Everspace: space arcade shooter

Saw this when it was under development and thought I'd keep an eye on it until a decent sale. Well, that's happening just now, available for a tenner until tonight at https://www.chrono.gg/

The Steam page for the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/396750/EVERSPACE/

It's also available on GoG, but not at that price. Another full price option on the Humble Store, which apparently gets you both Steam and GoG key for ultimate convenience.

Basically it's a pretty looking arcade space shooter. Single ship, upgrades, lots of havoc to be caused, etc. It's still downloading for me so can't vouch for it personally but the reviews are rather positive.
 
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So, spent a couple hours on it over a few days. It's pretty fun and makes for a nice distraction. It's one of those games with "meta-progression" where you unlock more and more stuff from the progress you made in a playthrough. Some stuff you find directly: ship module blueprints, ship paint colours (!), alternative starting loadouts, most stuff you unlock on the Perks screen after dying, spending all all the cash you earned in that run. That includes two other ships (three if you have the expansion).

The game consists in advancing through a number sectors, one jump at a time (bit FTL-style in terms of map/sector). Each jump takes you to a single zone, comparable to a CQC instance in ED. Each zone comes with its own stuff to find: resources to mine, floating wrecks to explore, loot to collect, roaming enemy ships, enemy bases, neutral ships, traders, capital ships, jump interdictors you need to take down, drone carrier ships... There's a decent variety. When you feel like it, you're free to jump to the next zone or next sector if you were in the final zone of the current sector. Rinse and repeat, with storyline events mixed up in there at times, and an AI commenting on anything you encounter for the first time before a data entry is added to your log.

Movement/Combat is 6DoF, with binary thrusters (on/off), an extra "forward" boost, and traditional space tar (max speed and ship slowing down in vacuum) for your typical space dogfight. Binary thrusters mean that a throttle is more of a hindrance than anything, and the game is ideally controlled with mouse and keyboard. Weapons include lasers (pulse, beams), ballistic projectiles, various types of missiles, and there are toys such as weapon/shield boosters, missile scramblers, drones, drone scramblers, etc.

The result is a fast-ish paced game that gets you straight into the action, jump after jump, always sets you in a new visually gorgeous environment with *something* to investigate, and has you compete with yourself by going further/doing better than the previous time. Right now a run takes me 30minutes to an hour which is a sweet spot for some of my gaming time windows.

Not sure I'd recommend it at full price, but for a tenner, I'm pretty happy with it. Might pick up the expansion if it keeps entertaining me as it just adds more stuff to increase variation from run to run (weapons, modules, a ship, enemies, resources, locations...).

On a side note, it really feels like it could (should?) have been a part of ED as an alternative score attack game mode (say, in place of CQC...). All the assets required are there in ED already: flight/combat, ships, locations, upgrade system, resource gathering, comms... It's the kind of stuff I'd have expected to see had a mod scene been a thing, but ah.
 
backed it on KS, and played it briefly after release.
As much as I tried, I just couldn't get into it because of the gamey flight model. My fault for not reading more into the details before backing.
Though I have read recently that they've improved hotas support, so I may give it another go at some point.
 
Yeah, my impression is that the hotas is a terrible fit at any rate. The throttle is wasted since you want to be able to rapidly switch from forward to backward thrust and it's 0 or 1, so all that throttle movement is not only wasted, it takes more time to trigger the change. I guess you could rescale the throttle so that everything happens over a tiny area in the centre, but then the zeroing might be touchy. And then the stick control itself won't provide the same precision as what you get with the mouse. Not sure how much of a hindrance that is over the long term though, maybe later weapons make it less critical but early fights can cost you dearly if you mis-aim.
 
Spent enough time now to beat it in Easy difficulty mode. It is much much much easier, and in fact the difficulty modes could have been a bit more granular as the three modes affect way too many things at once imho. There's a little storyline that is gradually revealed and explains the game premise (that you keep reviving over and over), and a few more hooks to keep you playing in addition to the challenge itself, but from there it's just about repeating the 7 sector run, using whatever that run drops for you and managing the foes.

There's a constant resource management layer, with weapon/ammo crafting and repairs all competing for the materials you collect. In addition, fuel is required for hyperjumps within a sector, becoming a big priority at times. This brings some risk/reward balancing as you end up weighting jumping away from strong opposition against fending them out hoping for some fuel dropping from them or making an evasive run to an abandoned fuel depot. Or aggravate the friendly faction by hitting their tanker.

In the end, it's a pretty nice game very reminiscent of the old Descent in terms of manoeuvering and combat, but in large open spaces rather than the enclosed mine shafts. From there resource management and jump-on-demand mechanics result in risk vs reward balancing by the player, with meta-progression and difficulty modes ensuring that the risk of never progressing is incredibly low.

Unless there's any particular interest, I'll leave it at that for this thread since the sale is over and my review complete. I'll therefore part with a few screenshots, some of them using a neat little "action freeze" free camera which, unfortunately, comes with a mandatory giant "EVERSPACE" watermark in the bottom right corner... Great idea, awful execution.

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I played this when they were in the beta phase, but I didn't buy it. Great game, but I was frustrated by the lack of controller support. It has a good sense of humor though, and is clearly a spiritual successor to Galaxy on Fire (same guys). I wouldn't have been able to resist buying it at $10, even without flightstick support, but I missed the deal (thanks for the new site to keep an eye on though)

Have you tried it in VR?
 
I played this when they were in the beta phase, but I didn't buy it. Great game, but I was frustrated by the lack of controller support. It has a good sense of humor though, and is clearly a spiritual successor to Galaxy on Fire (same guys). I wouldn't have been able to resist buying it at $10, even without flightstick support, but I missed the deal (thanks for the new site to keep an eye on though)

Have you tried it in VR?

Nope, no VR set here I'm afraid. I'll have a look at Galaxy on Fire out of curiosity. :)
 
I loved for what it is - nice, rogue arcade space shooter. Got to tweak mouse sensitivity a bit for my liking but other than that I enjoyed it a great deal.
 
I wouldn't have been able to resist buying it at $10, even without flightstick support, but I missed the deal (thanks for the new site to keep an eye on though)


It's now part of the Steam summer sale if you're still tempted. €9.23 for the base game and €6.99 for the Encounters expansion. Encounters is very much worth it imho, it adds lots of new toys to vary the runs, and 5 or 6 NPCs with storylines and quests that happen over multiple runs as you encounter them around the sectors.
 
It's now part of the Steam summer sale if you're still tempted. €9.23 for the base game and €6.99 for the Encounters expansion. Encounters is very much worth it imho, it adds lots of new toys to vary the runs, and 5 or 6 NPCs with storylines and quests that happen over multiple runs as you encounter them around the sectors.

I saw this.

It's been on my Steam wish list for ever and now the Summer Sale is on. (It's winter time here and it's damned cold!).

I must give this some serious consideration now that the Sale is on.......
 
Interesting. The people behind Everspace are making an open world game out of it apparently:

The rumors are true: We have been working on a new space game for quite some time. Of course, we had a good look at your feedback on EVERSPACE™, and one wish clearly stood out.

Even though many fans liked our innovative concept of combining fast-paced space combat with rogue-like elements and exciting storytelling set in a colorful science fiction world, many space game enthusiasts are longing for an open-world space shooter with classic RPG elements in the iconic vibrant audiovisual style and the intense action gameplay of EVERSPACE™.

Well, we got good news: You will be able to explore a vivid open world featuring persistent progression in our new space game.

There will be lots of exciting things to discover; from wacky aliens over mysterious space anomalies to a wide variety of enemies who will stand in your way in the everlasting quest for better loot; our new game will get down to business right away, and space will look even prettier than ever.

If we got your attention, make sure to follow us on Discord, Facebook or Twitter and put in for the big announcement of our upcoming space shooter. More on:

Aug 19, 2019

https://www.everspace.game/
 
Checked the trailer. This one is not for me. Never was really into 3rd person games

Unless they dramatically change things, the original Everspace had both 3rd and 1st person (with or without cockpit) views. I always play it 1st person with hud overlay (cockpit is cumbersome and gets in the way of the pretty visuals).
 
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