This is something I'm looking forward to.
http://mastercoldrice.com/?page_id=74
Looks like FTL but with a bit more RPG and ship customization to it. :D Still in kickstarter but all signs point to YES.
Noticed it thanks to Scott Manley's YouTube vid with some early gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHB-wMUVhCw
An entertaining trailer! Appears humor plays a role in this one.
Interstellaria has gone gold! Release is 17th July. I shall almost certainly be picking it up and will post impressions. :)
Quote from: Huw the Poo on July 07, 2015, 12:12:30 PM
Interstellaria has gone gold! Release is 17th July. I shall almost certainly be picking it up and will post impressions. :)
We are blessed with having you as our first guinea pig. :)
OK, very brief first impressions, then (Steam says I've played 0.9 hours which seems accurate).
From what I've seen so far, Interstellaria is an open-world space ship- and land-based RPG with tactical combat, particularly reminiscent of FTL among others.
The game begins with a very short introduction before throwing you right in. You begin as a single character on his homeworld who quickly finds himself in need of work, and thus enlists on the nearest spaceship. Without giving too much away, he soon finds himself in command of his own ship with a single vague suggestion of "find the Trade Co HQ for help".
You're gradually eased into the game. Rather than a huge tutorial which swamps you with info, you're instead introduced to gameplay elements as and when they appear. So you won't learn how to fight until you actually get into a fight, for example. The game is wholly mouse-driven but keyboard shortcuts are available. Speaking of shortcuts, let me mention the first thing that really impressed me. Evidently you will go on many away missions to planets and outposts, and the shortcuts really come in handy. When you're confident that the coast is clear, instead of laboriously instructing each crewman to gather up all the loot, you can just hit H (harvest) and watch as they intelligently make their ways around obstacles, picking everything up and dropping it at the ship. You can hit G to have someone guard a location (protecting his harvesting allies for example) and hit R to order return to the ship.
While on planets, you'll inevitably encounter resistance. Combat is simply a case of selecting a crewman and clicking on a target. Both land and space combat in Interstellaria is very much RPG, not twitch. Characters (and ships) will simply attack at the click of a mouse, to the best of their ability. Movement on a planet is similar; click a location and an intended path is immediately sketched on the screen and the crewman follows it. Sometimes you'll witness them failing to reach their destination by the shortest route, so the path redraws itself until the crewman is able to make progress. So far I haven't had to micromanage this at all.
The space segments are like FTL on steroids. As with the earlier game, you assign crewmen to stations, with each gaining experience in the tasks they carry out over time. Have an experienced gunner man tactical and your weapons are more powerful (and presumably reload quicker). Have an experienced scanner man scanning and your weapons become more accurate. You acquire equipment for your ship on your travels, in different ways, and they can all be installed on your ship to improve it. New weapons, armour repairers, medical stations for crew healing, stasis tubes for rest, entertainment facilities to keep people happy etc.
While in space the main part of the screen is taken up by a cross section of your ship, allowing you to see at a glance where each crewman is and what they're up to. You can also order them around from here. However the background reflects in real time what's going on around the ship; fly through a nebula and you'll see it "out the window". Barely dodge an enemy projectile and you'll see it whistle by the ship. Fire a weapon and see the shots flying off. It lends a dramatic air to the game and aids immersion. The crewmen also mutter to themselves from time to time ("imagine a third dimension!") which sometimes give clues to their status and what's going on around them.
Space combat is handled in a local area map beneath the main view of your ship. When other ships are nearby they will appear here, and you can click to move your ship around and select targets. Again, the combat is resolutely RPG-like, but you can give your ship a boost by guiding it around enemy projectiles, which move slowly enough that this is perfectly feasible and gives you an edge. It's absolutely not twitch-based though, and you can pause as often as you like and issue orders.
Rather excitingly, there are many clues in the interface that point to the possibility of controlling multiple ships later on (the fleet manager screen is a bit of a clue, heh).
Anyway I don't have a lot else to say right now...I just came up for air to give first impressions...I'll be diving back in in a minute. So far I'm impressed and enthused. I've been given the bare bones of a "main quest" but already, after less than an hour of play, I have options available to me. I'm looking forward to seeing what's next!
It's £7 on Steam and on the dev's website (http://coldricegames.com/interstellar/). Ask questions if you got 'em! Otherwise I'll post fuller impressions later.
The launch trailer is a real hoot! I love the nod to Starship Troopers. I look forward to updates on your adventures Huw.
Just saw that GOG also has it.
Yeah the trailer is what initially got me interested.
I have about 4 hours logged now, so right after I have lunch I'll post more impressions. Interstellaria isn't without its negatives which I'll explain later, but the dev is already asking for feedback/suggestions and has released a first patch.
For anyone about to pull the trigger, it's only fair that I mention that the game is a bit more twitch than I first realised. All orders can be issued while paused, but if you do this a lot battles can drag on. Anyway, more later (and yes I'm still very much enjoying it).
Scott Manley's YouTube vid with some early gameplay (now properly forum codified for our convenience):
OK so after four hours, some more entirely random and disjointed impressions. TLDR: Despite some niggles which will hopefully be addressed by the developer, this is a fun and enjoyable little indie game that's well worth the £7 asking price.
You can indeed command multiple ships - the upper limit seems to be five. I've acquired a second ship, kitted it out and crewed it. It isn't much better than my starter ship but it does have shields and it's a nicer colour. :) I gather that different races have distinct looks to their ships.
I was able to buy the ship using the reward from the first proper story mission. However you are free to go wherever you like and there seem to be plenty of side missions to find. You can also hail passing (friendly) ships and get tips on what's selling for good prices, and where.
Crewing the new ship was easy; any star port that sells ships and equipment will also have a random roster of crewmen to hire. The higher their skills, the more expensive they are. To be honest, unless you have money to burn I think your best bet is to always buy a "blank" crewman because it doesn't take long for them to get to the level that the more expensive crewmen are at, just through experience.
Fleet combat can get fairly hectic. When you have more than one ship, you're constantly switching control between your ships to move them out of the way of incoming projectiles. Not only that, when your ships do get hit they suffer location-specific damage, so just like FTL, you eventually have to order your men away from their stations to put out fires and repair holes etc. This morning I lost a crewman instantly when a hull breach occurred. I also had a droid onboard who seemed unaffected, I don't know why. But at least someone was there to repair the damage and get the ship back into the fight. A lot happens in battles and they can get quite hairy, especially when you can't spare the power/crewmen to man the scanner so half the battlefield is shrouded in fog of war.
Ground combat isn't anywhere near as involved. It's basically a pausable platformer. No real platforming skills are required as your crewmen handle all that themselves, but combat is far too quick for you to micromanage it much. You just position your men and tell them who to kill. I find it kind of fun but it won't be to everyone's taste. Oh, and I had what amounted to a boss battle but I was able to cheese it very easily.
Like Toonces I'm generally easily impressed by games, especially new games, but there are some negatives I can point out. Managing crew is more tedious than it should be; thus far I've found no way to select them by shortcut, so you have to click on each of them to switch control. This can be problematic at times. Also the pathfinding has been a little off on occasion, but this morning's patch seems to have addressed that. Other than that, there are little niggles, like being unable to scroll vendor lists with the mouse wheel, or crewmen who leave their station to go eat having to be manually commanded back to their station afterward.
I left the last session having just received the next proper story mission, but the map is wide open to me and I'm thinking of having a little explore and finding a non-mission way of making money. I just met a race who have cool-looking ships and I want to buy one! I also need to find a crewman to replace the one who was lost during the hull breach. Oh, and I want to upgrade the weapons on my flagship, and there's a planet nearby paying good money for some plants I've picked up, oh and I passed a "strange anomaly" on my way here........
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 18, 2015, 08:16:12 AM
Scott Manley's YouTube vid with some early gameplay (now properly forum codified for our convenience):
Thanks Jason - it's worth pointing out that that seems to be an early build and the UI (and graphics) have been greatly improved since then. The OST by Chipzel he mentions has also now been implemented, and it's really good in my opinion.
I watched part of Manley's vid the other day, after he posted it. Also checked out his earlier pre-release one. I dunno... still on the fence about this.
The ship part looks a bit appealing but the combat looks too Asteroid-like and the whole platformer part, on the ground, makes me very wary. Because Platformer. :-\
There's nothing really Asteroid-like about the space combat. You point where you want your ship to go and click, and it goes there. You select a target and your ship fires on it relentlessly (assuming the weapons have power and your tactical station is manned and working).
The ground missions are the weaker element in my opinion, but even though they're technically platformers, they don't play like they're platformers. As with space battles, you just click where you want your crewmen to go, and click an enemy (once) to attack it.
Quote from: Huw the Poo on July 18, 2015, 10:15:28 AM
There's nothing really Asteroid-like about the space combat. You point where you want your ship to go and click, and it goes there. You select a target and your ship fires on it relentlessly (assuming the weapons have power and your tactical station is manned and working).
That's what I was talking about. Reminds me of old arcade games. Titles like FTL were fun because there was decision making and some variety but this didn't look to have much.
Quote
The ground missions are the weaker element in my opinion, but even though they're technically platformers, they don't play like they're platformers. As with space battles, you just click where you want your crewmen to go, and click an enemy (once) to attack it.
Maybe this one isn't the droids I was looking for.
I love exploration, especially if it's randomized every playthrough, but the rest of the game mechanics give me a case of MEH in the vids I've seen.