Deep Sky Derelicts

It feels so underbaked. You could tell that the dev team was inspired by various roguelikes and tried their hardest to piece together some of the best features. Unit talent tree with specializations, various weapons with mod slots, the ability to actively scan nearby areas, quick dungeon crawls with the ability to leave and return, in-dungeon quests and bounties, and more. In theory, yes, all of these features should come together to provide an unbelievable roguelike experience, but this game fails in the execution. This is one of those indie games that would have heavily benefited from being overseen by a respectable publisher, like let's say Paradox. So much of this game falls flat or comes up short that it screams amateur. Be it something as small as how long attack sequences linger on the screen to something obvious like pressing the Escape key doesn't back you out of the active menu (it brings up the system menu) or dragging a mod out of the slot doesn't unequip it (you have to double left-click it?!) But the biggest issue is exploring each derelict ship, or let's put "explore" in quotations. You spend all of your time in the "scanner" map where you click boxes until something happens. You get zero sense of walking through an abandoned spaceship in the dead of space. Zero ambiance, zero tension, zero thrill. Even when you enter an irradiated or poisoned box, you can walk through completely unscathed. It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game either. It could have used some significant tightening up and oversight by experienced advisors to make it into a worthwhile game. As it is, I've only gotten 4-5 hours of gameplay before the realization of boredom set in. But, I also got the game for free from a GOG giveaway, so I don't feel as salty about it as I would have had I actually paid for a copy. So maybe this is a 2-star review rather than 3.

Game has a lot of promise, I played through all the available content and really enjoyed the ccg/turn based combat. Neat mechanics for sure, there are some balancing issues that need to be addressed. Things I would fix Scrap grenade is really strong early on then useless later Disabling certain types of cards in an opponents hand is underpowered Some monsters alpha strike your weakest character killing them before anyone had a chance to play No way to hire new crew, don't have the cash to revive a member and the game is over world doesn't feel open, too linear. ships feel too generated, include large room shapes and randomize from there for aesthetics Things I love random items with different card effects. This is novel and really fun building a team difficulty, I like that it punishes you for failure art/ambiance is great gameplay is fun and rewarding, larger variety of encounters will improve this dialogue options are always entertaining

This is not the type of game I'm usually interested in. I don't want to play what is essentially a card game on my PC, usually. But this game looked different. I love the sci-fi setting. This game gets compared to Darkest Dungeon, and I may well be similar, but I get tired of the "dark fantasy" setting in so many RPG games. I don't hate that setting, but I really love sci-fi! I'll grant, that the story is thin, but it is there. The best things about this game are the balancing of resources while exploring, managing your team, the RPG elements of leveling up and the loot management. The quests are pretty good too. I have so many back logged games, like 400 or something, and not a lot of time to play but I've enjoyed the hours I've put into this. I think I'm going to buy the expansion soon...

This is a great game, very cool art style, good, and fun gameplay. People compare it to Darkest Dungeon, yes there are elements (quite a few) in common, but the combat strikes to me more close to JRPGs, the good ones, only with cards, and interesting ones. The again I have a really soft spot for gritty sci-fi settings and the art style, reminds me so much of Mike Mignola's Hellboy... A game really worth a buy!

...and then it just continues. With the same 3 ppl in your party, unless you activly get rid of them. After about 2-3 missions you have seen everything the game has to offer. And about in the 2nd or 3rd Tier of missions you unlock you will have bought everything from research. Which is pretty sad, since the artstyle is cool, it actually has a few pretty good riddles (few being the keyword here), and the idea of balancing an item's stats and the type and number of cards it gives you, has potential.