BossConstructor

BossConstructor
N/A
Metacritic
73
Steam
59.339
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$7.49
Release date
24 October 2016
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
73 (182 votes)

Scavenge modules, combine them in the deadliest and most efficient ways imaginable, and fly your very own spaceship through alien space with BossConstructor. Thousands of procedurally generated galaxies await you and your space-faring collection of assembled modules to explore them.

Show detailed description

BossConstructor system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows Vista/7/8/10
  • Processor: Intel Core i3-6100, AMD FX-6100 or better
  • Memory: 2 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280, AMD Radeon HD 5770 or better
  • Storage: 400 MB available space
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Vinnie Mack
Vinnie Mack

A problematic game. Weird controls. A grid interface. No manual save, so death in a sector means reloading that sector. Battles can take an eternity if you have lost some of your weapons. Battles can become impossible if you have lost too much of your ship, making it necessary to reload from a previous sector since there seem to be no repair without finding a space station, and they don't seem to exist at the beginning. Some of these can be solved by remapping or turning off the grid. The rest of the problems...well, they are something you have to deal with.

But all is not bad. The game is fun. There are lots of scenario options. You can choose from pre-existing ships, or design your own. There is enough good to make it worth my time. Your time may be more precious.

Mean.Cloud
Mean.Cloud

First launch took forever on i7-6700K w/32 GB DDR4 RAM. Not a good start. Changing graphics options forced me to restart the game; restarting prompted a survey of my play style (uh, none yet) which I could not skip. No preview of what the icons mean at the top of the five core ships it has me choose from. First thing it has me do in my exploration game is kill an enemy ship with no tips on how to do so. Can't control my ship -- no clue how to play. Am killed. Escaping out, I see a buried Tutorial which should have been placed at the top, but I'm so disgusted with how unpolished this game that's been out for a few years is that I just shut it down. Awful experience and not willing to give it another moment.

Sporkmonger
Sporkmonger

Game is still clearly early access and not everything fully works and could still use quite a lot more polish, but it's entirely playable and enjoyable as-is and 100% worth an Early Access purchase if you enjoy the genre.

The genetic algorithm mode is particularly neat even if it doesn't work very well. Not really something you see often and I dig that even if it completely freezes my computer like I dunno, 9 times out of 10?

Exploration mode is the heart of the game and while it can be a really rough start if you pick a bad starter ship (with no real guidance say, that it's going to be super-hard mode since, oh hey, you just configured a ship with no weapons of any kind) overall, if you make it past the first round or two, it gets really fun. You constantly get to exercise your creativity as new modules and module varients become available to you. I'd say AI is only a challenge if you're outnumbered and surrounded, but that definitely happens and when it does, you may very well have a truly challenging fight on your hands. Most of the time, with any kind of decent tactics to control engagements and a good ship design, fights are pretty easy though. But that also makes it easier to become complacent and get totally surprised when a tactical situation changes suddenly and your gun arcs can't hit something that's picking away at your engines. Engines matter a lot in this game and once a couple are gone, you are all but hosed. I really like having a more tactical shoot-em-up, and I found most of the game design decisions here to result in pretty cool gameplay.

My biggest criticism of the game, if I had any would be that the non-combat missions can get a little tedious after you get the same one too many times in a row.

Erfly
Erfly

Loads of fun to play.
Haven't played much of the exploration mode, but sandbox mode and messing around with the ships I've made is fun enough.
While there are a few bugs and areas of the game that need polish, the developer is really active, and responds quickly to user feedback.

Very good game, and a really dedicated developer. I hope this does well after release!

Terpsitur
Terpsitur

Great little spaceship fighting & building game that basically gets as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.

You start of with a small spaceship to explore the galaxy and fight baddies, whereby each destroyed enemy has a chance to drop spaceshipparts which you can then add to your own ship and thereby, slowly and steadily, transform your little spaceship fighter into a mighty battlecruiser.

There are lots of options for designing your spaceship. If you like it simple, put weapons at the front, solarpanels in the middle, armor on the sides and thrusters at the back and your done.

If you like it complicated you can create an ever transforming monster of doom by using pistons and pivots to expand/retract or rotate certain parts of your ship, podracer-like-spaceships consisting of multiple parts only held together by energy-chains, or add replicators to your spaceship, which allow you to build an army of smaller, AI-controlled spaceships that you can also design.

And wait there is more!

This game also features interesting challenging modes where you can compete on the leaderboard for the fastest / most dangerous / most clever designs to complete the given task.

And there is also an evolution mode where you can watch AI ships battle it out in a darwinistic "survival of the fittest" setting, where only the strongest spaceship makes it to the next round. If you ever wanted to watch how an innocent little spaceship with a small missilelauncher evolves into a beast of a bazillion guns in order to stand against its mutated bretheren, THIS is the game mode for you!

All in all, really great little game so far, even though it is still in beta.

10 / 10

I just wish I didn't have to push stupid asteroids around in order for the lab people to like me, but hey, such is life in boss constructor.

MrLuckyStrike
MrLuckyStrike

I've spent the last hour and a half trying to get it to work, game crashes to desktop if I alter any settings (such as setting it to fullscreen), I've followed all the advice from the developer to resolve the issue that I can find and it has failed.

Inexcusable. The paying end user shouldn't be having to research how to get a piece of software to work nor should they be forced to make concessions in their experience (the game only works for me in a unplayably small windowed mode which excludes most of the interface).

A buggy waste of money.

Moforkus
Moforkus

Game is awesome, like FTL and space pirates and zombies combined. I love the gameplay. However...investing hours into the game only to have my save files become randomly corrupted is a pretty significant issue to be having. I have played many other early access games without this particular issue. Until it is addressed it is pretty pointless to play this game as your progress will be randomly wiped when the save gets corrupted.

my save right now simply doesn't even load..it just causes the game to crash.

Fix this issue developer ASAP...or watch the game sales crash faster than my saves....

Butterbutt™
Butterbutt™

Good mechanics, lots of potential. You destroy other spaceships and fulfill missions, and pick up scrap from them along the way to better your own spaceship (and I believe, build your own fleet along the way with AI modules.) What's not to like?
Friendly, responsive dev.

Lotny
Lotny

For now game is missing all the fun parts. Game is counter intuitive, shallow, easy, without context. Core is not fun at all. Music and sounds are very noisy and you cannot listen to them more then 15minutes. AI is stupid. Sorry to say that, but if you want to play some fun space shooter with ship building, this is not the game you are looking for.

Puppet #7
Puppet #7

If you're into the "Build a ship" or "Min-max" style games, BossConstructor is one of those under the radar, hidden indie gems on steam.

The game offers multiple seperate game modes, from quick skirmish matches to longer campaigns. It even has a seperate competitive mode using some specific predefinded missions- of which (

Jay
Jay

Quite frankly, THE best space-ship builder I have EVER played.

Like engineering designs? Like high octane space combat and bullet dodging? Like endless customization and build options? Like loot?

If yes to ANY of the above, get this game. Its a must have.

10/10

nomae
nomae

Controls are clunky and the gameplay is reminiscent of 1970s "Astroids". The ship building system is overcomplicated for what you get out of it, and damage to your craft unforgiving, resulting in a situation of whoever takes the first damage loses.

vetdotnick
vetdotnick

BossConstructor is a pretty good game for those looking for a ship building/top down shooter. At the current time, I've only tried exploration mode which consists of several dozen mini space battle areas, structured in a story line format. Ship parts are colllected throughout your journey and can be added to your ship, as well as unlocking them for your account. With a good amount of choices for parts and about a dozen or two different qualities for each part, the level of customization is vast. Adding to the part variaty, there is also full key binding customization so you can assign numerous different weapons to different keys to be more strategic with energy use or assign them all to one button to unleash a devastating full barage.

That being said, there are some down sides that exist. For one there are constant game crashes between loading screens which can be quite annoying. This problem is greatly alleviated by the autosave frequency which ensures that after a crash, I can easily relaunch and pick up exactly where I was. This could easily be fixed in future patches.
Second issue that I've found is that the ships controls can become slightly annoying when an engine is damaged or if your ship isn't completely symmetrical leading to vearing to one side. This can be seen as part of the challenge of the game but it can get a little annoying when half my ship is blown up from a fight and I have to navigate to the end of a level with only one engine located on the right side of the ship. Going stright when your only able to make left turns isn't the least stressful thing. I will say that the sense of accomplishment was pretty nice when I finnaly did make it though.

Based on what I've seen so far and what I haven't even tried out yet, I don't see how anyone with less than atleast a few hours of gameplay could give an informed enough review. It's a fun game that has some room for improvement, and based on what I've seen the creators really want to keep improving the game.

AlexMBrennan
AlexMBrennan

The game has some neat ideas but lacks polishing. Issues range from developer not thinking (e.g. you cannot quit from hangar menu without first placing down a command center, whereas any other application like Word will allow you to quit without saving), to crashes (genetic algorith drops to 1FPS by the 3rd generation and then crashes) as well as minor annoyances (e.g. the ship in the hanger keeps moving when you use the mouse to move parts around, and the battle camera is so useless that you need to keep one hand on the mouse to keep adjusting the camera unless you enjoy flying blind).

All of that could be fixed, but only time will tell. In it's present state, it is very hard to recommend.

Admiral McBoat
Admiral McBoat

I will 100% revise my recommendation when this game becomes less buggy. Everything else about it is decent (not amazing, but it has plenty of fun moments). I think I've put enough time into it to say I've given it a more-than-fair shot.

- Crashes often, for no particular reason. And that's just in normal gameplay, as opposed to the evolution mode where it will consistently crash within the first 10 generations, and most likely much sooner.
- Gets stuck on some screens in certain situations (notably, it can't get out of the ship design screen without a command center module, and it's entirely possible to remove some types of command center completely without them reappearing in your inventory, meaning you have to force-quit the game entirely)
- Other, smaller stuff, like the fact that you can get a mission to protect a ship, do your damnedest to blow it up yourself and let the enemies do the same, and still succeed in keeping it alive for the requisite amount of time despite your best efforts. Or the camera often centering itself in completely nonsensical places when it's zoomed in. Little weird things like that, irritating things that should have been fixed.

Fix it, guys, and I'll be right back to playing it. As it is, I've been firing it up for a short bit every bug fix or patch to see if my issues have cleared up. But my major complaints are still the same as they've been for months now.

estyles31
estyles31

Wow... This is just an incredible ship-building game. So much detail, so many different options. My biggest complaint is there are so many parts, it's hard to know what to do with them. Some things, like joints, could really use some in-game explanation. Also, I had a very hard time with the first mission using Beta/Economy ship. Switched to Delta/Weapons and it was a breeze. Not sure if I picked a terrible combo to start, an "overpowered" combo the second time, or if the second combo just fits better with my playstyle, but I will say that if you're discouraged by the difficulty off the bat, try a different starting ship - it makes a big difference.

Remedy
Remedy

This game is dope. Seriously, why wouldn't you just start your adventure now, build your own ship, modify it and go on with countless battles in different modes, doing it all the way you like? I think you should playing it right now.

braditor
braditor

This reminds me of reassembly in a good way. But it starts up with a survey. I would probably have liked the game and recommended it, but I can't get past the fact that the game starts up with a survey. This is shameful. It's not as bad as an npc trying to sell you DLC, or day one DLC, but it still gets under my skin just enough that I can't enjoy the actual game. And the actual game is nice. I wanted more games where you can customize your ship piece by piece and the game does that well. But that survey at startup just bothers me.

StupiDolphin
StupiDolphin

One of the best modular ship design games i ever played. simple to learn, fun to play. The different modes offered are very varied and the number of parts to build from is increasing from patch to patch.
Please, take my advice and try this game! if you don't like it after an hour or so you can always refund it on steam instantly, but I doubt you'll remember to refund it becaue you'll be too busy battling the von numan death ships :DDD

Mimsy
Mimsy

Imagine building a Lego space ship that really works. Then have it fight other Lego ships and blast them to pieces. Then collect the pieces you blast off and use them to upgrade your own ship. That's Boss Constructor.

PotatoMcWhiskey
PotatoMcWhiskey

BossConstructor is this weird mish mash of different ideas that probably shouldn’t work together but come together beautifully. You explore the world map in a system by system, fighting your way accross the galaxy salvaging parts to create a bigger and better ship to fight an existential threat to the galaxy

One of the things that stood out for me when I was playing BossConstructor is that the game was clearly a labour of love by the developer. It was dripping in character, it was dripping in attention to detail and it was well put together despite it's flaws, I found myself loving the game. But I can't really adequately explain why I found it so engaging.

Perhaps it was the roguelike starting conditions, where you choose from a few options that dictate the pace how you approach first the missions. On the other hand it could have been the sandbox nature of this odd little game, letting you choose your path and how you approach each challenge put before you or whether even to do that challenge at all. It could even have been something as simple as being able to share my ships through the steam Workshop, aswell as use my friends and other people's ships to test out ideas and learn how the game's systems work. Maybe it was the storyline, which despite the occasional flaw, drew me in but didn't bog me down in exposition. It was just there, like a sprinkling backdrop of space opera. It, it could even have been just the simple exploration, salvaging, and construction gameplay loop where you take down enemies for new parts and you start out in a little tug boat but by the end of the game you have this massive ship with arrays of guns on swivels with shields and lasers flying in every direction.

Regardless of what made me love the game I found myself making decisions from a cost benefit standpoint, but every now and again I saw a system being attacked and I helped it even though it didn’t really serve my strategic goals. That was profound to me. Now... I don't wanna be pretentious over what is essentially a fairly simple, and somewhat silly little space game but I really enjoyed this game and the game spoke to me and I think it’s worth looking at. So at the very least if I can't recommend the game to everyone, I can say it worth looking at and making the decision for yourself especially if you’re into exploration, customization and 2d space combat.

I love the game, now that said I do have a couple of things I want to criticise the game on here and the big one that stands out for me like a sore thumb was the ending. I wont spoil it, but I felt it was underwhelming. It was a pretty big let down and it met none of my expectations. Now whether that was my expectations being miscalibrated or the game’s failing I can’t say for certain but I can say I didn’t like how it turned out. I didn’t like the ending. It left a mark on the experience that I kind of have to take imaginary reviewer points away because of it. Another thing was the variety of the content available. Five to Ten hours into the game you’re going to be hitting that “Another Day at the Job” zone where you’ve kind of seen it all before and the game has no surprises left to give you. Which is fine when you consider the scope and scale of the game and it’s development but I feel I would be dishonest by endorsing this game without airing my biggest gripes about it.

Now in spite of the that there is still loads to do here. You could easily spend hours, evolving ships in the evolution mode or trying to optimize your times on the challenge levels but those are not the meat of the game.

The conclusion of all this is I recommend this game for people who enjoy story lite, rogue lite, space ship building and combat games. If you’re looking to pick up a 15$ or €15 game that ticks all those boxes and get 5, 10 maybe 20 or more hours out of it then this is a good option. If you like the look of the game but you’re unsure, wait til its on sale and big it up at a reduced price. If none of the above sounds good to you, avoid the game, its not for you and ultimately its a niche title in my opinion.

I also made some let's play content for the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX65PTxeYGU&t=565s

I do plan on coming back to this game and playing it again once it's fully finished [Still a little bit of development left] and updating this review.

Leslie
Leslie

I've only played a short period. There are many well written reviews here.
To address some of the concerns in some of the reviews, I've listed the below

1. I have not encountered a single bug
2. Ship control takes some getting used to, but it's easy to master
3. This is a game about upgrading your ship and making it better and beefier using many different strategies. It is not anything else very much.

Overall, It's decent fun. But I dont see myself putting copious amounts of time into it.

If you enjoyed FTL, you will enjoy this game.

Eagle_of_Fire
Eagle_of_Fire

While this game in itself would be interesting to anybody who like space and building games, the repetitiveness of missions (which basically end up ALL being the same with only very minor differences) coupled with the fact that most enemies are just downright the same (again with only minor differences) force me to down rate this game. There is just not enough of anything to warrant a good rating here.

The gameplay of this game can very easily be summed up by: struggle way too hard at the early game, get good stuff and then every mission is a breeze. Every single mission is either way too hard or way too easy with extremely little middle ground.

I would only recomment it to someone who is very into this genre and is willing to try something new without minding ending up disapointed.

Edit: Oh, and I was mistaken in thinking that I had procured this game at under 10$. I would have been happy at that price but since I paid the full 17$ I just have to mention that I feel outright cheated. One of the worst game fun/value ratio I played in a while.

Angela™ ᚲᛃᚱᛁᛖᛚ᛭ <ᚱᛞᛁᚻᚢ>
Angela™ ᚲᛃᚱᛁᛖᛚ…

This game is a tiny little gem with the potential to become a huge diamond on steam.

The concept is extremely simple:

Here's a bunch of parts. Make them into a functional ship and try to stay alive long enough with what you have to get more parts, so you can make more ship on top of the ship you had.

Later on you can make ships that make ships, and even ships that make ships that make ships that make ships (that make ships). Xzibit would be so proud !

The variety is fairly basic but near limitless. You start with very basic things in very basic settings but this soon spirals out of control into a giant frenzy of floating MissingNo type ship designs.

There is sadly no real "story" mode, but exploration is the closest thing to it. It's a solid part of the game and well executed albeit a bit lacking in variety at times.

The "alternative" game modes include an infinite mode, a "darwin" mode, where you pit your ship design against extremely similar ship designs and see which one comes out on top, then that one gets put against others, and this cycle continues until there is an all efficient ship design that trumps all others. Very interesting :D

Overall, this game is amazing in terms of how much potential it has, and overall is highly recommended to people with high nostalgia of Raptor, R-type, and other such games with the most imposing boss class enemies of all times, since you can basically make your own.

To be entirely full disclosure-ey, I've had this idea to make a game like this, where you make a giant boss enemy and wipe the universe clean of life since i was about 11 years old, and this guy nailed it (props to you sir.)

I very much hope to see this one grow into the beautiful title it deserves to be. So many other DYI ship designers tried so hard but this one looks like it'll go places.

8/11 !

[DARE] SysGabriel
[DARE] SysGabriel

It's a Interesting game with spaceships fighting with each other.

Graphics - 9/10 It's interesting
Technology - 8/10 It can be created on other engine, like unity. But you guys do a Good Job on java :D
Audio - 10/10 It's a excellent soundbank to the game (That Includes Musics).
Gameplay - 9.5/10 I saw this movements on CC (Celestial Command) on steam, and the combat mode is very funny and epic.

Suggestion:
Play this on exploration mode first.

R[e]venge®-uk*
R[e]venge®-uk*

Fantastic game to waste a few hours!!
Ship design is fun and blowing things up feels good!!
Does have some issues with performance now and again (the odd crash) and the ship nuilding parts could have clearer explanations as to what they do/are.

All in all, worth picking up if you like building 2d ships and then going battling others!! or like me your old and remember playing asteroids for far to long on your Atari!

DY5L3X14
DY5L3X14

I'm going to recommend this game.

It's flawed and has some very frustruting moments (seemingly random CTDs).

So far this code has caused me issues with crashes and getting it to run in the 1st place had me resetting my system a few times, but you know what? None of that matters.

It's a really simple game with really simple ideas and implementations. It's a slow shoot-em up with design and upgrades and actual tactics when you start to get into '1 hit kill you' territory with NG+'s

I've put in whatever hours are up there - I think 250ish. That's value enough. But I think I'll come back to this one from time to time - it's really good fun despite the horrid 1st impressions trying to get fullscreen at 1080p on dual monitors.

I'm an old skool arcade shoot'em up fan btw if that matters.

Morthai.Saichor
Morthai.Saichor

+ neat concept, but pretty poor execution:
- extremely clunky movement either too fast, too slow, unpredictable, too slow rotating or massively uncontrollable
- music loops with every mouse or button input back to the start
- tutorial more intrusive than helpful, you are forced to build a bad ship to start with, waay too many mechanics trown at a new player to even comprehent how to properly balance a ship at the start
- combat is is pretty unpredictable too as enemy ships either are waay faster moving than you, have waaay better firepower than you, or are taking ages to destroy even if you try to aim at the fast moving ships/heavily armored tanks
- once you even loose one piece of your starting ship, it is practically game over, oh lost a propulsion, nice you cannot fly anymore, oh you lost a fireball, now you cannot fire back, or your center of gravity is trown off so that navigation becomes a nightmare

Ass Grenadier
Ass Grenadier

As much as I hate it - this game is so close to being a rough diamond - I cannot recommend this game. It drowns in problems. Broken gamepad support, badly designed missions, clunky UI, extremely user-unfriendly editor... You end up fighting the problems to enjoy the game. For me? Problems won. Maybe that's for the best, if short-term problems are anything to go by, long term the good points wouldn't hold either.

Shame.

Dork
Dork

It's rare these days to find a game that can hold my attention for a few days. Bossconstructor managed that and then some. This top down space shooter is more than meets the eye.

Design your own ships, use your own imagination and come up with terrifying ships. Then take them into story mode or other challenges. You can be fast and aggressive, rely on speed and firepower, or you can be sneaky with cloaking and ranged weapons. You can be kiting with ranged weapons as well, or even just ram your opponent. You can be a turtling carrier or even your own factory, and send out your AI ships to defeat the enemy.

As long as you are having fun with the ship, it's a good design. I like how the developer allows the players to find their own style, and play the game their way. There is little handholding and "overprotective" balancing here. I applaud that, the game is better for it, and most importantly, it's FUN.

Pros:
Fun Gameplay
Design your own ships
Room for lots of creativity in ship designs
Great Dev Support
Challenges, leaderboards and different game modes

Cons:
Story Mode could be fleshed out more
A bug/crash here and there

SailaNamai
SailaNamai

Had this on my radar for quite some time and always was put off by the negative reviews about how the ships handle. Because if one thing puts me off its weird controls. But the ships handle perfectly. Change the position of your engine modules and you end up with a different beast.
The possibilities in this game are astonishing. Build a replicator ship that spawns carriers who spawn fighters? No problem. Build a melee ship that has triggerable moving spikes to punch out your enemies? No problem. Build a ship that grabs asteroids to hurl them at your victims? No problem (to be fair i haven't build this one but in theory it is possible).
This game puts AAA to shame has free content patches and bugs are fixed on a regular basis.

Fox
Fox

This game is a fun top down space ship shooter. You can build your vessel from the ground up with modules you collect from winning battles. There are a wide range of modules that suit all play styles. You can design fast, slow, ranged, close-quarters, shielded, stealth, mine-layer, carriers, drones etc.

There is a campaign which I guess is what most people play and it it challenging at the start but less so towards the end. Like most games, once you beat the technology curve the missions are still fun, but the outcome is pretty much predictable.

This is a single player game so the AI needs to be smart - and it is. It's not perfect but it's effective, considering the AI needs to control any ship of any design so none of it can be scripted.

There is an evolution mode where you don't play but watch AI ships fight each other. Winners will evolve into a new ship. You can watch generaton after generation evolve. Strictly for fun, science and interests sake but you can get some very interesting designs if you leave this sim running for a while. Also makes a great display/screen saver. :)

The developer is active and responsive to bugs. New content is being added post-release so the dev is supporting the customer base.

There are one or two minor useability issues that I think have been outstanding for a long time that are yet to be addressed but that's not enough reason to avoid this game.

I was reluctant to by a single-player top-down shooter but the way you can design a ship from the ground up and blast away at the AI is simply rewarding. :)

Zulu-1
Zulu-1

This game is fine for casual fun, but it lacks the depth for any kind of extended play. For a game about constructing ships, you'll lose any real choice in the appearance of your ship as you try to squeeze as many weapons on the front of your ship as possible without obstructing their firing arcs.

T-man
T-man

Lol this game is great. If you love shipbuilding and blowing crap up... and I do. Don't worry about the salty reviews, if you practice your building and are willing to put more than 15min into playing the game you will really get the hang of it.

Addictive, fun and totally worth $15. This is one of those games you tell your friends about.... repeatedly... until they buy the game to shut you up. And then they have to grudgingly say "thanks, it really is turning out to be a great game".

To those in my steam group... yes you all know who you are... told you. Just shutup and buy what I tell you to. :)

Eidolbyssus
Eidolbyssus

Note: I edited this review as I realized that a joking tactic just didn't work.

BossConstructor is a birds-eye view ship-to-ship combat game, utilizing pretty decent physics, a proper weight system that affects center-of-gravity and ship performance, and a variety of components for the ships themselves.

At the center of the game is the ship-building. While initially limited in your available materials, you can salvage modules from opposing ships, obtain them for completing objectives in levels, or buying them from a gambler station or a module trader. Your first ship is almost certainly going to be rather slap-dash. But as you progress through the game, you discover more modules, and more variants to them all.

This is the point where some people just stop playing, as they don't like the RNG aspect. However, that aspect doesn't play too much of a role in the game. Your success and failure both depend on your ship and how you built it, and how you use your ship. I'm not saying it's purely the player's fault, as I myself have been sidelined by a torpedo numerous times, or been rammed to oblivion. Just that maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses is key.

Rambling about gameplay aside, the game's performance on devices is mixed. On the older HP Notebook Pro that I mostly played this game on, it would run quite well, with occasional freezes that required a force quit via Task Manager. The computer itself had problems running pretty much anything though, including the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, so it was to be expected. On my Macbook Pro, it runs like a dream. On both it was smooth, with lag only appearing on the old HP when hundreds of ore, modules, enemy ships, and projectiles were flooding the screen.

Overall it's an enjoyable game to just play for a while, and experimenting in ship construction in the hangar is fun, as is testing those creations out in the skirmish mode. Whether you wanted to be a stealth ship that seeds the area with mines or a factory that produces suicidal drones equipped with torpedoes, a jack-of-all-trades or a nimble speedster or a hulking tank, you can most certainly be that in this game, provided you spend some time discovering those modules you want for them.

I recommend this game despite it's faults.

Cybernetic Swamp Gator
Cybernetic Swa…

It still has lots of bugs, but the dev is pretty devoted, and has been releasing new content for years for free.

If you have any interest in being challenged by spaceship design on a 2D plane while fighting for survival, this game is great.

Emmymonchy
Emmymonchy

BOssconstructor takes an interesting concept and does it well. I've played several games that let you design modular vehicles but this one is the best out of them. there's so many different options and things to take into account like weight distribution and positioning of engines. want to build a factory ship that produces flying AI controlled bombs? sure, why not? prefer a giant nearly static cannon array? that's an option. Of course there are many cons to this game as well. all missions are practically the same so replayability is severely limited to simply tackling the missions with a different tactic and enemies do little more than fly straight at you as soon as they spot you and shoot all they have. doesn't help that your modules are as flimsy as tin foil but then again, so are the enemies so it's not unfair. all in all i reccomend you get this game in a sale and play through the campaign once or twice before just mucking about in the arena mode.

Blackblade
Blackblade

Fun game.

The ship building is by far the strongest part of the game. If you aren't into that aspect, pass on this game. There are many components including many weapons, shields, armor, engines and more exotic things (hacking, grappling hooks, etc). The only real complaint with this part of the game is some components are very poorly explained. I still don't understand the point of energy chains, for example, even though I finished the game. The only caveat with ship building is you have to earn the parts through exploration mode (it did look like you could maybe turn that off but I never tried it). So you may not be able to build your perfect ship and it will take time for you to real use your creativity to make interesting ships.

The rest of the game is fun enough but could really use some more polish. Exploration mode is what I spent most of my time with. This is a campaign where you have to explore, meet civilations, do missions, buy parts and try and defeat the Von Neuman (the AI bad guys). It is fun enough but could have been great with some more time. The missions only have a handful of objectives so you will repeat these many times. You even get mostly the same missions in enemy controlled regions (with basically two mission type exceptions). After 10-15 missions you will feel like you've seen everything and just want to get more parts for your ship and get to the end. Another problem is it is not clear how to stop the enemy expansion. Early on you get some missions that will slow them down. Later these mostly go away and for every sector you take from them you lose 1 or more in return. Even the sectors you take don't seem to change hands and you don't seem to be able to stop the attacks from happening (they are marked on the map). This definitely needed more explanation / feedback, if nothing else.

The other modes are mainly for testing your ship and goofing around. Skirmish, wave battles, etc. The exception is evolution mode. The AI fights itself (without you viewing if you ever want it to complete) and the ships slowly evolve. Very neat concept but it is too slow and has other problems. It will sometimes build illegal ships and it seems to only hold 32 ship designs. Those can get filled fast and you end up losing the more advanced AI designs. Again maybe there are ways to get around these problems but it is not obvious. The speed is the worst though. Small ship designs can resolve in a decent amount of time, large ship designs not at all. I gave up on that after letting it sit for many hours and only getting through 1 or 2 rounds.

In summary, worth your time if you like ship building and can put up with some rough edges and some underwhelming aspects that should have been better. Probably best to get this when it's on sale. Would really love to see a sequel with a campaign more along the lines of Star Control 2 or Star Flight.

rcphoenix
rcphoenix

A fun game where you design a ship from parts and use it to complete simple missions. You are given a lot of control over the ship design and specific key bindings to best control your newest creation.

Incredible work from the devs who are constantly updating the game. It's alreadty enjoyable and i imagine it will only improve.

oi
oi

After play some hours now, i can recommend this game. Some pros and cons:

- The physics on game are well done. Everything is natural, if your ship is heavy and you want ramming little things, this go happen. If you make a "spear" with strong modules to ramming in the front, go work. If you make a little ship to be fast, this go happen. Overall the physics, the modules, everything, work very well.

Pros:

- A good variety of weapons, modules, missions and customization.

- I see some comments about not be a "polished" game. I cant agree. Is a solid game at moment.

- System wise, im playing in OSX with a "low-mid" system and the game is very light.

- TL:DR: You have a Stellaris galaxy map, and any system you enter, you have a RTS FTL customized by you to destroy the things, rescue people and everything else.

Cons (suggestions:)

- The lack of in-game customization to some simple controls on the hangar. I play on a notebook without the buttons to rotate the modules.

- Sometimes you have problems in indentify allies or enemys in battle. The colors (red/green) are not strong enough

- The game need something on galaxy map to identify traders, factions influence more easily.

---

Overall a nice buy if you want a mix between stellaris and a RTS FTL.

joey
joey

A couple of times it just closed itself and back to windows I went. It felt a bit unfinished from time to time but maybe that's just me.
On the other hand it's great if you always wanted to build your own spaceship :D

I also found out that it only uses one cpu-core which naturaly leads to lack in big battles. Don't know if that's supposed to be this way.

Mr.Z_E_D
Mr.Z_E_D

very nice succeeded game. Build youre own space ship like you want to play. Endless differend builds are possible and every build changes they way to play. In Fight you will loose some structurs of youre ship, then you had to show what pilot your are made.

Zauren
Zauren

Sort of like a 2D Avorion, although defense is primarily around not being hit, which is very hard to do. It's exceptionally hard to make your guns able to fire but not easily shot, and your guns can hit your own ship if you move too quickly. Vital blocks for progressing are often never found or available to be bought, and your ship gets increasingly unwieldy trying to keep up with enemies. Many hard missions require fighting waves of enemies, which is almost impossible for most designs as a single enemy with torpedos will destroy you and there might be a dozen total. Since you might end up with a slow ship that can't evade torpedos, it's literally impossible without raw RNG. The quality system for parts is very shallow and in some cases makes a part worse by causing the energy consumption to make it unusable, such as legendary fire rate. Enemy AI is terrible and often gets stuck on asteroids. Mostly-damaged enemies with working rockets can infinitely avoid you if your engines are damaged and make winning almost impossible.

On the good side a lot of the modules are very interest and unique and there's a few ways to build ships that I was figuring out, although getting enough missiles or carriers to do this was another matter entirely.

All the pieces are here for a great game, but they don't come together. If you like the idea but want better execution, go play Avorion.

Also if you hit alt-enter in windowed mode it RESETS ANY MISSIONS while not repairing your ship. I went from 10 dead and 2 crippled enemies in a wave mission to 12 brand new enemies and my ship still 2/3rds dead. What the heck? I lost a wave defense due to this trying to see better, which was really my last straw in enjoying this game.

Willie989
Willie989

I'm not going to lie: I played this for maybe 15 minutes, then let it sit for a year before returning to it. It doesn't look all that pretty, and due to ships having inertia and "air resistance" in space, I was immediately turned off. Eventually, I actually /played/ the game though, and turns out, its pretty fun.

The ship customization is very well done. There's a lot of different parts to use, allowing for different playstyles. I went through the campaign with a fireball ship originally, but then thought it would be funny to do it again with a warp-drive ramming ship. Come to find out, I was right. The best part: if played right, that ramming ship is BETTER than my gunship. There's just so much you can do- the only real limitation is your imagination...

... And the building field. it starts at 14x14, but can be expanded to 18x18 with some specialty parts. That's pretty big and all, but its still restricting. The strongest, most powerful designs are going to look like Borg cubes because of it. Aside from that, this game is actually pretty fun once you get used to the odd "space friction" and "springboard borders". If you like designing weaponized ships, this game is worth the buy.

thr33p10
thr33p10

For a game 2 years+ in development, it certainly didn't take well to my ultrawide settings and refused to load up properly. By the time I had figured out how to circumvent the settings (50%+ of my 0.9 hrs of "playtime"), I had lost interest in trying it further than the one time sitting down to try this out. I'm sure it plays well, it's a shame that something as simple as a screen resolution stops it from working properly for me.

Oranix
Oranix

Yikes. Controls are bad. Very bad. Clunky. Camera zoom is awful. I wanted this to be a good game, but I was very disappointed.

mwyeoh
mwyeoh

This game definitely has promise, but there are still a number of frustrating quirks to it

The galaxy slowly evolves around you as you're playing which is nice, but each stage is ultimately a single stage and is not connected to the others.

Frustratingly, everytime you load the game, you need to 'save' the template of your design as if you forget, after your next mission, you will need to do all your repairs manually by replacing each component one by one

On the plus side, designing your own ships is interesting, but the game does need to explain certain components a little better

Its not a bad game, but one that I got bored of rather quickly

In my opinion I preferred "Reassembly"

LivingParadoX
LivingParadoX

After playing through the game on medium and hard, i think i can say that this is a fun game. Its like mixing galaga with lego, building your ideal ship and realizing it sucks, or making a hodgepodge ship, and realizing you are a god of space warfare. The game can get cluttered on higher difficulties, as you have dozens of enemies on the map and debri everywhere (read: have decent computer) that make my old machine stutter. Beyond that, it is fun to have different objectives, and to try to make a ship that can solve them all. Personally, i like to mimic the collectors of Mass Effect 2.

Ubert
Ubert

At this point I've played this game 5.2 hours and I've really enjoyed the game and expect to play it for at least another 5 hours. I would say this game is worth $10-$15

Pros:
-Building your own ship is fun
-scavaging parts to build your own ship is a neat idea
-can control front, back, port and starboard weapons independently

Cons:
-Screen resolution is messed up on my computer and it makes building ships aggravating at times
-Tutorial was not very good
-I can't find the key mapings so I know what keys do what.

I will update this in the future after playing some more.

fangsane
fangsane

You can't move in a a stright line which is rather sad I paid $8 while on sale which I was planning on either buying this or another game during the winter sale. Was rather disappointed when I was like oh snap I get to be a boss in a game now. Nope got to start from the bottom before you can dominate. Oh wait you want to move in a straight like ha ha nope gotta rework on the controls.

edit: Ok so after playing the game for hours to figure out how to play this game. It is actually pretty interesting. So your acceleration and how you move you need to caculate to make sure that your accerleration is even on each side. use the asteriods to your advantage. When you defend an ally ship when the time runs out it will cloak itself. Resonator cannons are very useful I advise getting 2 - 3 for your ship. I have 3 carriers on my ship with like 5 missle launchers. I have 2 torpedo launchers as well. After getting used to this game I would give it a 9/10. The challenges are fun. You also get to fight against a clone of your own ship

Red
Red

I came back to check on the game, and it's as bad as I left off. Controls are floaty, early missions are a pain in the ass, nothing has hp, and the enemies are always stronger

sn0rlax
sn0rlax

I've barely scratched the surface. This is hard, but the good kind. It takes careful building to even suceed against the weakest enemies. It's fun just playing around with different placement of the various propulsion items.

Controls are fantastic, at least when using a controller. I get easily frustrated, so I only have short sessions. But the itch to keep crawling back is there. It'll keep me entertained for a good long time.

RandomUser512567
RandomUser512567

The trailer looks neat, but once I started playing I got 2 game breaking bugs during my 2 first playthroughs.
I left a message about it in the forum a while ago but the developer didn't even bother reply.
No go for me.

�[Dire_Venom]�
�[Dire_Venom]�

A very engaging construction/engineering and shooting game.

Highly recommended.

Bozworth
Bozworth

it's basically just SPAZ where you get to lego build your ship. it gets old real quick. unfortunately i fell asleep while playing (because it's so gawdawful monotonous) that i went over the 2 hour mark and can't get a refund now.

Bachri
Bachri

Spent an hour building a decent Battlestar Galactica replication, went to Test it and the game immediately crashed to desktop. My creation didn't save. I'd like my hour back.

I'd say the game is decent, but this soured my mood so much that I immediately uninstalled it, so take what you will with that.

[ J ]
[ J ]

This game is very addictive, the fun thing is you get to explore with your own made ship, with a building system that is easy enough for anyone to get into this amazing game. you build your ship, collect parts, raid infected sectors, make friends to trade with/upgrade stuff/sell stuff. finish the whole sector, warp to a bigger one! so the game goes on.

I am actually looking for more games like this.. this game is a GEM!

Shaded
Shaded

it's so-so, fun and frustrating, pretty well designed ish (love the direction but the timeframe is slow). It does have some save corruption issues and needs ALOT of polish but if you can get it on sale go for it. It's not worth full price as it stands imo. The dev releasing a new title while this one is not finished also bodes ill because the updates are already bi-yearly so the fixes and polish won't be ready by the time new titles come out an this one gets shelved. I'll be shelving this for Avorion which is already out and polished, starcom nexus will be out shortly and already looks better than this.

BoringOyster
BoringOyster

Hours of entertainment! Worth a punt on the sales for sure.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Great stuff , putting a bit of this on there, that as well why not and see how it works out in testing then go a do the system missions.See if you can complete the missions with the parts avaiable for you at the time , creating a ship is fun, lego with guns basically.

I'm enjoying it at the mo, sure not much play time but do we really need to post a review. Anyway have fun!

ElusiveSausage
ElusiveSausage

Still feels like an early access game with the bugs and lack of polish. Plus the overall game feel is just kinda scuffed and unfun.

If you want good 2D spaceship builders I suggest Reassembly (a cheap but very fun game on steam) and Cosmoteer, (a currently free game in alpha where the crew inside the ship are simulated and integral to the mechanics).

kraligor
kraligor

Tough call. It's buggy, badly optimized and the missions are repetitive. But it's fun. Real fun. And you can tell the dev loves their game.

So.. if you expect a flawlessly executed. perfectly balanced space game, skip it. But if you're in for a great sandbox experience and don't care about having to sometimes launch it 3 times until the menu loads correctly, go for it!

Klaypigeon
Klaypigeon

This game is fricken cool. If you love building a ship off of the spoils of war. Then this game is for you.

Zolokhan
Zolokhan

It is fun to mess around with.

halcyonidealsmusic
halcyonidealsmusic

This is one of my favorite games. It's like a Galaga I've always wanted, I hope there is a future for more games from this company. It totally is a favorite of mine and rocks!

BottomFeeder
BottomFeeder

Had fun for all 17 hours of play! Which is pretty rare in game play generally across the market sadly.

I guess you start with the bad when something is good. The bad is that after 17 hours or so i had maximized my vessel and seen all i cared to see of their universe. The game could have benifitted from a deeper variance in components like those in diablo 2.
Its second failing is it doesn't really cover the full scale spectrum of fighter to dreadnaught ship combat. It tries but sort of only in a tip of the hat way, which is fine as the things that would need to change in order to emphasise small to grand scale combat in this engine would have likely more than doubled the scale of game production.

But really all that's saying in the end is they left me wanting more and with great memories of those 17 hours. I won't go into details on what the game is as its clear from game footage and other reviews. Ill leave it as simple cons from a person who loved the game.

Daedalus
Daedalus

Having a great time with this one.
The UI is just a little bit clunky.
I'm still playing though. Really fun.

6/10

Jon11888
Jon11888

The game is fun, but it crashes often and has some obnoxious bugs.

xaminmo (Josh-D)
xaminmo (Josh-D)

It's like a combination of Captain Forever, FTL, and Star Control. Music is pretty nice. Controls are a little skittish. Ship editor does not save the parts you take off of the starter ships, so they just disappear. You cannot reset this back to defaults. Just gone. The tutorial is very very limited. The AI can fly straight, but human ships drift in whatever direction you turned last.

I wish reviews could be more than a binary thumbs up or down, but for a binary review, I have to call it a thumbs down. Really, I'd put it around 50%.

A Flaming Pansy
A Flaming Pansy

Don't buy, it's no longer supported!

This game won't run on one of my Windows systems and since they aren't even replying to requests for support I can't play it on my new system. It gives a Java out of memory exception even though I have plenty of RAM free, but since it's a Java app the -Xmx limits how much of your RAM it can use and while there are Linux and Mac shell scripts to start up the game in the Steam\steamapps\common\BossConstructor folder that you can modify to increase the -Xmx there isn't a windows batch file and I've tried adding a -Xmx to Steam's launch options but it doesn't work.

AlterEgo45
AlterEgo45

Controls and UI are just too clunky for me.

Trun
Trun

Pretty bad sim. UI is very poor, hard to understand some aspects of it.

markalan12059
markalan12059

I am going to recommend the game because it can be fun and addictive. However, there is one recurring situation which completely destroys the immersion for me. Many of the missions (in exploration mode) have you fighting your own clone - an exact copy of your ship. Now for me one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game is building the best ship I can, continually improving it and going out to (hopefully) trash the AI ships. If the AI is just going to copy my ship then what's the point? The AI will ALWAYS have at least one ship just as good as my best. Of course I will still be outnumbered so while I am trying to take on my clone I am surrounded and torn apart by numerous other AI ships. Very frustrating and it just seems like a lazy way to "challenge" the player. That being said, you don't have to play in Exploration mode if it becomes too frustrating. I've moved over to Skirmish mode and am still enjoying the game very much. And just because I suck at this doesn't mean you will. Get the game and go kill your clone ship!

Slax
Slax

Totally hooked and clocked asap.

Adam.Podstavka
Adam.Podstavka

I enjoyed the game, but it is:
- unpolished / unfinished
- buggy - e.g. you design your ship, test it and suddenly your changes you tested were not saved...
- it crashes about once per hour to desktop and is very unbalanced (spoiler: disintegrator will make you invincible)
- is probably abandoned by it's developer - it's been few years since he was active on discussions
- Missions are repetitive, there are not many enemy designs,
- AI is weak
- connection with workshop for ship designs is very weird and unintuitive

Overall I'd say it's a nice concept, half-way developed into a playable game, where you have to expect crashes, bugs and general lack of balance.

Cheddarbestest
Cheddarbestest

Takes awhile to get used to the controls and a bit longer to design a ship that suits your play style.

Only time my PC really lagged was when I was playing around with the evolution AI at higher speeds or if I alt-tabbed.

Subtiliter
Subtiliter

Pretty solid game. The controls take a bit to get used to, but are VERY customizable, and are capable of doing some really cool things. Customization of your ship is the primary mechanic, and the editor has clearly seen a lot of love.
The exploration mode (map based, progression focused, with a boss at the end) was the focus of my play time, and was fairly engaging once I got past a certain threshold of decent components captured so I could really start messing with the editor. The progression feels fairly balanced, though it's often less painful to lose a mission via being blown up than to NEARLY be blown up, as replacing the components of your ship isn't an automatic thing, and you have to replace them based on the components you have now. This isn't a dig on this mechanic, it definitely breeds some creativity by making you do the best you can with what you have.

You'll like this game if you enjoy:
- Fairly realistic physics in space games
- Building custom vehicles for combat
- Ship persistence in campaign modes
- Blowing up space ships

Xardas
Xardas

Cheap, fast, and fun.

Recommend.