Developer: Snowhound Games
Publisher: 1C Entertainment
Rrp: £15.49 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 26th September 2018
Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: Mouse
Approximate game length: 25 Hours +
Somewhere out in the darkness of space lie treasures from a civilisation long since dead. But the largest prize of them all is ‘The Mothership’, most believe it to be a myth but some claim to have proof of its existence. Many have tried to find it and so far all have failed… but perhaps you might be different.
I do love a good deckbuilding game and it seems that at the moment there’s no shortage of that particular genre around. However one thing that you don’t normally find is a deck-builder that’s an RPG and mixes in roguelite elements.
You start the game by creating your starting crew. Now before we start talking about the character creation you first have to do the most important part of making a crew, picking a name. Sure you could just go with a random name, but everyone knows that this is far too important for some dice roll to determine, so think carefully because this will have NO effect on anything at all. But I will judge you.
This crew consists of three people, each of which can be one of six classes (and no I won’t go into detail about what the classes do); Bruiser, Leader, Medic, Scrapper, Technician and Tracker. Each class has a set of default stats that dictate how they perform when using certain types of actions or attacks. Now that the class is selected you also get to pick their mentality which will give an additional bonus either in combat or to a skill.
Once all that is done you can choose to play on normal or hardcore mode. Hardcore mode adds in permadeath so once all your crew is dead the game is over.
The game opens to your crew being on a space station. This place will be your hub, where you can buy and sell weapons and equipment at the Pawn Shop, research new technology that will make your life easier while on mission at the Lab, heal up and revive your team at the Medical Centre, report your findings at the Station Hall and visit ‘The Lair’ where you can hire new crew for your team as well as take on and redeem contracts for some cash.
The only other way to make money is by selling the junk and equipment you find while exploring derelict ships with a trader on the ship (if one happens to appear) or back on the station at the Pawn Shop.
When out on a derelict everything you do consumes energy. By default your crew starts off with a thousand points of energy, this may sound like a lot but it gets consumed surprisingly quickly. Each time you move from one room to another it costs ten energy. When in combat each characters turn costs ten energy as well, even waiting costs energy. This is where the lab comes in, if you’re willing to spend the money you can increase your energy reserves, lower the costs of performing actions as well as many other improvements.
As well as your main mission of finding data on the motherships whereabouts each derelict comes with two optional missions you can complete. Completing these optional missions can reward you with new equipment, money or experience.
You can leave a derelict from a landing pad to return to the station, this costs nothing to do and your progress on the derelict is kept. If while exploring a derelict you discover another landing pad you can choose to land there instead if you choose to revisit that derelict.
Of course these derelicts aren’t the safest places in the universe, there are traps that can be set off, other rival scrappers to contend with and other aliens to fend off.
Combat turn based and the uses your crews initiative stat to determine the turn order, the highest being the one to go first. The various attacks and actions you can perform are represented as cards that appear on the bottom left of the screen. These cards come from the equipment your crew is using, the mods that are installed onto said equipment and a few abilities they gain as they level. If you remove a mod or piece of equipment then you also lose the cards that are attached.
As your crew completes missions, avoid traps and defeats enemies they will gain experience which in turn will cause them to go up in level. With each new level ability points are given to spend on a skill tree.
As I mentioned earlier, occasionally your crew will stumble upon a room that has been trapped, in the event of this your crew will need to pass a skill check that compares whatever relevant skill is needed against a hidden number. If you pass you’ll be rewarded with experience points, if you fail then one of quite a few bad things happens.
I really enjoyed my time with this game, I did two complete playthroughs on normal mode and I’m working on my hardcore mode playthrough now. If you also enjoy deck builders I highly recommend this game.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Slay the Spire
Darkest Dungeon
Void Bastards
