Space Games

[Dark Drakan]

Yeah I know its a generic title, im at work and writing this while in a rush but wanted everyones thoughts. Im fascinated with the idea of a game where you have your own ship and can traverse the galaxy (sometimes with friends) and land on planets and explore things on a universal scale.

With so many ambitious looking 'space titles' coming out recently and many that are still very much work in progress I wanted to use this thread to highlight some of them and filter out the ones worth looking into.

Im really intrigued as to which one will tick all my own personal boxes first and wanted to know if anyone else was interested in the genre too. Here are a couple that caught my eye so far...

Will start with the most well known and most ambitious one ive seen...​

Star Citizen (Not released) - MMO, space trading and combat game for PC and Linux which includes a single-player campaign titled Squadron 42. Despite multiple delays its scope has changed massively since it was announced way back in 2012, it has gone on to generate more than $50 million and is still in active development but no release date as of yet. (Some more info in my other thread here).

Elite Dangerous (Steam Link)- The player explores a realistic 1:1 scale open world galaxy based on the real Milky Way, with the gameplay being open-ended. The game is the first in the series to attempt to feature massively multiplayer gameplay, with players' actions affecting the narrative story of the game's persistent universe. Currently averages 80% on metacritic. ​

No Mans Sky (Steam Link) - Developed by a small indie studio and unfortunately surrounded by controversy after its launch when it was met with HUGE criticism over its marketing before launch and lots of features that were spoken about not actually being in the game. They have however recently come out with some big updates and frequent patches and the game is now being positively reviewed with many saying it feels like a different game. Couple more patches and more features being introduced and it could become great.

Duel Universe (Not Released) - Kickstarter funded (€565,983) continuous Single-Shard sandbox MMORPG taking place in a vast Sci-Fi universe, focusing on emergent gameplay with player-driven in-game economy, politics, trade and warfare. Players can freely modify the voxel-based universe by creating structures, spaceships or giant orbital stations, giving birth to empires and civilizations.

Morphite (Steam Link) - Coming soon to Nintendo Switch & Android, released Sept 19th for PS4, Xbox One, Steam, and iOS its touted as an atmospheric exploration sci-fi shooter with platforming elements and a Low-Poly Look style graphics. Inspired by No Mans Sky, Metroid Prime, Ratchet and Clank, and Turok your goal is to explore the galaxy, research plants and animals, battle hostile entities, and unravel a mystery surrounding a rare material called Morphite. Morphite is set to be a deep and enriching single player experience with both a story-driven plot as well as open-ended, player-driven exploration and discovery.

Eve Online (Released) - Player-created empires, player-driven markets, and endless ways to embark on your personal sci-fi adventure. Conspire with thousands of others to bring the galaxy to its knees, or go it alone and carve your own niche in the massive EVE universe. Harvest, mine, manufacture or play the market. Travel whatever path you choose in the ultimate universe of boundless opportunity.

TL;DR
Are there any games you know of that are based in space where you can have your own ship and explore space, planets, land on planets and play with others?
(They dont have to tick all of those boxes of course)​

 

[WolfOD64]

I'd rather settle for a nice, single-player flight sim game to be honest. My entire interest in games like Wing Commander IV and X-Wing Alliance was everything I could do on my own. And most of these games made today are largely intended to be played with other people online, which I'm not utterly fond of.

So yeah, we have a lot of space flight-sims, but very few of them are developed or committed to a single-player experience. That's probably why I'm more excited for Ace Combat 7 than Star Citizen (not least of which is because one actually has a projected release date).

 

[Dark Drakan]

I'd rather settle for a nice, single-player flight sim game to be honest. My entire interest in games like Wing Commander IV and X-Wing Alliance was everything I could do on my own. And most of these games made today are largely intended to be played with other people online, which I'm not utterly fond of.

So yeah, we have a lot of space flight-sims, but very few of them are developed or committed to a single-player experience. That's probably why I'm more excited for Ace Combat 7 than Star Citizen (not least of which is because one actually has a projected release date).

I used to love Ace Combat back in the day, though I wanted to concentrate on the shared world more online centric ones in this thread. Mainly because (and im speaking only in game terms) space is such a vast and empty lonely place sometimes game mechanics in them arent always the most interesting (lots of the same backdrops and traveling) and I think by going down the shared world/MMO route a lot of games will simply have more to do & see in them. When game levels are usually so linear and the paths preset it blows my mind how developers can have entire planets with any point of entry into atmosphere open to players meaning there has got to be interesting stuff over a planetary scale.

Single player space games will normally still be as restricted as the single player games of other genres with the game world only stretching so far and players being funneled down a preset path to a mostly linear location within it with only limited freedom being allowed.

In games where your actions can have effects on other players and can have consequences on a large scale as well as large space battles going on between multiple players & factions at same time as people being on a planet below (for example). It interests me how developers keep on top of something of that scale when game play areas are usually so much smaller and more focused on set destinations (as said above) & how the network keeps track of so many player actions on that scale.

Though I included Morphite and that's single player only & No Mans Sky was single player only originally (despite articles and interviews saying otherwise) & now has only very basic multiplayer element. Your named planets showed up for others as discovered by you and now you see others as floating orbs (like Fable 2) and will apparently be expanded further in future updates. It was a huge undertaking by a really small team & they had some clever tools and tricks to get a game of that scale created by that size team. I'm fascinated by the under the hood tech it requires to run a shared world/multiplayer environment on the scale of something like Elite & Star Citizen for example & that player base. The network & server stats for these titles is going to be insane.

Something like the economy in Eve Online must be an absolute nightmare to keep on top of and keep fair for new and old players alike (now it's free to play). Its the scale of these titles im most interested in and when developers start mastering the tech involved in this sort of scale what others genres could benefit from a scale increase too.