Salvation Prophecy

[Tpek]

Seems an interesting new indie game popped up on Gamersgate today:
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SALVATION/salvation-prophecy

Here's the description:

Salvation Prophecy is a military space epic. Human, mutant, and robotic factions are at war for galactic domination. Battles rage as space fleets collide, and planet invasions clash against fortified enemy colonies. Yet the greatest danger is the impending annihilation foretold by an apocalyptic prophecy. You must seek out the mysteries of distant alien worlds, and master ancient powers to withstand the coming storm.

Space Combat

    Engage in epic space battles with 50 fighter ships, space stations, and battleships.
    Upgrade your ship with more powerful weapons, missiles, engines, shields, reactors, and EMPs.

Planet Battle

    Embark on drop ship missions to invade enemy colonies.  Battle against enemy troops, turrets, flier-bombers, and powerful mech units.

Alien Planet Exploration

    Navigate your ship through unstable wormholes to unknown galaxies.
    Explore alien planets inhabited by dangerous creatures.
    Discover the secrets of an apocalyptic prophecy.
    Seek out the guardians of ancient runes.

Military Command

    Gain ranks by completing missions.
    Rise up to lead your faction's military strategy.
    Construct planet colonies, space stations, and military units.
    Order new missions to attack the enemy.

Visit the Salvation Prophecy web page at:
http://www.salvationprophecy.com/

Anyone knows anything about it?

[Nefaro]

Hrmm.. intriguing. 

Sounds awfully ambitious for an indie, though.   I'm scared to try, too.

[steve58]

Heres a trailer I found on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7sjN5T9SU

...doesn't look like my cup o tea...

[Tpek]

Well, I've watched the trailer and I'm getting it.
We'll report on it when I have time to give it a good playthrough.

[Jarhead0331]

^Please do post impressions.  I'm with Nefaro, though.  Seems too ambitious, like they are trying to do it all in one indie title. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[Gusington]

Looks interesting but I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig for it.

[Huw the Poo]

Looks interesting but I wouldn't want to be the guinea pig for it.

I would.  I love ambitious games even if they fall a bit short either content-wise or polish-wise.  If I had the spare cash I'd dive right into this one.

[son_of_montfort]

Reminds me a lot of that Russian Precursors game. I'm interested, but perhaps a bit too action oriented for my tastes. Still, would love to hear more about it!

[Jarhead0331]

Reminds me a lot of that Russian Precursors game. I'm interested, but perhaps a bit too action oriented for my tastes. Still, would love to hear more about it!

Precursors was more of a straight-up RPG in the vein of Fallout 3.  A pretty interesting game if I don't say so myself.  I hope someday I'll have time to go back to it.

[Tpek]

Well, after playing abit here's what I can say:

Game is nice in some ways, though nothing spectacular really.

Having played a bit with the Drone Unity (war-droids that revolted) faction and even less than a bit with the Salvation (religious mutant women), I noticed that at
first you play a few (usually 2) ground missions, where you fight alongside other 20 troops of your faction (all identical), and have to eliminate enemy forces.
After about 2 missions you reach Rank 2, which gives you a short space tutorial and then you get to fight space battles as well.
In the meanwhile you get credits for completing missions, and the better you do and more "achivements" you earn, the more credits you receive.

You use the credits to buy upgrades for your ship's systems (in a linear upgrade fashion), and also linear upgrades for your land character's armor and weapons.

There are also skill points which are awarded when you complete this "xp-bar", and allow you to get some passive bonus from a very restricted selection.

The ground battles:
Pros:
You're not playing a superhero in this game, nor a commander, at least at first, which makes you reliant upon your fellow AI soldiers. This is actually pretty neat,
and gives you a much better feel of "Battle", more akin to MP games than most SP games where you just massacre through thousands of AI troops with ease all the while
your AI companions are far more of a burden than an aide.

Cons:
There's just not much variety.
Each faction has only 1 type of "unit", always with the same weapons and powers (the only differences are the statistical improvements),
1 type of turret, and buildings which serve no battlefield purpose.
So in essence after a few battles you're sure to get very tired of this repetition.

As for Space Battles, I've only played the tutorial, but it looks like it *might* have potential.
Mind you, I have only got the first starting ship so I have no idea if there are any kinds of other ships you can pilot, but I am not that thrilled about the upgrade
system, which is again pretty linear.

All in all, so far I'd say that for 10$ this game would be great. For 20$, that still remains to be seen.

P.S No Multiplayer.

[Huw the Poo]

Thanks for the impressions, Tpek; I'm definitely still interested after reading them.  It sounds like there's at least the core of a great game in there.  Those cons can be remedied given time, too.

[spelk]

It seems very polished for a budget indie title, and it manages to make the "world"/Universe feel real, lots of lore stuff, information, and you can run around a station, with lots of others, go into a dropship and land and participate in a ground war, where the AI doesn't seem too bad. You can also pilot your own spacecraft, warping through jumpgates with mini-game of avoiding the lightning arcs.

All the effects and models look nice enough, especially the space combat. I think there are different weapons but you start out with the cheap stuff. As a twilek sort of chick, I had two laser pistols, a Ghostbusters energy draining stream, and I bought a shielding gun, that simply reflects damage back.

The humans seem to have lightsabres and laser rifles of some sort. The robots run at you and try to hammer you.

I think the ground combat could get a bit stale, if after the first few missions against different races it doesn't mix it up a bit. I like the way you have to assault en mass, and rally around to take our turrets and large structures. Plus you need to use the undulating landscape and obstacles in the way to shield yourself from incoming fire.

The interface works well with an Xbox 360 gamepad. All parts of it. Which surprised me. The scanners for jumping to waypoints, and the docking mechanism is all just easy to use and slick. I with the likes of the Evochron series could get some of this developers loving, on interface and overall looks.

It does have a feel to it though, a very homebrew feel. Animations are not massively fluid, and even though you have a lot of enemy on the battlefield at once, they do move around quite a bit, in a stiff sort of way. But to have four playable races, with dropship ground war AND space combat, along with a mission/questing system and RPG elements.. I think I'm pleased I took the plunge, for the price.

I'll be dipping a bit more into it later, definitely.

[Huw the Poo]

Thanks spelk.  I really want this game now!

What's the overall goal of the game?  How do you win?

[spelk]

Thanks spelk.  I really want this game now!

What's the overall goal of the game?  How do you win?

As far as I can tell, from the brief time I've spent with it, the goal seems to be "KILL, MAIM, DESTROY!".

[Nefaro]

So is the Space Combat the heart of the game? 

That's the impression I get - that the initial ground combat stuff is just a short intro mini-game or something?  If that's the case, I'd like to hear about the space combat 'campaign' and how that plays overall - more linear or more open?