Planetship

[NOTE: Review will become more in-depth in the future] A trippy experience, reminds me of days long past watching old Science Fiction B-movies and Twilight Zone. And some of my favorite Sci-Fi authors, such as Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick. Flying around in a planetship is excessive fun, though your mileage may vary. There's a kind of crafting system in this game, where you utilize the periodic table (disclaimer: You don't need to know anything about science, though it might help as the game is very intuitive science-wise. Ex: You'll find gasses in nebulous clouds, heavy metals in asteroids, etc). With crafting, you can make things or conduct research with the available elements. Through research, you can affect the lives of those inhabiting the planetship. Research also interacts with events that occur outside of your ship. For instance, I researched something that increased repopulation exponentially. While flying around, some of our food supply got infected by a fungi. I could h...

EDIT 3: Holy fuckin' shit! The "Death Stars," the girders in the massive comets/asteroids / dead planets, and the Fast Travel minigame?! Every time I play Planetship, there's some new content to see. And it's all fuckin' brilliant. EDIT 2: I found space pirates hidden in a huge hive-like asteroid. I translated alien languages and then bartered with them. I blew up gas clouds, crafted drones to fight beside me, set up an Embassy on an alien planet. And I saved my game. Planetship is now less a diversion and more of a game what could have time and effort beyond the [i]now[/i] invested in it, especially with the overhaul of the map. It's still in its infancy (relatively), but now there should be no hesitation in getting Planetship. I guess I should actually write some sort of review, going back and striking through a lot of the old one. You are a brain in a jar on a spaceship that is some sort of planet. Yeah, Planetship is real "out there(, yo)." The text-events are farfetched ...

I really wanted to like this game based on the trailers, my appreciation for abstract science fiction, and some of the review comments but there's too much of a disconnect between the game play and the aesthetics for me. If a game wants to indulge in trippy visuals, I would prefer it to limit both the amount and complexity of information that needs to be digested in order to make choices in game. For instance, trying to evaluate planets requires reading descriptions and bar graphs of several different attributes while the text is moving around on the screen and often in and out of view. That sounds nitpicky, but the effect is like trying to read while in the back of a car on a bumpy road. Moreover, the more demands that are made of the player to process and monitor information make all the otherwise interesting background visuals and noise into distractions. I'd have preferred if the spontaneous (and seemingly arbitrary) random encounters had a similar feel to the introduction stor...

It is a fun and unique space exploration game with procedural generation, good humor, and interesting encounters.

The game is fun. It's neat. It's... very, very trippy. The trailer does [i]not[/i] embellish. The problem is that it has a few small bugs and one huge, nasty bug. One of the conversation topics with friendly aliens results in part of the interface becoming inoperable. Sometimes first contact will glitch out and bork the interface even if a new game is started. And then there's saving... Saving is automatic when you go to the main menu. Sometimes saving will work. Most of the time it will not. This means that all of the progress you have made could be flushed down the toilet when you exit, and you won't realize until you start the game up again. You can easily spend hours [i]experiencing[/i] this game, only to have to start again at square one next time you play.

Fun little timewaster if you have an hour or so to kill. Might get boring after a while, but so does tetris. For the general audience, it's alright. Maybe this would work nicely as an IOS or android app. ...now for Stoners, fans of psychadelic art, or a big fan of music that sounds like Boards of Canada? game becomes an addiction, send help. Please.

Cool aesthetic, and their hearts are definitely in the right place. I love the various encounters that my crew can get into when I send them down to planets. I think it needs a little more time to cook in Early Access, though - there's not quite enough going on "under the hood" to keep me enthralled while I go from system to system and occasionally shoot things. Were I the developers, I would improve the navigation system and map, so that I can tell where I'm going and where I've been a bit more easily (my strategy thus far has been to go willy-nilly towards whatever jump gate has "???" above it, until I run out of one of the supplies and backtrack frantically looking for a planet rich in that supply). Perhaps a listing of scanned planets could pop up when you hover your cursor over an explored system on the map? It takes a loooong time to earn an upgrade, which is fine as long as I'm excited to continue the grind. I'm not certain there's a way to save at this point, which makes gri...

[i]~ As of May 4, 2015; 2200-2300 hours[/i] (^ Posting the date cos I have no idea which build we're on) [h1] CHILL SPACE EXPLORATION, PT.1[/h1] I wasn't expecting much of [i]Planetship[/i] when I got a coupon from badge crafting. I actually tried to get rid of the coupon, but since I couldn't, I used it instead. And I regret nothing! Despite the early stage, the game already feels nice and unique in its own way. I mean, which game will offer you control over a psychedelic worldship (or planetship, it's all the same in concept) to travel through a colorful, unpredictable universe to find a new suitable planet? Not only that, but there are very cool references to old school (and I mean [i]old school[/i]) sci-fi books and films, as well as funny jokes regarding how humanity thought space travel would be back in the 60's-70's. Since the game is in early access, I won't give my usual pros and cons, but instead I'll point out what I like so far and what I think could make it better. [b]...

Reccomended, with caution. This is a trippy game, with some facinating promise, but it has some interesting effects with the lightshow. You gotta play it to really know what I mean, but otherwise - its a game I might be inclined to wander into again when I wish to really get lost someplace.

Er, what the heck did I just play? No save game then? Kinda recommend it I think, just for the tripping aspect. Kinda relaxing in a strange way. There is certainly no other game much like this out there. Very odd. If you are into REALLY ODD GAMES then this may be what you are looking for.