Source: Birthday Prezzie
Price: £22.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Page
Version Reviewed: 0.3 (March 7th, 2017)
Other Reviews: Release

Good spaceflight games are, even in these days where they’re coming back, few and far between. But Everspace, god help me, has definitely grabbed my attention in a big way, because even though it’s only at 0.3 (0.4 coming soon), it’s already quite polished, and had me whooping like a schoolchild at how enjoyable it was to die, again and again and again.

The game has missions, every now and again. I can tell the mission giver is not a hoopy frood, because he doesn’t know where his towel is.

Yes, you heard me right. It was, and is enjoyable, even in losing. But let’s get into it. Everspace is the 3D equivalent of something like FTL, a procedurally generated universe made of sectors, themselves made of small, junk filled arenas where a series of pilots (played by you), attempt to get to their destination while being chased by the Okkar empire, a reptilian people, being hounded by outlaws, trying to find the resources (Especially fuel, which is needed for Jumps between subsectors) you need to survive, while also being nagged by perhaps the most British AI I have yet to encounter.

Interestingly, all of these pilots are named differently, but sound the same… And I honestly don’t mind. It… Works, somehow. I wish I could tell you how. In any case, the game is very polished for a 0.3 release, with some great soundwork, music that gets the blood pumping, a solid UI, and some nice, chunky ship designs, from the tri-foil Outlaw fighters, to the Okkar Corvette that I encountered in Sector 3 (So far, the furthest I’ve gotten in something like 30 runs.) Every time you die, the money earned goes towards levelling up abilities, chance of good drops, better equipment, and… Different ships.

It’s somewhat difficult, for obvious reasons, to grab footage of a fight as it’s happening. Thankfully, the game’s Action Pause Camera allows me to wow you anyway.

I’m not going to say better ships, because I’ve been learning that lesson the hard way with the Gunship. Oh, it’s meaty, alright. The Medium Explorer has a shield, a pulse laser, and a gatling gun (With the option to increase damage for a period of time), but, while the Gunship has armour (Reducing damage taken overall), a Gatling Turret, Combat Drones out of the box, and the highly satisfying Flak Cannon (Mangle an Okkar Fighter in just a couple of shots once its shields are down! Mine an asteroid or crystal node with one shot!), it also has… No shields, and its shield damaging weapon is the highly erratic and energy intensive Fusion Cannon (Which I try to replace with my dependable buddy the Pulse Laser as soon as humanly possible.) It’s also slower, and harder to turn. So, while, with the Explorer, it’s entirely possible to get through an encounter undamaged, the Gunship is very much in the “Damage race” end of things, especially as most of its weaponry is close range (Sub 1Km)

Considering I have to get 10 thousand credits in a single run to buy the Scout, I can’t really tell you what the Light option is like right now (Although I most definitely will before release), but I can tell you that each ship has its own upgrade tree, with a player tree for things like better maps (GOOD), Better retrieval of the wreck of your last run (Providing, of course, you can find it), extra equipment choices, and, of course, more cash, better repairs, more fuel… And while yes, there’s a limited amount of things you can encounter, the later sectors have bigger and badder things (Such as the Link Drone Ship, invincible until you destroy the swarming little beggars it produces… Periodically.) and, of course, the game isn’t finished, so more things are being promised.

Even as is, though, the game is high octane in its combat, darkly relaxing in between, with a lot of its potential already shining through.

Pictured: The first time I took the Gunship out for a spin. I underestimated my opponents, and I paid the price for not understanding how my ship worked. LET’S DO IT AGAIN!

Oh, and it has an action-pause cam from the menu, allowing you to hit escape at the right moment, go to the cam, and capture your ship either wrecking… Or getting wrecked. I’d like to be able to take pics from more than just the players’ perspective (I mean, if it’s my Gunship getting owned, maybe I’d like to take it from the perspective of my killer, or some random drone that still has a good angle?), but right now? That’s my only niggle with this game. It’s built around multiple runs, and so far, it’s doing a very good job of sucking me into one more run.

The Mad Welshman grinned as he heard the DING of target lock. What was causing all these ships of the same model to come by? Oh, no matter, they always had good loot!

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99 (£18.99 for Fleet Edition)
Where To Get It: Humble Store, GOG, Steam

The sea is a harsh mistress. She is also, in Diluvion, a strangely empty one. Unless you count pirate ships, of which there are plenty.

Thankfully, at this range, it’s almost impossible to miss. The day is mine!

Let’s step back a bit: Diluvion is a submarine adventurey simulation type thing, in which you pick one of three ships, eventually upgrading to better ones that can go deeper, picking up crew and having adventures as you go.

There’s just one problem: It’s not very intuitive, and it doesn’t feel all that rewarding. It is, without doubt, pretty. When you find an ice block, several times bigger than your sub, or an abandoned research station surrounded by mines, you can’t help but wonder at the stories. But, even with the landmarks, those stories are mostly one liners, and most of what you’ll be seeing, even if you work out how to efficiently use the faster currents to get around, is murky dankness, filled with the bacteria and dead flesh of the ocean, the marine snow.

Not the shiniest landmark. But still an *impressive* landmark, considering…

The main thing that comes to mind with Diluvion is that yes, it’s a fairly open world, but it’s an open world without a whole lot to do. The first main quest (Upgrading the sub) is effectively an extended fetch quest, asking you to find scrap (Which is the easiest, being common, and ammunition for your main guns aside), reinforced plates (Seemingly only found in a minefield, because this is a post-apocalypse), engine parts (Seemingly, again, only found in certain areas), some blackberries (God knows how they’re grown, but I’ve also found Ferns and Daisies, so… Good job?), and a morse radio (Again, found… Somewhere. Somewhere I haven’t been yet.) Meanwhile, most of what this entails is docking with abandoned research stations, Loot Spheres (No, really, that’s what they’re called), pirate ships you’ve attacked, hunting around a hand drawn 2d representation of the thing you docked with for chests, and looting the buggers. Occasionally, there will be a crew member to hire (Including, weirdly, in the pirate ships you cripple with your scrap cannons), a trader, or an event hidden behind a door, itself gated by whether you have a crew member (Who you will potentially lose) and a crowbar (Which you will definitely lose, regardless.)

Again, these… Just blend into each other, to be honest, the majority not even being noticeable, let alone memorable. Crazed crewman to calm down was the most common one I saw, along with “There is a loot chest here, but it’s dangerous to get, maybe a crewman will help!” Meanwhile, Lady with Party Hat seems to get about a lot faster than I do, being seen in multiple places, at multiple times, sometimes even in the same building. Sometimes she’ll be running a bed and breakfast. Sometimes, she’s got absolutely nothing to say. Sometimes she’s a crafter of charms, which, due to the strange world, actually have an effect. But she is Lady with Party Hat, and unfortunately, you can tell me no different.

Good Heavens, they’re *multiplying* o.O

There is an over-arching story to this, by the way, something about a treasure, with everything unknown but its rough location (Very Deep Underwater), that apparently will make Everything Alright… But, for all that there are excellent ship designs, and the buildings are interesting, the sameness of a lot of the ones you encounter dulls the overall experience. It’s interesting, in its way, how a first quest can really mess up an experience. There are interesting things to find, and I’ve mentioned a few (Another would be the Angry Captain. Poor feller’s driven himself into an electricity pylon, and needs to make the cash to get towed), but despite seeing these things, I’m bored, and this big ol’ fetch quest is a big part of that.

It doesn’t help that, as mentioned, it’s somewhat unintuitive, and a little bugged to boot. When entering the settings, mouse sensitivity and the window size aren’t remembered between sittings (Occasionally causing swearing as Apply resizes beyond what I was comfortable with), the crew end up being pretty numbers, and applying them is odd, combat depends upon you remembering turret position, and just because something is a landmark, doesn’t always mean its a checkpoint. To be perfectly fair, dying is not a big problem, as you can reload from the last checkpoint just fine, but switching between 2d captain mode (For talking to crew, boarding ships, etc) and the main 3d mode is annoying at best, and, even with the addition of a slowdown function to switch crew between stations in combat, frustrating at worst.

Tonnesburg is, so long as you look around, a surprisingly lovely place. You will be coming back here. A fair bit.

I can see Diluvion being perfectly fine if you go into it with the right mindset, aware of the grind and just wanting to chill out, spend some time. It does, as noted, definitely have its pretty side. There was obvious attention paid to the aesthetics, there’s obviously a world out there. But it’s not really for me. If you want a chill submarine time, then I don’t think you could go far wrong with Diluvion. But if you want something a little spicier, quicker, and a little less grindy, I definitely wouldn’t blame you.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Oh, Nefarious… You’re kind of villainous, but for many of the wrong reasons. I’d still say you’re okay, but you definitely have your downsides. So let’s discuss that, you and I.

Problem one with screenshotting Nefarious: There’s a fair amount of variety.
Problem two: MY EYES!

I like your idea: This time, it’s the villain. I loved some of the interesting, gimmicky moments you had, and the wry commentary on many moustache twirling habits, like mainly kidnapping princesses rather than princes, and how not all princesses are going to be dainty little flowers. I love your visual design, cartoony, over the top, and yet so clean, and I definitely love your soundtrack, with all the knowing nods, winks, and nudges to a wide variety of things, including Sentai shows. We need more of that, so props where props are due!

But, of course, we need to talk about the other things. You’ve probably heard them before, and you may be tempted to dismiss them. Please don’t, you can improve, twirl your moustache that little bit harder if you listen. Let’s start with your platforming. It’s floaty, and saggy. Part of this is the physics… Yes, I get you wanted freedom of movement in the air, but sometimes, those little boom jump things really would be better if they were fixed path. It would save a lot of players, including me, switching their hand from the mouse to make damn sure we actually get where we’re going, which slightly defeats the point of those boomjumps. Similarly, needing the player to fully go through the landing animation before being able to jump again causes some headaches, especially when you’re required to jump rather quickly and precisely. Not quite sure how to fix that, but it does lead to accidents in the workplace, sadly…

The prince is a nice guy. You did a good job kidnapping this one!

…Soundwise, you’re a little bit lacking. Those punches need a bit of a swoosh to them, add a little impact. In fact, sound in general needs a bit of perking up, and I was rather confused when the protagonist, Crow, spoke in the beginning, and then… Didn’t. I quite liked his voice, but I understand if the budget didn’t allow… It’s just a little saddening, is all.

Beyond that, there’s minor niggles, like how the airship keeps flying back to the first area after each level, or your problem with ramps (A common one with Unity games, but fixable. Take heart!) but I’d like to stress that you have charm, you have a lot of variety, some nice, eclectic references, and even if you’re not for everyone, I know you can improve, and gain a blacker, dapper-er heart.

Don’t worry about the ropes or the train, that’s just my normal way of greeting a fellow ne’er-do-well.

Not pictured: The slightly hollow footsteps.

Wishing you well!

The Mad Welshman

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Defect: SDK (Standing for Ship Destruction Kit) is a game where, despite knowing it’s partly my fault, I can’t help but get frustrated. And it’s down to a lot of things.

Firstly, there’s the UI. Now, good UI design is hard, because while we often talk about how many interactions (Clicks or keypresses), it takes to do a thing, that’s only one factor. There’s also another pair of factors that doesn’t always get talked about with the design there: Time and attention. So, for educational purposes, I’m linking this rough note of the main game UI for Defect.

This isn’t that linked UI pic, but this does illustrate how big things can get. These are *nowhere* near the biggest things in the game.

That’s potentially a lot of things for what the game is, which is a mission based, effectively score attack arcade shooter with construction elements and unlockable upgrades. Bars go down, numbers go up, and, by even the end of the tutorial, fire is going to be coming at you from many directions, and many sizes of ships. I mentioned in the Early Access review that, at least in the early game, you are not big. But other things definitely are. Pay attention to them, and the smaller ships become somewhat hard to intuitively evade. Pay attention to the smaller ships, and you probably won’t even see the frigate that murdered your ass from what you perceive to be several screens away.

That’s a fair bit to keep an eye on over what often turns out to be a short space of time, and that’s frustrating.

Similarly, the game’s balance very much relies, not only on the mission objectives, but one to two core pieces of equipment, including: The Core. This blows up, you blow up. But this makes other decisions extremely tough, and it only takes the second core component, the cockpit, to see why. Just crew, on your first core, can take a tenth of your energy for… A small fighter at a time where you’re probably wanting something bigger, or a quarter of your energy for… Just over twice the crew. This is, by the way, before you start putting in the things that require both crew and power, which include the engines, weapons, armour, and… Wings. No, I’m not joking, each wing you put on your ship requires a crewmember to man it. Out of, at the end of the tutorial, an absolute maximum of… 25. It slowly gets better as the game progresses, but the key word there is slowly. Most of the time, you’re going to be making heavy compromises. Something tanky and shooty, but slow as heck and steers like a cow. Something quick, but with very few weapons and next to no armour. That first one will fail you quite a few of the missions from the second tier (Most of which involve speed or agility), while the second… May well run into another limiting factor, and the key behind the game’s name.

With this new core, I can… Spend 200 extra scrap for 30 extra power. Which I’d need to spend extra scrap to use. Grrr.

Defect (v.) – Abandon one’s country or cause in favour of an opposing one. Aka what your crew do after every. Single. Mission. It’s meant to be a running gag, but it wears extremely thin once you build a small, nippy ship for, say, doing a mission involving a trench run on the weakpoint of a planet smashing laser platform, only to then have to destroy the ship you built last mission, which has lots more armour, and about four more weapons. At least two of which are semi-guided missiles, and likely a turret that tracks a hell of a lot better than I do when I have the damn things.

Now, in balance, I will say that the visual style of Defect is damn fine. I love the artwork. I somewhat like the ambient music and the creepy drama of the title theme. The sound design is good, and the customisation is mostly well explained. Nothing like seeing a lovingly rendered Crewman Ziggy stab you in the back, or listening to the fwwwwwoooosh of your thrusters (Or, in the case of some later ones, the RRRFWSHWRRRRWRRSH.) The basic controls, similarly, are pretty simple: WASD for tank-control style movement, mouse for pretty much everything else. Bam.

But, in a very real sense, Defect is built on conflicts of design and compromise, and, while I’m certain at least part of it is that I’m not great at arcade twin sticks, another part of it is that yes, the game conflicts with itself at times. I’m sure there’s an ideal path through the game, one that allows you to build progressively better ships, going through the missions, and managing to destroy your traitorous crew each time with few problems. I’m equally sure that people are enjoying it more than I am, exploring the requirements of each mission with gusto, creating tricked out ships that shouldn’t work, but do.

Alas, I am not one of those folks.

One of my many flawed attempts at building a ship. Try and spot the main flaws here.

The Mad Welshman fogged up his faceplate with a gusty sigh. He was somewhat used to treachery, but normally he was on the other end of it. Oh well, he thought, nothing to do but wait for the rescue craft.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £9.99 (£3.99 for the Soundtrack, which definitely ain’t bad)
Where To Get It: Steam 

When I got the email that the developers of UnEpic were making a new game, I was both excited and nervous. Excited, because UnEpic did interesting things. Nervous, because it was also referential as hell, dumb in places, and stupidly hard and grindy in others.

This, er… Makes slightly more sense as a joke once you’ve played UnEpic and seen the bits before this… :/

For good or for ill… Little has changed. The references are somewhat less forced, the story veers wildly between pulpy silliness, philosophical discussion, and blatant referential humour, and the grind?

Oh yes. The grind remains. And it remains my problem with Ghost 1.0, because, to me? It’s just not fun to repeat alarm lockdowns for Energon-Cubes-As-Currency, so I can get better weapons that, really, I should be earning more organically. And this is a damn shame, because, for all the bitching, there has been improvement over the UnEpic formula, with fluid movement, a better overall story (Involving the enslavement of androids by an evil corporation… Hey, I said better, not amazing), and some cool stuff hidden in there… But, even past the halfway point, I’m not sure it feels worth it to continue. Boss with nigh unavoidable paralyzing shockwave, making it a damage race? Check. Instant death laser segments that, while using the cool idea of controlling robots with cyber-psychic powers, uses it for tedious, “Do it right or do it again” segments involving scientist robots with no offensive abilities (Read: Forced puzzle-stealth segments.) Check.

Not cool, Fran, I totally made my Dexterity Check!

There’s fun in there. Really, there is. The second boss, for example, is fun. The first boss, once you figure it out, is fun. The interplay between Ghost, Boogan, and Jacker (The latter two technically making a return from UnEpic) is fun. But it’s buried beneath a game that feels like it’s run by an adversarial GM who still thinks OD&D is the best thing since sliced bread. And this is such a core problem, and obviously deliberate, that I unfortunately can’t get past it.

So, when it comes to the question of “Is Ghost 1.0 worth playing?” , two questions have to be asked. The first is whether you like metroidvanias. A simple enough question, but the next is harder: Do you find grind and “death makes things harder on you” fun? Because, regardless of the good voice acting, the fair animation, the interesting toys (Once you’ve earned them), and the story that definitely has interesting elements, if the answer to that second question is “No, not really”, or some variation thereof, I really can’t recommend Ghost 1.0 to you.

The first boss, about to get a schooling from an awesome cyber-psychic merc lady. Who still died five times while getting the cash for the gun she’s using… >:|

The Mad Welshman is hacking Ghost 1.0 to provide a “Less Grindy” mode, but he’s hit Alarm Level 9, and the respawns are getting a bit tiresome. 

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