Space Game General All-Platform Thready Discussy Thing :)

So I’ve been streaming Starshatter: The Gathering Storm recently because I’d never gotten very far in it, and I wanted to bang my head against it. If you’re unaware, it’s really an amazing thing. You start off as a fighter/bomber pilot (you can choose which) and rank up to frigates, destroyers, and eventually full carrier fleet command, planning missions and such.

I recently ranked up from fighters to destroyers for the first time, and my god, it’s an entirely new and different game. This is all through four dynamic campaigns, which is another rarity in the genre. I’m just getting more and more blown away by this thing as I play it. Also, if you wanna try it out, it is free, as the source code was released a decade ago.

I wasn’t and I told you multiple times. Glad you’re getting to experience it now. ;)

Holy crap, that is seriously cool looking. I’ve loved the Interplay Star Trek games for years now, but I’ve never played Super Star Trek. There are a number of other Star Trek text adventures that I’ve tried my hand at though, pretty fun in their own retro way:

Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative

Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy

Star Trek: The Rebel Universe

I know, I can’t assume everyone knows of it though.

Man, I played and loved all of those.

I’d never heard of these. Wow. And that Rebel Universe game seems to be a graphical game, not a text adventure like the other two. I clicked on that first because I was curious what the heck kind of name Rebel Universe was for a Star Trek game, but sadly that page doesn’t have much plot details.

Rebel Universe was the first of those games to have a mouse-based interface, which was MINDBLOWING at the time, after several pure text adventures. Sadly, I feel, it wasn’t as good as the previous text-only installments but it wasn’t terrible.

Hunh. This one kinda snuck in. I have this already from some long-forgotten digital distro, but it’s finally up on Steam. Pretty much no optimization other than the decades-old UIM6 patch, though.

So I’m 12 hours in now and have barely hit the tip of the iceberg. One guy on Steam has over 300 hours. There’s just a ton to do.

Example, I went to a planet to do a merc mission. I saw a question mark nearby and checked it out. This spawned a mission chain that I’m still working on. This is besides the mission screens you unlock by joining guilds and the primary story missions. Plus just doing random exploring (using an EVE-like probe system) and mining (which I have yet to figure out).

Yeah, theres just a loooooooot to do here. I’m honestly kind of in love with the thing, even though it needs a lot more work.

I was a little worried that the scope of this was going to be too big for the developer to achieve - not the case in your opinion?

So it’s a bit different to the mining in the first game heh.

I need to finish the main storyline in the first game before I look at this but have been distracted by the two recent demo-fests on Steam which have (among other things) led me to Dead State after playing the Urban Strife demo.

Been playing the game since last week and so far I’ve been really impressed. Reminds me of Elite, which I’ve got over 1200hrs on pc and Xbox. So this game is right down my alley. Even in EA you’ve got to be looking at hundreds of hours of game time in this. Space/ground combat, factions, thousands of systems, planetary scanning which doesn’t just scan for one location but many. You can take over systems, control fleets, the list is just endless and all the work of one person. Best £13 I’ve spent in a long time.

I mean there’s still a lot that needs working in. Buggy stuff, stuff that’s half finished, but I’ve little doubt he’ll be able to achieve his goals here.

Right? This thing is a steal at the price.

Thanks very much. I have really enjoyed Spacebourne so will definitely get 2 at some stage. I see he’s already released a few patches & an update.

He’s released a ton of patches. Guy is a machine.

Guess I better give him my money sooner then!

Yes, he releases patches almost every day or two.

Yeah it’s pretty astonishing given he does this part-time.

I love those little go-getter devs who never sleep. I worry about their health and sanity, but I love 'em.

Could his name be a Derek-Smart-anagram? Trying it… well, nope. To make up for that bad joke (but really, what a one-man-show!) I’ll play the game now. Proud owner of part I (unfortunately I just bought it last June not realising part 2 was in the making; part II looks much better).

I played about 3 or 4 hours of Chorvs this weekend. I’m enjoying it so far. It does remind me a lot of Freelancer.

This new space 4X looks interesting, they say they were inspired by SOTS: