3030 Deathwar Redux - A Space Odyssey

[Jimmious]

So this is out since September and has a pretty good response:



Seems like a funky combination of an open-world space game and a ... pixel art adventure game?
Anyone tried it?

 

[Morkar Left]

There was a free version years ago. This is the improved one. It's basically Escape Velocity meets Lucas Arts adventures style. There are no real adventure parts with a scum engine or something like that. Otherwise I really like the game. Worth a try if you like Escape Velocity like games and some adventure humor.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I tried it recently. From what I could tell it has three basic gameplay modes: 2D top-down flying about, walking in stations and salvaging.

Salvaging is a nice mini-game, and walking in stations works because there's no immediate risk to the player, but all three modes suffer from the same crippling problem: The UI. The game has a lot of information to share with the player, and the most vital of it is only relayed via a single text line prompt, which somehow manages to be barely noticeable and never in the same place between the three modes. So it's very easy to miss out on important stuff. Another UI problem is that are four different targeting commands for some reason: One for stations, one for friendly ships, one for enemy ships and one for floating items. Surely this could have been streamlined?

Finally the game flat-out doesn't tell you a lot of things that should be easy to figure out. Buy a missile launcher for your ship and the game doesn't tell you that it only holds a single missile. The game tells you that a ship has no turret slots, yet you can fit a gun to it... OK? Meanwhile it has some very useful tooltips (like the one for docking) so clearly someone has been bashing the dev for his lack of UI awareness, but he lacks an overview over the game's UI as a whole. I was also annoyed by what missions are available is solely based on what ship you're flying. The minute you upgrade to something warp-capable, the mission pool is completely switched out for missions requiring extended trips to other systems.

Also the game got pretty repetetive really quickly, so it didn't hold my interest for very long. There's a fine game in there, but it needs finetuning and streamlining - currently it feels like a few blocks of gameplay held together by duct tape.

 

[Blaine]

The game tells you that a ship has no turret slots, yet you can fit a gun to it... OK?

There's a difference between fixed guns and turreted guns. That might be why.

No idea, haven't played this as it looked neat but by all reports (including yours) is fairly thinly spread.

 

[BLOBERT]

The game tells you that a ship has no turret slots, yet you can fit a gun to it... OK?

There's a difference between fixed guns and turreted guns. That might be why.

No idea, haven't played this as it looked neat but by all reports (including yours) is fairly thinly spread.

BROS FINISHED THIS

PROS
GRAPHICS ARE GOOD PIXEL SHIT
MUSIC SUPRISINGLY GOOD
ITS FUNNY ENOUGH
ITS THE SPACE SHIT TYPE GAME I LIK2
CONTROLS WORK DECENT

CONS
ECONOMY IS NOT RUGHT I COULD GO ON FOREVER
NO GREAT SENSE OF PROGRESSION
MUCH OF THE VALUE IS THAT IT IS CUTE AND FUNNY AND PRESENTED WELL