Objects in Space

I really wanted to like this game. This modem-punk, spiritual love child of the "Silent Hunter" and "X" series could easily have entered my top 10 favorite games ever. But "Objects in Space" strains me. It's unstable and poorly optimized, and its meager ship selection consists of three ships so similar, most other games would consider them variations of the same make and brand. These and a handful of other flaws surely detract from the general experience, but they wouldn't keep me from playing the game. The UI, however: It's bad. Oh god, is it bad! While it's not technically game breaking, it certainly breaks the game for me. — Want to evaluate the sub-components of any part or ship you want to buy? Too bad. You can't. — Want to compare the components in a shop with those currently in your modules? Well, technically you can. Just write down every attribute of every part, and make a list of every part you currently have in every module. — Want to buy several pieces of the same component? Select one, press buy, select one, press buy... — Want to sell the 20pcs of identical components you just replaced? Scroll down, select one, press sell(screen auto-jumps to the top of the list), scroll down, select one... Oh and did I mention that scrolling down on the mousewheel makes you walk away from the screen? — Want consistent ways to navigate menus? So do I. It remnds me of the aftermath of a front-end "upgrade" on a previous workplace of mine. A slow-to-learn, but extremely fast and efficient text-based UI got replaced wth a sluggish GUI, wthout changing the hardware. And btter yet: They cloned the old unintuitive strcture, while removing all hotkeys and rplacing them with a mous. And tht is wht the usr intrface of "Objects in Space" feels lke, only wrse, somhw. Th imprcticl layout f an old TUI, only navigabl by th slw means f a GUI void f cnsistnt htkys nd shrtcts, nd wth a sprnklng f thrghly cntrintuitiv ctrls. Thr ar thns f mor xmpls thn thse abv, bt 'm rning ut f chr

I realize it's still in development, so hopefully some of these issues will go away - and if they do, awesome! 1. Dialogue is silly. Screen after screen of pointless, akward dialogue with NPC's will irritate and frustrate. 2. The economy, especially in the early game, is broken. Be prepared to grind on missions for barely more than the fee each harbor charges to undock (average money made from mission = 150 credits or so - average fee to undock = 100 credits). To put that in perspective, any significant upgrade for your ship costs 5000 credits or more. This makes missions mostly pointless, at least until you get a jump drive (6000+ credits) - which of course, you can't. 3. This cycle can be broken by meeting a random NPC or two who will offer you a mindless task for a ridiculous amount of money. However, there's no challenge or "fun" factor to these missions, which makes the payoff seem cheap - and the reward of purchasing upgrades to your ship pointless, since that only offers the chance to grind on more pointless missions. 4. The game doesn't seem to have a coherent "goal" or plot. While some aspects are fun (below), those quickly become repetitive as a result. Not all is horrible: 1. The maintenance system for upgrading and modding your ship is well done (though a few bugs do still exist in the beta). 2. Space is vast, though fairly empty. In the end, kudos to the devs for attempting this project - it's a great idea, just needs lots of refinement and development, and much more content. An over-arching story-line, periodic goals and rewards, and a more coherent and balanced economy would definitely make the game a winner.

Game had promise, but is still filled with bugs, crashes, and non-sensical missions that make you lose money. It has officially been abandoned by the devs. The first few hours are fun while you're learning. Then it sucks.

This is potentially a 5 star game, but in its present state I'm giving 4 stars due to various issues. I'm gonna describe some of those issues so that you have an idea as to the current state of the game. Game is in dev, so bugs and crashes are to be expected. The game (at current ver 0.9) is playable though and crashes are not that frequent. Points of interest: Graphics and text are well done and the design is consistent, gives a great retro feel. Atmosphere is great and sounds and music are very fitting. Interface is clunky and needs improvement, no scrolling with mouse wheel, when you can scroll with arrow keys you need to tap key for each line. Some gameplay elements are unclear/confusing/require you to read up on forums (e.g. how to drop cargo, what the SOS button does (it teleports you to a station and charges a hefty fee, instead of alerting nearby vessels like you would think)) Early game requires some grind, at start you have no jump-drive and no weapons, so for the first few hours you are essentially limited to trading in the starting system. Gives you an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the controls though. As others already stated there's great variety, but progress in-game is slow NPCs are quite verbose and dialogue cannot be skipped. Dialog is well done, but if the game crashes or you need to reload and have to go through it multiple times it can get taxing. No manual docking is possible. The autopilot sometimes fails to dock, so that you have to fly away from the station again, till you are far enough for the autopilot to lock on again. This game is not a simulation, the ships in the game do not really behave like a spaceship would, e.g. they have a max speed that you cannot go above, even if you keep firing the engine; ships keep momentum, but only forward; rotation stops as soon as rotary engines cut out, acceptable for gameplay purposes. The devs are active on their forum and are hard at work to fix crashes and bugs. Overall worth a buy