or from players.
Yeah I would think that too except I have no issues with any other game I’ve played recently and this include games running off Steam, Ubisoft, Oculus, etc.
I am just hoping for Ultrawide (not widescreen, I assume that already works)
My point has nothing to do with Epic and more about giving it a year to bake. (But I would prefer it on Steam.)
My bad, I meant Ultrawide.
For what it’s worth, there’s a resolution unlocker that’s supposed to unlock ultrawide resolutions:
Just tried it - works great for 3440x1440. Thanks!
This game is fantastic and evokes a sense of wondrous exploration I have not felt since being a kid and playing The Manhole on an old Macintosh.
I am a bit worried about how long it will last, though, because I don’t want it to end. It doesn’t seem that there are a lot of places to go. Can anyone comment on that?
I absolutely love the space physics. I haven’t used the autopilot, because I don’t need it, but I can see it coming in handy for someone who is having trouble maneuvering in zero g.
I had a real tense moment when I crashed too hard into a planet, and my thrusters were damaged as well as landing gear. I had to exit the ship, thrust back towards the ship and repair it, all while hoping I didn’t end up getting too close to the sun. Lots of great moments like this.
Austin Walker said on Waypoint Radio today that it took home 25+ hours to beat. While there aren’t many locations, there’s apparently a ton of stuff to discover and learn about on each one, and there’s a definite ending that he absolutely loved.
Rough estimate based on my playthrough:
With complete knowledge you finish the game in ~30 minutes (the last loop).
Normal story progression, visiting all planets and almost all points of interest: 15+ hours maybe. +/- a couple depending on how strong you push towards the end.
Complete everything, read every inscription, scour every location to the last mote of dust: 25+ hours.
The planets are small astronomically, or compared to garbage filler like No Man’s Sky, but they are chock full of content.
Yeah seriously. Started this today and it’s been an unexpected joy!
I seriously love this kind of game. Its central mechanic is what Emily Short calls “accretive player character”, which is one of my favorite gameplay conceits. It usually crops up in IF: Sam Barlow (creator of Her Story) has a famous example called Aisle, in which the player can only issue a single command, the game responds, and then that’s the end of the game. Over repeated playthroughs, you can uncover a bunch of information about the backstory and setting. Adam Cadre is the master of this kind of game. Varicella (one of my favorite IF games ever) requires dozens of playthroughs in order to solve the puzzles, learn and optimize the solution. Endless, Nameless is similar and introduces several twists on the forumula. And Andrew Plotkin’s Spider and Web and Hadean Lands include the mechanic, although it’s not central for either of them.
It’s awesome to see a developer using this in a graphical format, and especially in a game that also includes this toy solar system with realistic physics. I love it!
Piling on with my own praise here. There’s surprises everywhere in this. I knew that there was a so-many-minute time limit, but what I didn’t imagine is that the planets around the solar system actually change over that time, so there’s good and less-good times to visit them. I’m fascinated by some of the complications to navigation they put on each planet, but sometimes I sure wish they hadn’t, because I just want to look around, not worry about falling into a black hole or dealing with non-linear passages.
I feel a long way from figuring out the biggest mysteries, but at the moment I’m more than willing to pour another ten hours into this.
I was slow to warm up to this but I think I’m hooked now.
It was difficult for me to decide how to start the game. I knew about the threat of the star going nova and the time loop, but apparently that’s all coming as a surprise to the characters, so there’s no direction offered at all for how you should begin. Just “Hey, guess you’re ready to be an astronaut, go fly around and check some stuff out, or don’t, whatever, we’ve got marshmallows here.”
I would’ve appreciated at least a little more guidance for where to start. Maybe one of the characters said something and I missed it. My first trip, for no particular reason, was to Giant’s Deep. I still haven’t been anywhere else, but that’s a pretty disorienting place to start with all the water spouts and islands being launched out of the atmosphere, and it almost turned me off.
There’s also something uneasy about navigating this whole solar system. I think it’s a combination of the claustrophobic point of view from within the space suit or space ship, and the uncanny speed at which this solar system operates. The planets—though again, I’ve only explored one new one—are practically scooting out from under you as you’re flying, day/night cycles are quick, and then add the chaos of the water spouts, dense cloud cover, and ocean surface of Giant’s Deep, and it was almost overwhelming at first.
All of that made my first couple of attempts short. I died twice from my own mistakes and lived long enough for the super nova on a third attempt, and each time I took a long break before going back to the game.
But!
Spending a bit more with the ship’s log started to help give me the focus I needed to continue. The way it tracks the things you learn of and gives you an idea of where to go next or where to continue exploring for more information is very helpful, and committing to just returning to Giant’s Deep for as long as it seemed like there was still more to learn there eventually started to feel rewarding.
I’m finally hooked, I think, and look forward to getting back to it as soon as I can. I know I still have at least one thing at Giant’s Deep that I need to explore, and the idea of moving on from there isn’t nearly as daunting as that first choice of where to explore. I’m glad I got this game now.
tldr: If you’re overwhelmed at the start, just pick a planet and trial-and-error your way to exploring it, I guess. Make sure to refer to your ship log for summaries of what you learned and what that suggests you should learn more about. That worked for me.
I’m not as far as you (I only did my first reset so far), but you did miss something. The game clearly wanted me to talk to everyone and do everything on the planet before takeoff, hence the extended tutorial on the planet for so many things. So I did that. And there’s a couple of clues to start you off that get recorded in the ship’s log before you even take off for the first time.
Here my limited knowledge of the nova time limit worked against the game: I think I talked to all of the characters around the home planet, but sometimes I was just skimming or reading quickly. I thought I was already up against the clock and a little torn between how much to soak in and how much to rush past. And I’m still not 100% sure whether the “countdown” begins in that first experience on the home planet or not. It’s just from reading this thread that I later got the impression that your first run through you’ve got all the time you want prior to actually getting into your ship and blasting off.
Not the game’s fault, exactly, but something they still could’ve addressed a little better.
This is almost the perfect game for me. I just love everything about it, and I have just about figured everything out, but I have two last question marks on my rumor board. I am a little unsure how to approach the central one but I have a few ideas I’m going to try out after my coffee.
As far as where to start, I just treated it like a normal space program, and went for the moon first, as it was closest, and seemed the least intimidating. It worked out really well, to the point that I think that’s where the game wants you to go, but I don’t remember seeing any clues in the town that pointed that way.
I finished the game a couple of days ago and think it’s going to stay in my mind for a long time. Probably my favourite game since Nier Automata and Witcher 3 before that. It just hit all the right buttons for me and I adore it.
The first loop starts counting after you have a cut scene with the statue.
It’s a great exploration experience but I can definitely see and feel how the 22 minute window clashes with parts of the game.
I never fully “explored” the two largest cities in the game in the conventional sense. I visited probably every bigger point of interest in them, and most minor corners, but always with a purpose. With specific goals already in mind before I set out to them. They are both too big to be covered in one window and both get changed within the window as well.
You can’t leisurely stroll around and endlessly take in the atmosphere and content, It’s more of a planned approach.