Recent reviews by igiss

This action game has peculiar atmosphere to it, but I didn't quite enjoy the action part. Shooting feels shallow, sound effects are weird, and there's no feeling of impact when you hit your enemies. Needs lots of work to become better.

I liked this game. Parts of it were quite imaginative. I think it could use some added length and more encounters and more worlds. Perhaps in the second part?

A Freelancer-like space action/trade/exploration game. I will update this review after trying more game features.

Pros:

- A dynamic game world with nice little quirks like you dock at a station, it gets attacked by hostiles and ejects your ship when it's damaged too badly;
- Good tutorials;
- Simple movement controls (but not firing controls, see below);
- Lots of options to play with, plus God Mode for easy exploration;
- Intriguing options like building satellites and commanding a fleet (did not try that yet);
- "Hypersleep" for fast travel;
- Good music that sometimes gets WEIRD in a nice way (railroad sounds in space anyone?).

Cons:

- Very few usable hotkeys. Many frequently used features (hypersleep, weapon fire) either don't have a hotkey or it's not clear what the hotkey is.
- NPC ships sometimes appear from nowhere in front of you and disappear the same way;
- Confusing missions (you get TONS of distress calls, but it's not clear what to do once you reach the waypoint);
- Death is underwhelming, you don't even see your own ship explode, and it's not clear what to do next (like, you don't have a ship anymore, and if you don't have money to buy a new one, you're screwed).

Overall it's a fun game to play, but it needs a lot of polish. Right now it's more of a 3D platformer than a shooter, since it's the environments that slow you down the most, not the foes. There are lots of repetitive jumping puzzles, and you cannot always see where the fall-to-the-death areas are. Visually, the first level is extremely bright and the next ones are so dark that they require to change gamma setting to play; I'd really suggest to work on it, perhaps make the first level darker so that the consequent ones don't become such a huge contrast.

I will update the review when I'll be able to complete more levels.

I rarely play idle strategies but this game really got me. Very easy to play, lots of fun. Basically you build up a base and then go offline, and the resources pile up by themselves.

The problematic thing is switching between star systems, which forces you to start building your base from anew. While this prevents you from piling up infinite resources and infinitely powerful ships, it can also be quite frustrating, especially when you had powerful ships in your previous system.

It could also be useful to be able to skip space battles where your ships vastly outmatch the enemy. Quick battles are fun to watch but they can get repetitive when you win DOZENS of matches in just a few minutes. A practice mode where you choose the difficulty of your foes could be a useful addition.

Edit: I see that in the 2nd galaxy and beyond there are "Generals" that allow to fight automatically. They cost immense amounts of candy, though.

You can listen to the birds sing, watch the trains go back and forth, and stress out because your cards run out way too fast.

Love this game. It might seem short, but it's actually quite lengthy and complex, since you replay a story over and over with different conditions and very different outcomes. Marvellous music, too.

Save the Underling!

This game is your average space shoot-em-up with some RPG elements and story. However, the RPG elements are not well-balanced, there are upgrades like giving you a 0,5% damage increase or 0,1% chance of insta killing something. Story is generic, and dialogs aren't that great (voices aren't either). The game can be fun, but the complexity is added by adding massive hit points to all, even the most basic enemies. This makes progress slow and unrewarding.

Can't really complain since it cost me $2, but it could be much, much better. There's only one usable tactic (turn around the planet and fire), there are sound bugs, and intro screen is just... something.

This planetary strategy may seem small, but it's quite complex.

You collect water, oxygen and coal from asteroid fields, then throw them onto planets created by the Sun. The Sun is supposed to be teaching us what to do, but in fact it sleeps all the time (and tutorial is very far from completion, even the asteroid fields aren't explained). When you get the resources onto planet surface, you have to ignite a "space match" and put it next to coal in order to warm the planet up and make it fertile. Then you seed it with plants, critters, trees, animals and such.

The amount of combinations in this game is immense, since each "space seeds" or "space eggs" item may produce different creatures in different conditions. Atmospheric conditions on planets change as new species are introduced, and some species may die out.

This is interesting to explore for a while, but unfortunately the balance in this game somehow tends to make all planets wet, and creating more complex life requires gathering "twigs" for "nests" that are nearly impossible to produce on water planets. Interactions between elements are quite complex, and it could be better to make things easier. At least add a clear way to make planets dry but still fertile.