A chill way to spend a few hours just workin on the grind. This game is what I expect the old arcade Asteroids would be like with a modern remake. The game has you going around shooting space rocks to break them up and catch ore chunks that pop off. The ships can be upgraded, each of which change your play style a little, as does having different ships. It's not a tycoon-style game where you can own a fleet of ships and have them run autonomously (you can own multiple ships, but only as options for you to fly). Since saves are limited to the main station, it's much like a rogue-lite. Controls can be weird but they behave very consistently and are easy to get used to. Commanding the autopilot based on references is probably the best way to go. Most of the controls are remappable, but some are not (like enabling hardpoint subsystems). Autopilot upgrades make a huge difference as to how controllable the ship is in manual mode (cargo weight distribution is simulated). What's more, the gamepad controls play much, much differently than kb/m because where it's easy to left/right offset the autopilot relative approach vectors in gamepad, it's very difficult with the keyboard; this makes capturing much easier in kb/m mode, but avoiding and maneuvering around obstacles much harder than in gamepad mode (unless you are quite good at maneuvering with the mouse). There's not a lot of info/help on what the crew does. Suffice it to say that even cheap crew will pay for themselves. Astrogators remember POIs for a certain amount of time, Pilots provide "adrenaline surge" slowdowns when nearing collisions, Mechanics increase the repair % cap, Geologists identify minerals, estimate value, and highlight them. They also give you conversation interactions with other spacers. Play the demo. If your PC cannot lock the simulation speed, you're going to have a bad time (autopilot stability goes mad). Overall, I'm very satisfied.
