EVERSPACE™

Now that it's finally out in completion, I'm more than excited. I patiently waited for the full release to have the most out of the game for me personally and it is just gorgeous! Gameplay feels perfectly fluid and they added so much interesting stuff since I watched a few alpha/beta streams. It's really nice to see what this game has become and I totally love it and don't regred backing this project early. If you consider buying this game and you love roguelikes and space shooters like the ol' classic Galaxy on Fire 2, don't look further and buy this game. :3

I had a lot of fun with this game from what I could play. However, it uses a lot of bright flashes and quick movement for lots of abilities and effects and game-play and it almost literally knocked me out. I can be a little sensitive to flashes and quick motion, but I have played similar games in the past and this game take it to a level far beyond what I usually experience. I can't continue playing it, but the game-play itself was fun. If you are normally sensitive to flashes and quick motions I would recommend against it though.

A rougelike Space shooter. You take control of a lone space fighter to explore the vast, procedurally generated reaches of space. Being a rougelike, it does not have much in the way of story, what is there is decent enough for this type of game I suppose, somewhat interesting. The thing that kept me playing this obsessively until I actually had a successful run anyway was the gameplay. You can think of it to be like FreeSpace, with the ships controlling in a more arcadey way. Aside from moving how you’d expect, that is, being able to point in any direction and accelerate towards it, you can also move backward and strafe at will, which probably doesn’t make sense physically but it lets you perform really cool maneuvers, so it’s great. You can of course shoot too, important for this kind of game after all. You need to take your target’s and your own velocity, as well as your weapon’s range and projectile velocity into account if you actually want to hit non-stationery things, the game’s HUD will aid you with this if you prefer (which I did) though. Encounters are generally fast paced. You will be reduced to space bacon before too long if you don’t act to get yourself out of danger quickly, especially if you’re severely outnumbered. You also get flushed out of a zone by an armada if you delay too long. There are also an array of hazards both expected in this environment and bizzarre to keep watch of. Quick thinking, skillful flying and accurate shooting will mean the difference between life and death. And weapons. Weapons always help. There is a nice array of weapons, items and abilities to choose from, usually found as you traverse the various sectors in the game. Gives you decent variety in how to approach your interstellar (intrastellar?) journey. Equipment drops from enemies occasionally, but you’d normally find it hidden away in containers in the wreckage of ships and stations scattered about the various sectors. These sectors are procedurally generated, which didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment, and also feels normal enough since you could plausibly encounter so many different places in the vast reaches of space. And these sectors look gorgeous. The game as a whole looks great, you might feel tempted to take just cruise lightly and take in the scenery, and it also adds to the epicness of your space battles. Seeing an enemy fighter going up in flames is always satisfying, and watching as a large enemy ceases to be with an appropriately massive shockwave is sometimes ample reward for taking out an intimidating foe. As for dislikes, the only things I can say I wasn’t too keen on was the variety of your own and your enemies’ ships, but what is there is still good enough to keep one blasting through space for hours. Highly recommend it to anyone, and especially to those fond of rougelikes in general, and similar space combat games.

pro : - graphism - difficulty where you can see your skill progress (I die often at the beginning then start to understand the weapon, the ennemies and start progressing in game) cons : - the lenght of every run (4 h) - the sixe and color of ressources indicator (everything is blue in a blue world...) - the story is described as "captivating" it's not. It's a basic story, just a base line to explain while you are shooting at those ship. - no trophee (I don't care but the stream version have it and the dev promess it, here, on GoG, but never actually did it) summary : a FTL like, with a "no man's sky" view and space battle mechanics, but not designed for it. If there is one problem with this game, it's the length of every run. It take me 3h30 to arrive at the last sector. And since it's a game designed to make you die and try again, it's way too long. FTL, for example, only need 1h or 2 to finish a full run. and it's already too much to my taste. But here, you have a game, with some unfair element (like every random generation) wich may kill you after a 3h run, with very little you can do to avoid it. It's fine when the run are short. you only "lost" half and hour of your like and you progress a little for your next run. Here, it's an other level. You can lost half a day for just a little progress that will not really help you for your next run. I'm fine with the difficulty. I'm fine with rogue like game. When it's design for it. This game is not. I'm lucky, I have it for free but don't paid it, it's not worth it (especially for dev who doesn't keep their promess about trophee, here, on GoG).

1: The single most important point: You are expected to lose, and die. A lot. Money and upgrades are lost when you die, but perks are not, so every time you complete a section or earn money, spend it all, mostly on perks, and then when you next die, you'll begin with a higher spec ship, and survive further. Death is not the end of the adventure in this game - there's a cloning mechanic which even fits this into the storyline. 2: Also, every level is different. Always. The individual levels are randomly generated from a large palette of event and object types, but the overall storyline and progress of perks and upgrades are not. These factors, especially the first, are the causes of some of the negative reviews here: Some people don't realise that you're expected to fail at first, and to do so /is part of the progress/. Some people feel that inclusion of randomness means there's no meaningful progress. Both are mistaken. The game is fast, frenetic, and exciting. Graphics are rich, colourful, and beautiful, and sound is thumping and adrenaline-inducing. An injection of humour comes from the snarky interplay between the ship AI and the pilot, which is often triggered by external events, and therefore often comes up with surprises, though these will dwindle over time. The storyline isn't as rich as, say, the Wing Commander games, but there's more than enough to hold it together as long as you enjoy the central gameplay. I use WC as a comparison, because the space combat in this game bears a strong resemblance to that in those games. It's arcadey, not a physics simulation like Elite:Dangerous. I don't have the reaction speed of a teenager (I'm nearly 50) but I was still able to play and make progress. I suspect I'll have to earn more upgrades than a caffeinated teenager would, but I can still enjoy the game despite my incipient decrepitude. On a fairly high-end rig (i9 9900K, RTX 2080 Ti) it ran in 4K with temporal AA at >60fps. I have yet to try VR. Great game!