EVERSPACE™

Despite being a beta version, this game runs very well. I've put about ten hours in, and have yet to experience any bugs or crashes whatsoever. Though I do have a decent computer, this game ran smoothly without any slowdown on maximum graphics at 1080p. Some of the menus are a little clunky, and it does feel a bit like the UI was designed to be ported to console. The basic idea is an FTL-style one-way romp through increasingly difficult areas as you amass equipment along the way. The dogfighting is relatively simplistic. It's your basic freelancer-style mouse movement and aiming game, with primary and secondary weapons. You get a good variety of each, and all the weapons are fairly unique. Missiles are quite good at hitting their targets. Mostly you will fight small fighters and drones, but there are larger ships, including corvettes, frigates, and full on capital ships which you will have to escape. Environmental hazards affect enemies too. It's pretty fun. You start out with a laser blaster, a machine gun, and some missiles, and you can pick up, or eventually craft, all sorts of other weapons. There are equipment slots on the ship too. You start with just your shields, but you can get things like cloaking devices, teleporters, anti-missile devices, and so on. Lastly, you have consumables, like scanner drones, shield boosters, and energy boosters. As you play, you earn money, and find blueprints. Like real life, the goal is to die with as much money as possible. Before you start another run, you have the opportunity to spend the money you amassed on "perks" which is your basic character leveling system. Through this, you can improve pretty much every aspect of your ship, making subsequent runs easier, hopefully allowing you to make it further, and to make more money, and eventually beat the game. The blueprints you find allow you to build the items they describe in-run, using the various crafting materials you can find in the world. They seem to drop randomly.

I have been craving a game similar to Freespace, and this game scratched the itch. Whether you will enjoy this game probably depends on how much you like roguelikes. If you hate them, you probably won't care for this game. There is a "time limit" for each level. After a period of time, super powerful ships jump in and you have to run away. Some might find the time limit frustrating. It is a more "forgiving" roguelike. After every death you get to keep your credits, which allow you upgrade your ship. Upgrades are permanent. You can also find powerups, one of which essentially turns off the time limit in each level. I definitely recommend getting the "Encounters" dlc. It adds a lot more variety / missions to the game.

They really nailed the loops and combat, loved it. There are only 4 ships (with encounters), with reasonable upgrades Great performance 60 pfs on i5 7th gen + 12 GB RAM + GTX 1050ti

I wanted to play this game in VR as it is officially supported according to the store page, but it's bad. First, to even be able to use VR, you have to manually launch the game with the "-vr" command line argument, as the GOG installer does not create an equivalent shortcut, and as launching the game normally will cause Steam VR to boot and fail to detect that a headset is connected. (I can normally use Steam VR just fine and my Quest Pro headset doesn't even need Steam VR to play the game, so I'm not sure what's up with that.) Then, the game will launch with the video display settings set to maximum, causing the menus to be extremely laggy if your GPU is relatively old like mine and you have to change these settings while in this mode to fix this. (Launching the game normally uses a different set of display options.) VR controllers don't work either - you have to use either a mouse+keyboard combo or an Xbox controller, with the recommended option being the former even in VR. If you do use a mouse+keyboard, the only way to confirm a menu option is with the F key, and you can't use your mouse as a substitute as your cursor is invisible in the main menu even though there is one for in-game menus. If you do manage to start a new game despite all of the above, get ready to be disappointed with the VR immersion, as depth is not very noticeable in space. The controls are also terrible, with the HUD hiding what you're trying to aim at, in-game menus being a confusing mess, and the now-visible mouse cursor being extremely inprecise. The frustrating and repetitive gameplay doesn't help either. Get also ready to have the game become suddenly unresponsive during gameplay because of a Windows Defender pop-up you won't see on your monitor asking you if you want to allow the game to connect over the Internet to Epic Games to spy on you without your consent. Oh, and if you press Alt+F4 to quit the game, the game will crash instead.

Yes yes, I know we all claim awesomeness on a stick about the things we love and then exaggerate and claim it's an understatement. I beg to differ in this case - this game is awesomeness on many sticks, and I've played a few over the years! Rock Fish Studios have taken the Unreal 4 Engine to an amazing polish in this game, and it's still in development!!! The the explosions look like real ones - the details are amazing! There are very minimal load times between systems, fast paced action and there's even VR support! (I haven't tried this yet, I don't own a VR headset.) The crafting system is very well integrated - but neither do you have to use it if you don't want to. No scanning probes? Go hunt for that stuff by yourself, but watch the time! Those interceptors don't wait for no container! This game is not for those who easily get motion sick, it has full aerial freedom. Pitch, yaw and roll along with the cardinal movements (U, D, L, R, F, B) are all there - if you can handle using them all, take one U R AWESOME ticket and join my club - most of my family can't. I can for some reason? Point aside, Rockfish Studios as the designer gets many U R AWESOME tickets! I have managed to complete the original release after about 40 runs without all the upgrades - but neither have I taken down a colonial warship yet. I wonder how many ARC-9000's it takes?