I’ve been playing a lot of blazing beaks with a friend of mine, and I’ve been interested in other indie games which take this arcade approach of being infinitely replayable whilst still being a multiplayer experience that I can maybe take on a goal to play with a friend...
In my quest to find awesome games that aren’t well known, I came across StarSector a couple of weeks ago and I can’t put it down. It is the same addition that I had with Factorio and Balatro in recent times....
I don’t know how I came across Star Sector but games it reminds me of:
Mount and Blade obviously (the open world with roaming bands you encounter)
Transcendence is a game where you only play as a single ship but this is one of longest developed 2d top down ship games and it deserves mention.
Battlevoid Harbinger is much simpler but the game is well suited for mobile and the tactical battles are actually extremely interesting, there is a lot of thought to how you approach situations and which direction you choose to go through sectors.
Silent Sector, I haven’t played this one but it seems to be well reviewed. This is a game where you fly mostly one ship I think.
Subspace Continuum is a deep cut lol, old multiplayer 2d spaceship combat game with really realllllllly deep combat mechanics and a very high skill ceiling. You pilot a single ship. Mostly dead :(
Nebulous Fleet Command is a good pick if you want Star Sector but 3D. It actually controls fantastic on my steamdeck and I am reallly REALLY impressed by the UI, tutorials and general control scheme as this game is basically as in-depth with radar, targeting, guided missiles as you can get without going for a modern day military sim (like command modern operations or something).
Space Rangers HD: A War Apart looks bonkers, haven’t played it but it deserves a mention for just being so off the wall and obscure
(Microsoft) Allegiance is an old space combat game kind of like Empires Mod or Natural Selection 2 where one player per team is the commander who plays the game like an RTS and all the other teammates play the game like it is a spaceship combat game. It is 3D and multiplayer but I feel like there is some shared DNA here with picking the right fights so you can upgrade your fleet and then taking enemies more head on.
Armored Brigade is worth a mention, yes I know it is an entirely different genre of a Cold War gone hot realistic military game, but the top down visual style and the really interesting delayed orders system I think might be interesting to check out as a fan of tactical spacecombat games. The effective range of main battle tanks in this game alone is terrifying.
The Last Federation by the makers of AI War also deserves a mention here because I LOVE the clever twisting of game mechanics (these developers are great at that, see Tidalis lol) where you play a single spaceship amidst warring factions but that your goal is to UNIFY them. You are an extremely powerful alien from a dead race with a powerful ship and you want to stop the galaxy falling into war but you are only one ship and you have to think about the political/diplomatic implications of every move you make. It gives the game structure of star sector or mount and blade where you roam around fighting and negotiating with much bigger factions than yourself a broader shape and arc to the experience. Very cool game, I haven’t tried it yet either though.
Star Traders: Frontiers sigh imagine if it had combat like star sector??! Or imagine Star sector had its non-combat elements fleshed out this much?
Helium Rain looks very very interesting in the way it simulates economies and let’s you interact with an open world but it is 3D
Children Of A Dead Earth is probably the only actually realistic space combat game, I want to try it
x4 series or whatever seems like it has great options for building up companies with automated ships going everywhere never tried it though
3030 Deathwar Redux is a great singleplayer 2d space game with a well done story and fantastic looking grim cyberpunk pixel art. I love the commitment to going with a point and click style art scheme for everything outside of the spaceship cockpit. This game nails the vibes and I think other game developers making space games should take another serious look at just how efficiently point and click games can convey the feeling of place with a single backdrop or two and some music (imagine if a space game like Star Traders: Frontiers had the art style of The Sea Will Claim Everything?? Ooooff that would be dope).
The Dominions and Conquest Of Elysium series, I know this is a different genre but there are a ton of shared mechanics and strategies here and I need to mention them in case a space strategy fan hasn’t stumbled onto them yet.
ΔV: Rings of Saturn rightfully takes a closer look at space mining as being something that is fun, exploding spacerocks with lasers shouldn’t be like a more boring version of a basic MMO quest right? It should be like playing a game of pool but you are ON the pool table and the pool balls can crush you (I suppose Hardspace: Shipbreaker deserves a similar nod for making us consider how foolishly we handwave away the fun of disposing of our unwanted starships by abstracting all the fun plasma-torch cutty bits into a single “sell” button) .
sigh ok sorry one more deep cut and I will stop, I am just having too much fun going through the cobwebs of my brain lol
Approaching Infinity is a turn based roguelike game where you play a spaceship captain roaming the universe with very very simple graphics but the gameplay is absolutely superb and deep as hell. Yes, the graphics are awful hahaha but the abstracted tile based nature of the game means that complex systems can more easily be built and developers have more time to focus on balancing those mechanics so that a player always feels like they have interesting choices to make. A difference here though is that a big part of the game is exploring a wildly different planets with different hazards and resources, this game is kinda a bit like No Man’s Sky if it had completely opposite design goals.
Nebulous has a conquest mode that is in testing at the moment that sounds extremely promising. The base gameplay is so good the game doesn’t need much, just a bit of progression between battles and choices to make about who to fight next.
Transcendence is a classic, the dev is still working on the game and the first early version came out in 1995 so rest assured if the game peaks your interest there is a lottttt to sink your teeth into there!
StarCraft 2? I mean I still play Total Annihilation or Beyond All Reason, StarCraft 2 is practically a totally new game!
The nice thing about old things is that generally people only bother to keep returning to the good old things and the bad old things fade away and are forgotten, also the communities around old things while small tend to be very friendly and toxic people are muchhhhhh less common than with popular new games.
Ommmm I know that is why I got a steam deck? I love video games that don’t force you to buy a super expensive gaming rig.
I don’t really fuck with emulation though I want to (dunno where to get roms honestly) but there are so many banger indie games out there that barely use any resources to run, and honestly simpler graphics is almost always better for gameplay, development, and even aesthetics because it forces developers to adopt a style with their simplified vision of reality instead of just making things look super realistic.
I hate modern strategy games where the map is super pretty and 3D but impossible to read and all the menus are animated with tiny little buttons and hard to read text against textured parchment backgrounds…. it is clear as day that giving those game developers a more powerful computer to develop on was actually a catastrophic mistake in terms of UI readability.
Something tells me the person who made this doesn’t actually love playing multiplayer shooters with a controller, they just wanted a cool project to show off their DIY skills.
I am actually ok with micro transactions in multiplayer competitive games for cosmetic skins.
I am not saying that most games that do this aren’t extremely toxic in their design but the idea of players of a popular competitive game continually paying small amounts of money to artists to create new riffs on the same player models and weapons that those players can use to express themselves is potentially a wonderful direct connection between 3D modeling artists and players that continually values those 3D modeling artists far after the initial game development is over (and a game company could potentially have no work for a 3D modeler when just maintaining a multiplayer game with small updates).
The problem is that the type of people who are most likely to spend money on loot boxes are exploited heavily, and then shamed by everyone around them into not revealing how much they spent on video game call of duty mobile skins.
None of this even remotely works when you talk about singleplayer games though, basically nobody dresses to the nines to just go for a walk in the woods where nobody can see them… the direct link between 3D modeling artists and players expressing themselves in view of other players is gone. Players may spend hours dressing their singleplayer character and enjoy that part of the game but it just isn’t the same thing as your multiplayer competitive game character you have spent countless hours playing in multiplayer matches interacting with countless people with. It is the difference between taking a freeing walk in the woods and taking a walk in a city in view of a crowd of other artists.
I guess what I am trying to say is that micro transactions are really only okay when they are “micro” because they are a direct interaction between a player and an artist in the way buying a single song from an album might be.
Of course, my entire point is subsumed by the fact that most of the big companies probably treat the 3D modelers making their skins like trash and are probably going to replace literally all of them with AI as quietly but as quickly as possible in the next couple of months.
In my comment I attempted to point out that yes the profit from micro transactions never really goes to the artists and developers, but if it did in theory I would actually be really supportive of artist run cosmetic stores for multiplayer competitive games.
I want 3D modeling artists to be valued, and competitive multiplayer games providing a canvas in which artists can continually express themselves and create outfits/skins for players and items in game is an incredible opportunity to reaffirm the value of the labor of 3D modeling artists.
The opportunity is currently totally captured and subverted by shitty corporate control, but in theory it is still there.
For singleplayer games, no horse armor crap is lame, I just want developers working on expansion content.
Multiplayer Arcade-Style Indie Game Recommendations? angielski
I’ve been playing a lot of blazing beaks with a friend of mine, and I’ve been interested in other indie games which take this arcade approach of being infinitely replayable whilst still being a multiplayer experience that I can maybe take on a goal to play with a friend...
any tips for playing CDDA angielski
IGN immediately lays off every non-UK person at their newly bought sites, including some key members like deputy editor Alice Bell (aftermath.site) angielski
Welp, this didn’t take long....
Ubisoft is stripping people's licences for The Crew weeks after its shutdown, nearly squandering hopes of fan servers and acting as a stark reminder of how volatile digital ownership is (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
So... Let's talk about StarSector
In my quest to find awesome games that aren’t well known, I came across StarSector a couple of weeks ago and I can’t put it down. It is the same addition that I had with Factorio and Balatro in recent times....
Time to play some Ogre Battle 64 (lemmy.world) angielski
They're often much older if I'm emulating (lemmy.world) angielski
Classic Microsoft (lemmy.world)
Where's my current gen rocket jump? (feddit.uk) angielski
[PyottDesign] Ultimate FPS Controller Design and Build (www.youtube.com) angielski
CD Projekt CFO does "not see a place for microtransactions in single-player games" (www.eurogamer.net) angielski