Liberation

The controls seem really shit at the moment, but damn.... Something about this game is winning me over so far. I like the graphics and overall style. I see good things in its future.

This reminds me of Frontier Elite 2. Yet it is much more easier and friendlier to get into and lots of fun. The dev is responsive on the forums and fixes issues quickly. If you already own this, you really need to drop a review with your experience. Feedback and reviews help dev's immensely.

Getting to play a video game reminiscent of the Blake's 7 television show is amazing. I have only started playing, but the adventure story is fun so far, with good pacing. The purchase helps an open source developer. The game interface works great on the Steam Deck.

Imagine a smaller, more tightly focused Frontier: Elite 2 and you'd be in the ballpark for what to expect from Liberation. It's a great throwback and the extremely British puns and references throughout its narrative were always a delight. The spirit of it reminds me of the classic days of shareware, but the quality is well above a lot of the 8/16-bit space combat games. The story takes some real fun twists and turns and I don't want to spoil / imply / hint about anything that happens, but I will say that I loved it. I ran into a few issues on the Steam Deck with trying to adjust the resolution, the autopilot is best ignored, the inputs didn't always read properly, and it's super easy to accidentally overwrite your auto save after a death... But honestly none of that detracted from how much darn fun I had playing it. What. a. treat. The author estimated 3-5hrs of content and I hit the finish line at 4.9, though I probably would have come in an hour or so lower if it didn't take me s...

Down with GalFed! Seriously loving this game so far. A love letter to games like Elite and Frontier: Elite II. Plays smoothly on my Steam Deck too!

Rather lame, linear and small. Just go where you're told to and shoot some ships along the way. Has some great retro visuals though. Wish it was used to remake Elite: Frontier since the flying and combat feels similar but much better. Too bad it's only used for one main quest story with no trading, mining or side missions that could have easily expanded the game further. Yeah, it's an open universe where you can go where you want but so what when there's nothing to do there.

(Disclaimer: Played the itch.io version before; Steam version is identical). Liberation feels like a game made for the entire handful or so of those weirdos who, while everyone else was busy shooting legally distinct Wookie-Klingon hybrids in Wing Commander, spent their fondest space-blasting memories of the 1990s with DID's utterly bizarre Inferno; and this game digs quite deep into said memories with its fast arcade combat, garish vector graphics, and in-your-face soundtrack. Sure, the visuals favour green and purple over red and orange, the charming homages to Blake's 7 and other UK sci-fi classics are as far removed from Inferno's grotesque 90s comic book stylings as it gets, and instead of Alien Sex Fiend, the decidedly less British Machinae Supremacy blast out of your speakers, but the itch is being scratched one way or another.

Giving this a mostly neutral rating. One of those games that's worth buying when deeply discounted. Biggest positives are the unique retro art style and quality story writing (though short!). Being able to explore freely is nice, too, though there's not a whole lot of variety at the star ports in each system (news is generally the same, shop items are mostly the same and rather limited). There are multiple difficulty settings, which is good because by default the game is rather easy. Combat isn't very dynamic and controls are a bit clunky. Sound effects aren't great but do match the art style, while the music is ok but doesn't match the aesthetic as much. The game is largely bug-free but there is a nasty bug that screws everything up most of the time if you try to load a saved game after dying, requiring restarting the game to fix. One final nitpick, it took a few tries to figure out how to approach the last major encounter, so it would've been nice to not have to fly so far from the l...

You can see from the videos, it is an old school space sim adventure, so the graphic is "terrible" but well done, the music is awesome, the planet systems are "typical" (mining, city-planet, junkyard, etc), but well represented (i flew around to watch them closely), the interactions are basic but that is enough. The story is seemingly straightforward, but much longer than i expected. Reading the funny government ads in the game and watching the trailer again, i suspect i still far from the end of the story and there will be a twist. The space dogfights are simple and easy, thanks to maybe too helpful and cheap auto-target system. You can crank up the difficulty if you need to feel the danger, but i love the relaxing state of the game. Now i am in the (first?) major space battle and the difficulty spiked as i was squashed like a bug, but maybe i was just unlucky. I think control is the weakest part of the game, i didn't like the default keyboard mapping at all, but the dev patched...

Initial impressions are good. Pretty cool old-school space sim that reminds me of Elite. I'm just getting started for now, but I've been enjoying the way things are going so far. Fly around, shoot things, visit stations, upgrade your ship, and complete quests. At least that's been my experience so far.