Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (LIGHTSPEED EDITION)

Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (LIGHTSPEED EDITION)
73
Metacritic
80
Steam
77.237
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$2.99
Release date
9 August 2017
Steam reviews score
Total
80 (541 votes)

A retro space strategy RPG with base building, deep tactical combat, crew management and emergent storytelling. Halcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition is a massively enhanced version of the Award Winning indie strategy RPG, Halcyon 6.

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Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander (LIGHTSPEED EDITION) system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 or 10
  • Processor: 2GHZ
  • Memory: 2 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 128MB
  • Storage: 1 GB available space
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Thor's Throbbing Hammer
Thor's Throbbi…

Fun, easy to pick up and play, fairly intuitive, charming pixel graphics, turn-based spaceship combat. What's not to love? I guess it would be nice to have a more complex diplomacy system and it does become a grind just trying to get your officers to become admirals, but those are minor complaints for a neat little strategy game.

Sint-Holo
Sint-Holo

Halcyon 6 is a 4X/Turnbased Strategy/Tactical RPG game with great elements but not delivering a longterm gameplay value.

PROS:
+ Graphic design: Pixel art is good but not outstanding. Some parts even uninspiring.
+ UI: Well set, easy to understand.
+ Sound design: Even its repetitive, soundtrack is perfect. Goes amazingly well with the gameplay. Sound effects are below par.
+ Game mechanics: There's a lot going on there and they all connect with each other superbly.
+ Gameplay: For the first run, everything is new, suprising and addicting. (Second run... Forget about it, you have seen it all.)

CONS:
- Variety on game mechanics. Even it seems like the game deals and offers amount of mechanics to the player, when you inspect the parts on their own, they all crumble. For example; there are ships but variety and customization is very low, there's a tech tree but it is very limited, there are ground battles but every battle feels the same, there are factions but they have little to none impact on the run, there is a map but its the same thing sprinkled over everywhere.
- Gets old fast. After the first run, i had no intention or desire to go back for a second. Actually, i did start a second run to see if theres a new element or a rogue-like mechanic is preset... and there is not. Quitted fast.

FINAL:

6/10

Halcyon 6 is not a bad game, its even very fun for the first run but it doesnt have the longevity you would expect from its genre. If one run is enough for you (probably 5 to 6 hours) go for it, if its not wait for a sale.

[PBS] StoneD0G
[PBS] StoneD0G

Wow, i've played this for 21 hours already!

It's like a lite version of Stellaris but with superb pixel graphic and classic JRPG combat.

okasion1
okasion1

So much contradictions in the reviews. I think those who compare the game to FTL or XCOM are pretty wrong, because the game as it's own way of advancing and moving, it's own rules, and it just happens to have copied the XCOM build system because of a reason, and pretty important one.
Seems to me those who downvote this games is because they haven't played it enough, or in the case they did have played many hours, haven't advanced as the game implies, even if it's an "open universe".
Very good game, would definitely buy it on sale; if you like almost 4X, strategy, turn based combat, and sci fi, buy it sale or not. This one It's and underrated one.

Abradolf Linkler
Abradolf Linkler

I finished this game twice on another platform ( subscription based so I didn't actually own it), saw it on sale here and grabbed it.

Base building is similar to x-com, combat is like a basic rpg from 20 years ago ( turn based, game pauses on your turn). I found it amusing enough to purchase it here. The humor was quirky but not so stupid that I couldn't stand it ( a lot of games miss this mark and go overboard one way or the other, either feeling like it was written for 10 year olds or taking themselves super seriously).

I don't care about graphics if the game is entertaining, and this was. Some reviews mention excessive grinding but I'm not sure where that's coming from, I never had to grind in either playthrough.

My only gripe is that some of the combat sound effects are obnoxious, but since this game has various volume sliders it wasn't a big deal at all.

Highly recommend the precursor DLC, it adds a lot to the base game and is reasonably priced.

This is a game you can finish in a few days and I will probably replay it every few years or so. Their new game also looks pretty promising.

zekster
zekster

I can only give a cautious recommendation. It's a well made game from technical point of view. Nice pixel art, good music, solid mechanics. I had fun for a while.

However eventually it starts to feel a little tedious. You're fighting similar battles over again without making much progress, and the UI requires a lot of clicking and micromanagement.

Ground combat seems like a contrived addition to the game. It works the exact same way as space combat, but all the skills and effects are renamed and shuffled around, so it takes additional effort to learn it.

The game also gives an illusion of having more freedom than what there actually is. The way combat synergies work the only practical way to build a fleet is to have one ship of each class. When it comes to starbase management, you will eventually research and build everything, so not much choice there either.

escher255
escher255

Fun game with a nice sense of humor, worth a play through for the "lets see what happens" factor. Not particularly difficult even on hard (captain) mode. The space fights have some variations, but how to win consistently is not hard to figure out, so they do get a bit stale by the middle game, and the by the end its a bit a grind to go through. The ground fights exist but probably do less than 1 ground fight for every 10 space battles, so its not a big part of the game. I bought it on a good sale, and got my money's worth, but its not one on my replayable list.

ctwtn
ctwtn

I was told to buy this for the co-op multiplayer.
There is no co-op multiplayer. Or any multiplayer for that matter.

Good ass game tho, will probably sink 200+ hours into it.

PS: If you wanna try it out, the Prologue Mission can take up the full 2 hour refund period (or longer). It's not necessary (lots of hand holding), so just skip it and make your starting character from scratch rather than using the pre-fab choices for the Prologue.

ashtongellar
ashtongellar

how this piece of shiny sh***t have me hooked i have no idea, but how good it feels!!!

RGGStriker07
RGGStriker07

In all my years of RTS and turn based battles I found this game in my recommendations I love how this game is both easy to understand and extremely hard and I love it. The graphics are manageable enough for low end pcs which is a big plus their I hope their will be a sequel to this awesome game. :D

NAY OUR ILLITERACY RATES
NAY OUR ILLITE…

Pretty cool, turn based ship combat while exploring the galaxy with base building progression

Humble
Humble

While game seem to be interesting, but gameplay itself is very tedious and difficult without help, like enemies grow stronger than your crew and ship lot faster, you had limited number of healing, when you reached final boss level, that boss had at least 50,000 hitpoint with damage anywhere 500 to 4000 damage, more and less, while may or may not had unlimited healing that add other 25,000 healthpoint at least, more or less while your best 5 level ship had anywhere 3,000 to 5,000 hitpoint, and your damage is anywhere up to 2,500 damage max with limited number of healing up to 3, I recalled. This was second lowest easy level when I play this game, mind you.

So I felt it's too tedious, and not getting stronger over enemie at all, and had to rush pace, before enemies destory your homebase and gameover in very short time in storyline mission. It's too difficult for normal people when come to play game and lack of knowledge, you had to understand and lot of knowledge before playing game, this isn't for easy going common gamer play this game without understanding like common games, most people might need cheat and help to overcome this game storyline, not very good balance in this game, seem for crazy hardcore and memory of what is work and what isn't work on enemies with lot of management crew, ship, ect.

Game could be fun for everyone if they design balance, like enemies don't get crazy damage, healing, hitpoint on easy level, not had to rush pace to catch up enemies, enemies do not become stronger, out of nowhere enemies come to your homebase and got destoryed in storyline unknow while trying work hard on way by collect resource, tech and build, ect.

I wouldn't recommend to this any common gamers, and gamer who want to play game without help and gamer don't like to do task repent over and over again in new game or battle even on easy level.

Noted: I do play this game more than what steam show hours as I was playing offline at a time.

Donatello
Donatello

Simple yet interesting space strategy.

Nebuchadnezzer2
Nebuchadnezzer2

Saw that the top review (by a wide margin) is negative, and felt obliged to offer some counter points and my own experiences with Halcyon 6.

Picked it up rather early, I believe in Early Access, well prior to the 'Edition''s, as it piqued my interest, and I was curious about the combat mechanics (ship/infantry attacks applying statuses other attacks exploited).
That early, most of the game was centred around the Chruul invasion and the Federation being rapidly overrun, forcing you to assume command, commandeer outposts and refueling stations, and prevent the Chruul from overrunning your neck of the woods space, culminating in defending Halcyon 6 in a last-ditch fight for survival.

From there, it's expanded slowly, to incorporate interactions with other races, pirates, etc. including what is effectively a 'chapter 2' of Chruul invasion, and nice variety in how you interact with the various factions/races.

Just saw the Precursor Legacy DLC on Steam, as Massive Damage, inc.'s Star Renegades came up and also piqued my interest (then saw the Dev name which seemed familiar, and here I am), which appears to add what is effectively, a 'chapter 3', possibly more.

Counterpoints

What initially grabbed my interest, was the fairly large list of abilities and statuses that could be applied, each with a range of affects, but more importantly, other abilities could 'exploit' these statuses, often for extra damage, which then removed that status.

A lot of combat, from start to end of the game, relies on ship/crew abilities, and applying them to your foes. Some enemies are more susceptible to some statuses, or immune/resistant to others, and given enemies tend to hit rather hard until or unless you can 'out-tech' to better ships early, you need to balance having statuses applied to enemies, vs exploiting them to finish enemies off/nuke em down quickly.

There's also quite a few buffs from 'support' ships/crew, which make an equally significant difference in combat, often in the form of damage reduction (always welcome), healing, better hit chance, etc.
Most of the abilities and statuses are fairly self-explanatory, and while I do agree with some UI gripes, and would like a 'glossary' for them you can browse through, you'll come across most of them pretty quickly, and hovering over the icons in combat shows their effects.
You get used to it over time, as with most things, but it could be better.

Ship classes much like crew, specialise in slightly different things, as well.
Two classes per ship type, per tech level, usually one more 'support' oriented, and one more 'front-line' focused.
As mentioned, their abilties largely overlap, but their stats do vary, and combined with the crew you're using, make a significant difference in ship performance.

You want to synergise ship classes and crew abilities, so you're not stacking two Engineering ships and a Science ship, and lacking the damage output to really win fights, but you can usually still do that, in a lot of encounters (not really viable for boss fights), and get away with it.

To tack on a little 'bout the UI/research:

The UI could use a bit of work here and there, like the aforementioned 'glossary' for abilities/effects, UI tweaks to avoid message box/menu-spam, this sort of thing, but it's functional, and for the most part, works well enough, it's mostly just some nitpicks/finicky behaviour now and then.
For instance, the transport ship management/message spam in the early game ['chapter 1'], is reduced/eliminated in 'chapter 2', likely because the devs realised it could be rather annoying at that point, with a lot of ships arriving.

Research is somewhat linear, and more of a progression tree, particularly ship-related sections, but you still have wiggle room to focus on somethin you want/need/prefer, over other options.

Summary

TL:DR:

Quite like Halcyon 6, as you might've gathered, have played through it ~3 times I think, gunna be 4 since I'll be grabbin the Precursor DLC and rerunnin it (tend to come back after a while and do so anyway).

Not without some issues/flaws, largely [i]to me[/i], minor.
Even with those, I'd rather support indie devs these days, with all the flaws/bugs/issues that come with some of them.

Benjeemite TTV
Benjeemite TTV

Enjoyed the game and the art style. The turn based battles are great! Have had this game in my library for quite awhile, gave it a good run but I won't be able to finish it. Honestly I got a bit bored and annoyed at the game-play loop, maybe I should give it another go, but I feel I've got my monies worth. I did go non-stop on this with any spare time I had, so it sure did suck me in. Cheers :)

geekywhiteguy
geekywhiteguy

This is a fun game. The learning curve is steep and there's really not a whole lot in the way of teaching how to play but for me that's ok.

J.Tarwin
J.Tarwin

The first hour seems pretty tough but after you get into it you'll wonder where your day went. A really fun game with just enough strategy to keep you engaged.

Loewe
Loewe

Great mix of RPG, RTS, and class customization. Space theme is cool. Best of all, it's a difficult game. Games are too easy these days... not much fun for us vet RPGers. Highly recommend.

YouMakeMeASanwich!
YouMakeMeASanwich!

Like 4x but 3x[3+]

It is some kind of 4x game, but without exploring part. Other components however are highly modular - you have special place to expand, special place to exterminate and a few places to exploit.
Game offers player some standard mechanics:
- standatd clear place + build room base simulator
- standard assimilate planet + get resources income management
- non-standard but simple production/construction system
- up to 3x3 ground and space turn based fights
- simplified diplomacy and some neighbours (no concurrency or territory wars)
The most complex thing in game is turn based fight where up to six units has 7 types of damage/resist
which may be combined to deal a bonnus damage, own stats, percs, skills, items. Those fights are intresting until you grow up above diffuculty level you chose, however there are enough difficulty settings.

Gameplay[3+]:
-Difficulty[3+]: No balance at all, but extra settings may compensate it.
-Length[4]: Just a little longer than it supposed to be.
-Modules quality[3+]: The only good module is a turn based fight one, others lack dev attention.

Visual[4]:
-Background[5-]: Nice and variative pixel graphics.
-Objects[5-]: Nice and variative pixel graphics.
-Animations[3]: Ok, except for fight animations, which are essential for the game.

Sound[4]:
-Music[4]: Good, non-repetitive background.
-Effects[4]: Ok, nothing to mention.

Story[3-]:
-Main[3-]: Not bad but simple, 4~8 sentences.
-Neighbours[3-]: Not bad but simple for five different fractions with a 1~2 sentence for each.

skalchemist
skalchemist

A great lighter space game, if you can enjoy the pixel graphics. Has enough depth and hard decisions to make it worth the time playing it.

Dreamcrusher
Dreamcrusher

Yeah alright, enjoyed it a lot tbh. Either I was too good or too careful but I finished it on Captain(Hard) difficulty with a low amount of struggle.
Don't right click a ship that dies and ends combat, had to alt f4 out of that one.

a_harmless_teddy_bear
a_harmless_ted…

The game is paced strangely. There are certain map/campaign triggers that get activated and the difficulty spikes. If you are not prepared, you are severely punished for it. I don't consider it good game design (it deliberately forces you to read a wiki or replay). There were bugs and complaints logged by the developer years ago, that have never been fixed or patched (see the thread about invisible officer traits). It's obvious they called it a day and left. I know this was a kick-starter campaign, and I am disappointed that they didn't do a more thorough job. Not the worst game in the world, but not what it could have been with simply a little more effort. The game gets grindy and repetiive, but it does pass the time for me and there are some parts that are fun.

I guess everything looks terrible in comparison to Terraria, which just keeps improving over time with free content.

I will still give it a thumbs up because of Linux support. Otherwise, it is more of a 5/10 review.

Psyborg
Psyborg

Great retro-style strategy game with really good pixel arts and animations (last time I've seen such animations was at my old Amiga 500+). To me it feels somewhat nostalgic.
Anyways, the game mechanics is quite simple, yet very well done. The only thing falling behind is the tech tree, which becomes a mess about the mid-game.
I've got this game on sale, but I recommentd it even at the full price.
P.S. I highly recomment The Precursor Legacy DLC, as it adds some extra to the game for very little price, though you might want to increase difficulty level a bit, as it makes the game noticably easier.

Overall 8/10

Nutlaw
Nutlaw

It's a cute pixelated space 4X with XCOM base building and turn based RPG combat both with ships and ground units. It's fun. All of the different influences mesh together well with some interesting skill development and tactical decisions on ship loadouts before each battle to maximize your ability to play to enemy weaknesses. It gets a little grindy and repetitive after a time, but it's well worth playing.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Recommended, but can still be a bit grindy and feel a little drawn out at the end. All in all a fun, funny, and not too heavy strategy game that's more than worth it's price.

TheMaster1
TheMaster1

Very repetitive. Fight aliens in space again, and again, and again, and again with the same combination of abilities... Combat becomes very tedious...

Also no way to automate the fight even a little bit or to put defences in colonies.

Could be a fun game otherwise
4.5/10

eels.
eels.

I enjoyed this game a lot. It reminded me of one of the best games of the mid 90s, Star Control II. I just wish it were longer.

Epic
Epic

Absolute garbage. Boring. Also the screen shake is nauseating.

kyaace
kyaace

Good little game with some UI wonkiness. If you like the Geoscape view from XCOM games, the fleet view scratch a similar itch. It will hectic, especially before you have enough officers to field a second fleet. The combat system is neat, the debuff combo system takes a bit to learn but lets you punch up very well. I also like how different environments give a blanket 100% resistance to a specific debuff, causing you to have to take that into account along with different enemies having different baked in resistances. Also the Star Trek inspired humor is good if you're in the mood for it.

On the negative: The UI feels very off sometimes. Right click can either cancel you out of a view, pull up more information on a foe or send your selected fleet directly toward the target. The pause is cancelled sometimes on menu selections but not on others, forcing you to zoom through hours that you might have needed. Finally, the fleet mode map is large, but you cannot zoom out (or at least I couldn't figure out how to), forcing you to pan around looking for exclamation marks sometimes.

Ship combat works well, ground combat feels a bit weak, tactically. Ground combat happens so rarely and with so little warning usually that I ended up just muddling through with whoever was available. I would have liked to have had the option to pull officers off of other tasks to deal with a base ground combat from the select officer screen, like how you can for the fleet embark screen.

Overall, a great game if you don't mind the UI and ground combat hiccups. The ship combat is great, the aliens have fairly good humor. Would recommend it for 50% sale, if you like turn based tactical games or Star Trek-like settings. Currently on 80% sale for Winter Steam Sale, so recommend it for anyone even vaguely interested.

Fluke
Fluke

Buy only on a discount.

This review could have easily been negative but I got more enjoyment than frustration, hence the positive review.

The base gameplay is solid and the attack animations are surprisingly stunning. The problem is that there is little progression and the gameplay doesn't expand upon it's basics. For instance, every attack has a debuff and some attacks exploit a ship with that debuff for extra damage. Why not have even deeper and more complex combos and chains? Why not more variety of ships and enemies? These things would have pushed Halycon into the good and even great category.

That and the grinding is what makes the game too long. For my playthrough I was grinding enemies because there was nothing else to do but good thing I did because the tier 5 ships you need take very high level commanders to pilot. I could go on about the UI and map and ground combat (which is pointless and even more shallow than the ship part) and other small problems, but I still say this was worth a good 10-20 hours of gameplay.

MisterDellanna
MisterDellanna

It's like Tiny Death Star for people who enjoyed Master of Orion II. Or the other way around. It's a good game, funnier and with better music than I had anticipated. Surprising strategic depth.

Ra66it
Ra66it

Epic space game, had me going till the end, fun story, funny events, sometimes brutal.

Fraudio Serafino
Fraudio Serafino

Few, samey ships

Samey abilities

lots of grind against samey opponents that don't really threaten you at all

mcnealdj
mcnealdj

No overwhelming complexity or base management, but still requires strategy and forethought. I would play a sequel.

RabbitSlayer27
RabbitSlayer27

I like the concept, but the game is a bug riddled grind.
The interface is kludgy, requiring too many repetitive clicks to perform routine tasks. This is not an endearing trait, but it is a forgivable flaw in budget indie release.
The game flow is VERY grindy. You have to perform a lot of very repetitive tasks over and over and over. This, again, is not endearing but it is forgivable.
On my first playthrough I have run into three broken quest links and a malfunctioning loot drop system. Looking through the forums I found that at least two of these were issues acknowledged by Grendel the dev, who did immediately provide a terminal mode workaround for one of the broken quest items back in Feb 2018. But it is 2021 and the game is still basically broken.
I have not found a forum solution for my third broken quest link, and it appears to be a game breaker.
Sometimes life doesn't work out ... there just isn't a winning solution. That is why I play games. It is not forgivable when a game is borked badly enough to be unwinnable.

Bobson Dugnutt
Bobson Dugnutt

Another example of a could've-been classic. Fun 8-bit design, potentially deep tactical combat, and (albeit desultory) base construction make this game fun at first, but bafflingly cumbersome UI and profusion of status inflictions and exploits make this a tangled knot of ultimately unsatisfying confusion.

Much like the previous sentence.

Lidon
Lidon

This game seems like it has some neat ideas, but the execution is severely lacking. The interface is really, really, bad, and the overall gameplay seems ridiculously unforgiving: you get three or four commanders, and practically _every_ action in the game requires the presence of one. Building starbase extensions, creating transport drones at mines, commandeering a fleet ship - all require an officer present, so you're constantly micromanaging the tiniest increments.
And don't think it will get easier over time; quite the contrary, every success in-game is immediately punished by a drastic difficulty increase and more waves of vastly superior enemies spawning in droves.

I am not new to 4X games, and I am willing to put up with a bit of grind or unfair computer enemies, but being constantly pounded into the ground on the lowest difficulty setting is no fun at all.

Buy it if Dark Souls is your thing, or you really enjoy making Excel sheets to plan out your moves.

Clonetrooperz48
Clonetrooperz48

Big Guns, Lot's of Lasers.
And it's Always an uphill battle.

Not a very good game for Strategic Fleet sense, Due to the max being a 3v3.
The enemy can build more ship Production lines, While you are stuck with 1.

Godspeed Gamer, It's a hard mission, But god damn is it fun.

bassboneheath
bassboneheath

I finally pulled the trigger and bought this game during the Christmas/New Year sale 2020-2021 after having it wishlisted for a while (really, the predecessor "Classic" edition). On a yes/no scale, I just can't really get behind recommending it. There was no sense of exploration for me - ground missions are just a single battle, and (as far as I can tell) the whole map is available at the beginning. I'm not upset for having purchased it, as it proved a change of pace and a good time-killer for a couple days. There are some good ideas that the Lightspeed edition certainly improved upon, but there's nothing that really stands out that makes it a "must-play" kind of game.

neoshingundam
neoshingundam

It's like a combination of X-COM and a 4X game. You have to manage resources and your colonies across the galaxy while also dispatching your fleets to deal with numerous problems; not to mention your tech trees and starbase construction. This is game will either be a micro-managers dream or their nightmare, as even on the easiest difficulty it never relents on how many pots you have to keep watching.

Still, the inventive space-combat and overall design polish pulls it ahead of most competition. Give it a look!

Avamander
Avamander

A surprising amount of depth and difficulty for the price. Well-made artwork and story. I wish it had a sequel.

Superman™
Superman™

Worth every penny, with great music and art and funny interactions that remind me a bit of Star Control. The combat is great and there is plenty of RPG and Strategy elements that will keep you entertained and busy.

irashandle
irashandle

A very stylized game with fun characters and compelling world building. You are the last defender of a great democratic utopian space federation. The previous commander died when an ancient evil ambushed and annihilated the federations defences. Now you have to reorganize and rebuild the federation before the enemy overruns the final bastion of humanity.

cptskamerica
cptskamerica

A very addicting space 4x RPG. The UI is simple enough to not interfere with the story, and the pixel graphics are a treat for retro gamers.

Halcyon
Halcyon

XCOM + FTL + Secret Sauce == Delicious

lean1fr
lean1fr

Don't pay too much attention to my playtime because I fell asleep several times while playing

It's an extremely repetitive game where you repeat the same tasks again and again with very few sense of progression, just grind, tedious grind. The game is shallow but obfuscated behind interface and lists. Nothing goes very deep, the combat is pretty much a NES jRPG, just you and the enemy trading blows, the most sophisticated thing you can do is to chain two characters' attacks two create a simplistic combo.
Outside of combat, you spend most of your time waiting for a task to finish so you can start another one. Your characters have a skill tree where everything is connected and that forces you to upgrade every skill if you want to progress, so every levelup is a chore where you have to go and tick the same skills again and again for each character you create without real possibility for specialization.
The only progression in the story comes from little dialogs that are annoying, anticlimactic and just recycling standard scifi tropes with cringe humor. They are advancing a story but nothing interesting enough to balance the boredom of the main game.
In fact at a point, the game's scenario starts repeating itself, I destroyed two enemy spires for the same result that it was sending a signal to attract more power ful spires to destroy. I don't know if there is actual new content after that, but I don't have any interest continuing playing. It took me about 8 hours to reach this point.
There is also an endless swarm of small enemy fleets attacking your colonies, which can only lead to the ultimate result of you losing the game because you are losing all your ressource spots and you can't really fight allthese enemies unless you start micromanaging several strong fleets but the diminishing returns won't allow it forever. This is probably the endgame as designed by the developers. Well I don't know and I never will know...

I've seen some reviewers and curators compare this game to FTL and it makes it obvious that there is at least one of these two games that they haven't played.
There is neither strategy nor tactic involved here, just a janitor job.

The pixelart is of the ugly kind with huge pixels and childish character designs.
The music is very nice with a great '60s scifi' mood, but absolutely not adapted to a videogame. It feels out of place during combats, and it annoys you with loud sounds when you are in the thinking phase.

(follow my curator page GenXPlayers for more retro and indie reviews)

the_Pilot
the_Pilot

Very good resource gathering / rpg retro style game

lady_rosali
lady_rosali

Can recommend if you're fan of games like FTL, Out There and such.

Pros:
- Nice light-weight 2D graphics, nice graphical and audio style
- Interesting story, somewhat fun dialogs

Cons:
- Grindy and sometimes stressful
- Can be a bit too tough

Zaxis
Zaxis

This game is hauntingly addictive. Thanks Massive Damage Inc!

Drugs MacGyver
Drugs MacGyver

Despite 100+ hours, it's still boring. Too many informational pop-ups - does AdBlocker do games too?

Astasia
Astasia

Can't recommend. Seems like a kind of neat X-Com style management game with old-school RPG combat between squads of 3, but major features like the entire pilot trait system have been completely broken for over 3 years now because these devs seem to have no interest in maintaining or fixing their games. They released a DLC update that broke things, acknowledged it was broken and that they were looking into it, but instead they completely walked away from the game and started working on something else. I would avoid this game, and any other games by this developer.

SingToResolve
SingToResolve

I can't put my finger on exactly why but this game is just not my cup of tea. Good effort though. Feels like amateur's first attempt at a professional game. I'm sure everyone learned a lot during development that they took into the next game.

rndmBOT
rndmBOT

Shallow, repetative game, with ugly sprites, drawn in MS Paint, stupid dialogues and dissapointing ending.

bobagadush
bobagadush

This game is nothing like either FTL or XCom, so don't fall for that false advertising.

It's not roguelike, you aren't moving through nodes on a map, nobody is chasing you, you don't control modules, crew members or individual weapons. You rarely have any sort of story vignettes, you don't run into shops, etc, etc. It is absolutely nothing like FTL.

There are some small similarities to XCom in base management, but that's as far as it goes. The combat is simplistic, and not tactical or grid based in any way.

In reality, you control a starbase, with a few officers. Officers are assigned to ships. You can form up to three ships into small fleets, and then send those fleets to go deal with situations around the galaxy, which inevitably results in ship combat and/or crew combat. Both ship combat and crew combat are more like classic Final Fantasy battles than anything else. Your units are lined up on the left, the enemy units are lined up on the right. You take turns. You use one ability per turn, which might inflict a status effect.

Unfortunately, this turn-based combat is both the core of the game and totally uninteresting. Some of the systems around it, like base management, are a little interesting, but since the whole point is to prepare for these crappy battles, it's hard to maintain interest.

I bought at a deep discount, and I'm still unsatisfied. I recommend not to buy, even on sale.

Barrfind V
Barrfind V

Good space game. Great pixel graphic, never too old. Nice music, splendid gameplay.

Atropus
Atropus

Star Trek with classic JRPG combat, is the best way I can think of to describe this. Lots of fun, though it can get punishingly difficult at higher difficulty levels. If you like light RPGs and Sci-Fi, I'd definitely recommend it.

Yippo the Clown
Yippo the Clown

It's functional, and it's a somewhat novel take on the RPG genre, but I can't recommend. Although it's supposed to have management and strategy aspects, these may as well not exist (they boil down to 'upgrade all your resource generation and 'research whatever upgrade is available right now' respectively). The RPG/TBS elements are initially somewhat interesting, revolving heavily around applying debuffs and then removing said debuffs for bonus damage.

The trouble is that after an hour or so, these stop being interesting. An hour or so after that, you've seen basically everything the game has to offer; it insists on continuing for another ten hours or so after that. On any difficulty below the very challenging you'll have maxed out your ships and officers long before the game ends, and find yourself running around your little quadrant of space putting out a million and one space fires because nobody else can be bothered to do anything. This involves fighting the same ships, using the same ships, a few hundred times in a row on various flimsy pretenses, the rewards for which are usually 'more resources'. They go on the pile, because you long since ran out of anything to use resources for.

The one saving grace is the writing, which manages to be entertaining (if not interesting or original). Unfortunately this isn't enough to rescue the game from devolving swiftly into a repetitive slog. If you're very bored and it's on sale, maybe give it a go for the novelty, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend.

NemoDiscovers
NemoDiscovers

Wanna see gameplay of the first hour? https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1000340698 there you go!

Long Tutorial which does not explain everything is odd, but still helpful. This space station management roguelike/lite tactics game with random events as well as a story is quite something :D I had fun and a bit of confusion going while I checked this out but did enjoy it overall. Cool upgrades to ships and pilots. Interesting mechanics for fighting and management that seem to lock in well with one another. pixel graphics are good looking and the sounds are cool in space battles ^.^ Turn based fun!

Crazyi
Crazyi

Turn based combat
Juggle resources with directing traffic of ships and jobs
Base building similar to XCom
Progress the tech

It is a solid game for the price tag, but combat is a pretty set pattern from early on. There is a random CC you cannot inflict every fight, which is about the only thing that really changes your rotation.

czubai
czubai

Pretty neat overall, but drags on and becomes very repetitive with lack of meaningful new content/gameplay/tactics as you make progress.

wcil
wcil

This game is fun. I knew it was a mash up of things I like, and there's a lot of fun things to do here.

For folks who enjoy something with a slow burn, I highly recommend it.

I finished my first playthrough in 18.6 hours on the second difficulty, with a victory.
(I bought the DLC as well, so there's additional side story content, though I didn't start it until in middle game).

While playing this game, I was getting vibes of "Protostar: War on the Frontier" from the story, while also feeling a bit of Masters of Orion 1.

Its strengths include:

- A fun combat space system

You haven't lived until you have a Hasted, Cloaked, Tactical Commander with a Revved up Chain gun who is laying down RIGHTEOUS HOLY FIRE unto your enemies. It is not uncommon to see it lay down 4500 ~ 6000 damage between enemy turns.

- Intrigue and Storyline

The story, and side vignettes were enjoyable. :)

- Nice pixel art and effects

Its weaknesses are:

- Ground Combat is too dang deadly. Ensure you are either massively over-levelled or have the Officer Cloning Labs up. One unlucky crit might kill your superstar.

- Diplomacy feels hollow, not fleshed out.

- The Tech Tree is needlessly crowded and badly designed. It'd be better suited as a single Tile for (say) :"Tier 1 Ships // Upgrades (6/12)", and you could click that to open an accordion tile with all the upgrades listed.

Things I would like:

- Would be nice to be able to re-spec officers (Maybe at the Officer Training School, with a scaling cost depending on Officer Level)?

- I have a ton of resources late game with nothing to spend it on. It'd be great if there was a way to sink those to level up my next crop of officers faster; or maybe leave them as lures to spawn pirates for them to fight?

- Have an "Encyclopedia" available at all times, including the main menu. This should show concepts, ships (that you have unlocked through gameplay), officers, races, lore, etc. Think Civilopedia from the Civilization series.

- Despite the tech tree looking so crowded, there's actually not much depth or breadth to it. I'd like some meaningful decisions to make here as opposed to "lol unlock everything lol"

---

See you folks in run 2 on a higher difficulty. :)

HellSlayer
HellSlayer

Review in progress... so far - its.. better than expected

Hexadis
Hexadis

Fun combat. Quirky aliens. Was good.

AldouzTek
AldouzTek

Warning this is Scripted Arcade Game, the main purpose of this game is to lure you to make upgrade, improvement or whatsoever, then random bad things or events appear then mess with your progress. For example you upgrade your ship to tier 2 and you would think the enemy will be easier to defeat, guess what? NO, the enemy will be stronger, then you will opted to upgrade even higher tier ship and so on, so on and so on.

Imagine in real life you got a job then got promoted but your electric bill, water bill, taxes all go up, then you got promoted again but your electric bill, water bill, taxes go up even more...

Maybe humans working in this game (Developer) have that kind of mindset or maybe they just kind humans, I don't know...

Anyway avoid this game if you just want to have fun playing game, but if you're masochist this is the right game for you, thanks

Earthangel
Earthangel

JRPG sapce and ground mission combat, a strategic map with resource development/management, character levelling and a decent story. Great game, have fun.

ardaoe
ardaoe

Old style strategy game. I like the game despite I don't like being rushed into missions. it would be nice if the game won't rush player into time limits in easy mode. Eg. 40 days later an enemy will hit the base. They generally are highly overpowered, and you need to be working tirelessly endlessly around the clock to rush your bigger ships into defence.

This is the only flaw that can be ruining the fun making a stressful play session. If you couldn't be ready when they come, your whole playsession is ruined and you have to load from a save hours ago, or better yet restart the whole game.

Anyway, it's a really nice game, if you liked master of orion or K240 back in the day, this is the next best thing.

BoogieMan
BoogieMan

The game has issues which haven't been resolved in over 3 years despite them saying they were looking in to it.

They have abandoned the game and don't care about their backers and Steam customers that they screwed.

xLegionnaryx
xLegionnaryx

Bought because I liked FTL, did one playthrough that took me 22.5 hours, enjoyed it quite a bit.

Holypanda
Holypanda

I love this game, but I have a hard time playing it because of all the screen shaking. My eyes get fatigued while playing this. It's the one downside to an all around great game.

CumbersomeCastrator
CumbersomeCastrator

There is a decently fun game hidden behind the terrible UI. Do not expect the game to explain how things work, most of the game mechanics you'll have to figure out by clicking on things and hoping it does what you want. I cant give it more than a 5/10 cuz I really want to quit after struggling to figure out a basic mechanic (ship repair this time) for the upteenth time.

Fiscale
Fiscale

Simply amazing! Great game-play, great storytelling, setting and atmosphere! Beautiful pixel art and cool soundtrack!

Mithris
Mithris

This game merges together many types of games and does so rather well, even if it left me wanting more.

There is both space & ground combat, but most fights will be in space with your captains and ships. Both space & ground combat are focused on combo attacks that let you overpower stronger foes. Through combat, you can level up your captains, granting them new unlockable skills and access to better ships. Along the way, you'll interact with a handful of alien races that you can friend or foe, all while working to stave off total annihilation from an unknown enemy.

Meanwhile, the other half of the game is the XCOM style base building, which requires you to explore the galaxy youre in and build automated resource generating stations. Aliens will attack these bases from time to time and you must defend them or lose the base, all while working through the rest of the game.

Overall, do recommend, especially on sale, for anyone who enjoys sci-fi & party based combat, or just rpgs in general. I doubt any more content is coming out for this game, but I'd love to see another 'act' in the game, as well as more classes, alien races, and equipment.

panda
panda

Fun game. Dev's promised multiplayer during their kickstart campaign 5 years ago. Still haven't gotten it.

dqvence85
dqvence85

It is a solid game. The only thing I don't like is not being able to really select which skills my units learn. Its basic random and you go down which ever tree you pulled. Very little player input and every character is different, but I never really get to train them in the skills I want them to learn. I can't look at any of them and think.... "I made that character well." Still a solid fun game for a few hours though.

HephaestusTheRed
HephaestusTheRed

easy to get sucked into i would make sure you have any dlcs installed before you start a game

Fula
Fula

Well, if this is the lightspeed edition, I tremble to think what was the slow one. Game is a constant loop from week one. It´s a constant grind that got me asking for release all the way to the end.

patt2129
patt2129

Much better than the first version practically a brand new game. Very original concept , no bugs as of 7 hrs

FullMetalToxin
FullMetalToxin

Too much grinding. Lost potential. I wish I could love it but I never able to tolerate the constant repetitiveness and linear gameplay.

Anonymous
Anonymous

It reminds me a lot of old FFI on the Nintendo. Or other Turn based RPG... either way its pretty fun.

General Patton
General Patton

Challenging old-school graphics with new-school sensibilities. I didn't find much re-play value. Your mileage may vary.

Andrew Curlutu
Andrew Curlutu

Somewhat simplistic and can get crazy difficult later in the game, but worth playing.

Negazul
Negazul

A bit boring and repetitive
The art is good
Get it on sale, not bad to chill in-between other games