We all kinda knew deep inside that that the "open-galaxy" space sandbox genre would be better OFFLINE. I'm talking about games like EVE Online or the sandbox side of Elite: Dangerous. They're notoriously highly dependent on connected services, one galaxy with everyone getting to ride in it, spend time, unlock ships, lose ships, lose hair... WIth Astrox Imperium we get to verify that hypothesis, the results? - We can pause (active pause) - We can fast forward time (3x) - We can customize the gameplay (starting specs, multipliers, timers, scales, death consequences) - We don't lose as much real-life time grinding and re-grinding - No fear of missing out when we exited the game and go about our life - No maximum lifespan for the game - Mod support. Now the game itself: it's not an arcade space simulator like Elite: Dangerous, No Man's Sky or Star Citizen, where you use analog sticks for all ship movement. In Astrox you use mouse and keyboard and information panels to plot navigation and your ship's navigation computer does the rest. Which frees you to manage modules, targeting, scanning, launching drones, etc. That's the way it should be and will probably be in real spaceships that are too valuable to have a human steer them. There are manual arrow controls for avoiding obstacles for example. Astrox knows its crowd of virtual spacefarers in randomly or procedurally generated galaxies, and offers simplified and faster progressing systems which greatly benefits enjoyment. If you like a stronger challenge or grind, I am sure you can customize the gameplay after experiencing the default difficulty for a while. But the complexity might not increase that much. Another thing I really like is that a lot of features are available in the first hours of the game, all the jobs, bigger ships, top tier ammo, hiring NPC pilots... And the cost of entry isn't ridiculous. That means that if you're good at making money, you'll get rewarded very fast. As a space enthusiast with a day job, this game makes my favorite game genre acccessible to me again. The game is still is a grind, a time sink, and a "second job", but one that lets me tweak it according to how much time I can spare, that way I feel it respects my time. If I schedule a play session of 2h because 2h is all I have: I can still experience a lot of varied gameplay within that time. It's also less dramatic to start a fresh new game for any reason: you can give your new pilot a custom number of starting skill points, credits, inventory items, to pretty much come back to where your previous character was, only with a different map and faction states. The game doesn't have much of a story, I think the developers planned for it but haven't been able to showcase a proof of concept campaign - so the sandbox gamemodes are the way to go for me, past the tutorial. At some point the "engagement" to the galaxy will dry out without an evolving narrative overarching the entire game, but a great number of sandbox players completely ignore story elements. So it might not matter to you, just know that if you play other similar games that get story updates and are mainly into those stories, Astrox Imperium might feel barebone to you. The UI and controls are easy to get used to. It can be daunting during the first hours when all you have to do is navigating to a station or mining a rock, with lots of panels and buttons involved, but as the gameplay elements increase: the UI stays the same and in the end it is quite simple but powerful. There may be room for more QoL improvements, but I never get the feeling the game is fighting me. If I'm confused, I can always pause and look for answers. I wish for Astrox Imperium and future iterations to gain more traction, a larger community, and perhaps grow its own DNA further. One thing that niche and indie games lack unavoidably is player-driven online resources. May it be answers to how-to questions, discussions, video guides, out-of-game tools... I fully recommend this game, it plays like a sandbox, so once you have your favorite missions and your goals, it gets fun really fast. Like, "less than an hour"-fast as opposed to many other games.
This was a great experience, going beyond expectations throughout the chapters with stories and characters that hold up. Gameplay wise it is fun and easy to follow if you read everything on the PDA's and terminals. The puzzles are always a step further into dark, futuristic or horrific themes. Speaking of puzzles, for those who remember that Stasis had moments when several players felt stuck not figuring out what items to use and combine - it can happen a few times in Bone Totem as well. But with an advantage that there are three characters and three points of view, giving more information and hints as to what needs to be done next. This and knowing to pay attention improves the experience a lot, so this games has reached a very good level of game design. We need more games like Stasis!
