Space Run , a spaceship (tower) defense game!

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http://www.passtechgames.com/blog/

This came out on Steam yesterday, I’ve watched a few videos for it and it looks like a refreshing take on tower defense. Brian Rubin, please report in on your experience! I saw you had 2 hours played on Steam!

It’s also on sale till 6/20/14 for $11.24 (25%) off.

I usually can’t stand tower defense, but the spaceship angle sells it to me. It’s tense and fun and difficult, and I like it. I’ll have a video up next week.

I’m typically a big fan of tower defence (particularly games that put a twist on it like Revenge of the Titans, Immortal Defence, Gratuitous Tank Battles, Sang-Froid, Comet Crash, Tower Wars, Dungeon Defenders etc.) but my enthusiasm for it has bombed a bit recently, which I attribute to Kingdom Rush (a solid game but I think I burnt out on it). I’ve got to say though, Space Run has piqued my interest! Thanks for the heads up lordkosc, another to add to my list…

Also, that has to be Stephen Russell doing the voice over.

I wouldn’t call that a tower defense game, even though the developers do. It doesn’t have enemies following a fixed, twisting path. The enemies don’t just trudge by the towers while taking fire, they’re shooting at you. You have components that have nothing to do with shooting things, like power generators and thrusters.

It’s a spaceship construction game, where the design of your spaceship is simplified so it’s done as dropping components down on a hex grid. Which is great, I really like spaceship design games which have you tinkering with layout as well as components, the most recent of which being Out There.

I’ve got a ridiculous backlog, but I may end up buying and playing this soon anyway.

THIS makes it sound way more appealing (although I’m not someone who hates tower defense in general).

It does remind me of a more literal tower-defense-in-space game called Starship Defense (wow, bland name!) for the DS. I’d definitely recommend it if you still play on your DS.

I saw the trailer and went for it. I haven’t played a TD game in a long while. Besides, it reminds me of Galaxy Trucker, and that’s always a good thing.

I agree with this to some degree. I’m guessing the enemies attack in scripted waves so you have to tweak and tune your setup in much the same way you do with traditional TD. I suppose with Space Run you’re turning the TD paradigm inside out so instead of enemies passing through your defences, you’re passing through them – in much the same way as Anomaly.

I’m starting to think that ‘tower defence’ is losing its meaning or is becoming quite misrepresentative, perhaps even misused, in almost the same way as ‘roguelike’. TD or roguelike elements is perhaps a more accurate way of describing these games that have clear influences but buck a lot of the genre’s trends. I think it’s great that genres are cross-pollinating but I do worry sometimes that trying to snappily describe certain games with a few genre types can ultimately sell them short. Look at Sang-Froid, it certainly has tower defence elements to it but it’s much more than that. In fact, I nearly didn’t list it with the others above. I suppose for me, if you’re laying out defences for an inevitable attack (defences that operate without your intervention), and that’s the primary mode of play, I’d says it’s in the tower defence ball park.

You mean Starship Patrol! It’s still a bland name.

So, do you control the ship at all, or is this more like GSB, where you design it then watch the battle play out?

Weird. Apparently it went under both names. Funny that I didn’t see that the name was different in that link, though.

The ship itself goes in a straight line, what you control is where and which components you put onto the ship, like guns, shields, power generators, engines and the like, so as to protect you from the waves of pirates, asteroids, competitors and so on that you’ll have to shoot at and survive through. You also do this as the ship is underway, so it’s pretty hectic.

Okay, I finally watched the videos for Space Run and it seems totally inspired by the Galaxy Trucker boardgame. Which is awesome. On my wishlist. We’ll see what the discount is at the summer sale.

Screw it, I bought it and I’m playing.

You’re delivering cargo, and you must deal with asteroids both small and large, small hostile ships, big hostile ships, and neutral ships. You have no control over your course, but that’s fine because you’re pretty damned busy as it is.

Every mission you start with your cargo containers, an empty ship hull that’s specific to the mission, and a single thruster. You get a steady income of “nuts,” which is the currency you use in missions to build new ship components. Every asteroid or ship you destroy drops more nuts, which you must manually collect. I dislike games that force you to collect money manually, but this doesn’t seem like enough of a time-suck to matter.

Enemy weapon hits and asteroids that strike the ship do damage. These damage components first, and if they strike a hex without a component, can damage the ship’s hull. Empty hexes which take enough damage are destroyed and lost forever, which is a pretty big setback. You can repair components, which costs nuts, but only if they haven’t taken damage recently. So you can’t spam repair to offset enemy damage.

Weapons have fixed, very narrow firing arcs, generally just 60 degrees (one hex side). In addition to placing components, you execute commands on existing components. For lasers, the most important command is “rotate,” so it’s facing a new threat. Lasers project one hex forward into space, so it’s actually possible for a laser facing forward to block an adjacent laser from rotating left, because the barrel is in the way. This also means the placement restricts what firing arcs are possible - if the hex doesn’t have a clear view aft, you can’t rotate the laser to face threats from behind.

Thrusters affect how quickly you finish the mission, and very little else. Your starting thruster will get you there on time for standard delivery. Additional thrusters will cut your time enough so you can get the Express or Lightning delivery ratings. There are little markers for the faster goals on the timeline below the ship, and they display quite clearly how much thrust you need now to make that goal. As time goes on that number’s naturally going to climb. Generally speaking you need to spend your money on weapons first to deal with threats before you can afford additional thrusters. Since thrust is important, hexes with rear-facing hexes which can take thrusters are at a premium.

When you finish a mission, you gain credits and reputation stars. Credits is per intact container delivered, multiplied by the speed bonus. Basic is x1, Express is x2, and Lightning is x3. Credits are the between-missions currency, which you spend to unlock new components and additional abilities for existing components. You can run a single mission repeatedly and get Credits each time, so barely making it means you’re making progress in Credits.

Reputation stars, on the other hand, only count your best run for each mission. Finishing is 1 star, delivering 50% of the cargo is 1 star, delivering 100% is 2 stars. Express delivery is 1 star, lightning is 2 stars. So the best possible run is 5 stars, 100% delivery in Lightning speed. Reputation stars unlock equipment and additional missions. You can’t buy advanced equipment no matter how many Credits you have if your reputation is too low.

Weapons I’ve seen and used so far are Lasers, Missile Launchers, and Ion Cannons. Lasers are the basic weapons, can rotate, and can shoot small fast objects. Missile launchers are much more effective and have a much longer range, but cannot rotate, and can only shoot large objects. Ion cannons disable enemy ships and take down shields, which is important against the bigger ships, which have the same hex layout as your ship. There are quite a few weapons I have not unlocked yet.

Support items I’ve seen are shield generators and power generators. Both take up valuable space, so they aren’t practical on small ship hulls with few hexes, but they don’t need an exterior hex like weapons. Shield generators absorb damage much more effectively than components, and regenerate on their own. Power generators improve the damage output of nearby weapons, provided you’ve purchased the appropriate upgrades.

There are multiple types of cargo pods. I’ve seen basic pods, fuel pods, mechanic pods, and passenger pods. Fuel pods do damage to your ship if destroyed. Mechanic pods can create additional basic cargo pods, for a cost in nuts. Passenger pods must be placed on the exterior of the ship (for the view), and require an adjacent power generator or they rapidly degrade.

In all, the “tower defense” aspects are primarily the highly scripted nature of the threats on each mission, and very artificial feel of starting with almost no ship components and constantly building them on the fly. It’s really very different from tower defense games, so there’s very little “done that” feel to it. It’s really its own genre.

I’m only a few missions in but so far I really like this. Between missions you can spend money on upgrading existing parts and unlocking new ones. Upgrades are either some actively used thing or a passive boost; the starting laser cannon’s first upgrade allows you to reorient it (very important). The first thruster upgrade allows you to turn it off for 15 seconds but earn 50 sheckles for doing so. Since you’re racing against time this presents some tactical decision making I guess, but I haven’t beaten “lightspeed” by much on the first couple of maps (finishing faster than lightspeed gives a 3x multiplier for the money you earn; there’s a category below for 2x).

I’ve just gotten my second contact for missions. The next mission for the first contact will give me an engineering module (permanently? not sure). They can build additional cargo crates en route which can help boost money. You need space to do it though.

The engineering module is for that mission only. Though I’m assuming you’ll see other missions which also give that module.

Ok, thanks. Hectic and I don’t get along.

Yeah, while my initial reactions are positive, I’m not liking the pace. It’s too fast for me, particularly when you run into a boss ship (“Brown Beard.”) I feel like I don’t have any time to think about what I’m doing.

I won’t say it’s impossible to take down a bosship without understanding it’s pattern. . . but it has to be close. That’s really frustrating. My first clash with him went poorly because alot of my firepower was concentrated in areas he never spent much time in. There isn’t enough time to deal with something like that. Also, the little cutscenes are annoying.

I think it’s possible to fight the boss the first time without having unlocked ion cannons, which means you might be able to take out a few of his outer hexes but then your weapons will do a lot of bouncing off of his shields. So I fought him a second time and I actually took out about 80% of his ship. . . but that was partly due to luck. I was able to get one laser on rapid fire for a good portion of the ship’s pass, backed by ion, but it wasn’t enough. The powers on the things you can build are cool but they just make the pace even more frantic. It seems like we’re expected to put them to good use, but with all the different parts it’s hard to get all of them doing what you need them doing at the moment you need to do them.

So yeah the pace can be frustrating, especially with bosses or fighting multiple waves at once (this isn’t a problem the first few times you do it, but soon you’re facing larger waves and tougher large ships all at once).

Yeah, sadly I didn’t see any way to pause the game or anything, so it might be one speed fits all. Would pausing take away all the tension though? Personally I think not because FTL has pausing and I still get anxiety attacks from that game.

Well, I think FTL is the “that’s my thesis, that’s my closing argument!” response to a tension argument. This game isn’t the same type of game as FTL granted, but the point being that it’s generally possible to add pausing to something while maintaining tension is certainly reasonable. The ships are already getting too intricateto be hopping through turrets doing lots of activating/repositioning/etc with much coherence.