Space Game Watch: Starsector

I have always had a soft spot for space games, so I tend to break my rules about never playing indie games when it comes to anything with spaceships. Someone on the SA Forums made a rather fantastic thread advertising a game called Starsector, which is currently in early access alpha for a very reasonable price. The developers unfortunately chose to use the worst programming language ever, but the upside is that the game has a surprisingly strong modding community (Stockholm syndrome in action).

The game is basically just a space combat simulator at the moment – you get to give some rudimentary orders to your fleet, and then you can take control of one of the spaceships and crush some heads. They have an elegant mechanic for managing a single resource (flux) in combat – your ship can only handle so much of it at once (without overloading) and your weapons and shields generate it. Add to that a ship special ability, customizable hardpoints, ammunition and support fighters, and you get a deep and involved space combat system – although I still find it somewhat hard to pilot though, as the battleships handle, well, like battleships, I suppose.

The campaign is supposedly going to be some sort of RPG/strategy/Star Control 2 inspired adventure, which sounds pretty fantastic, although currently it consists of exactly bugger all. I’m sure I’m missing something since there seems to be nothing to do except find pirates to kill, but thankfully that part of the game is great – and it’s fun to gradually buy new ships and weapons until you can steamroll anyone who stands in your way.

Anyway, hopefully the authors get a move on and make that campaign, because we could really do with a game like this!

Credit for the picture goes to Cycerin, the author of a Starsector mod called Blackrock Driveyards, which is a great mod. Download it. He also made the thread on SA, which is way more detailed and interesting than this post!