WarpVector

Highly recommend this one. This is a really interesting space-based roguelike where you control a single craft out to find a MacGuffin that can stop a star collapsing. You get 1000 turns to do this. Most of the traditional roguelike trappings are here -turn-based gameplay, high difficulty, permadeath, procedural generation etc., but what really sets this game apart is the combat. All the combat entities are effected by what is basically Newtonian physics. This means that you can't turn on a dime because spaceships have inertia they need to overcome before they can turn. Depending on how fast you are going it may take several turns to stop and turn around. This means that you have to carefully plan out your encounters, not just out-gunning and out-thinking your opponents, but out maneuvering them as well. Your ship has multiple mount points, facing forwards, and facing port and starboard. All this coalesces into an experience that is more than the sum of it's parts. In an carefully u...

WarpVector is ... an odd duck. Pros: + Classy retro graphics, imitating text mode games of decades gone by. + A unique turn-based movement system, capturing the tricky nature of maneuvering without air or water resistance to slow your momentum. + Quick, play-and-go runs that only take a few minutes even when going well. Cons: - Very, very random. Pop an anomaly, appear in a random system with no warp power in range of a pirate space station's siege lasers, game over. Try again! - Obtuse mechanics and UI. You'll be told you "collided with the planet" when you landed correctly. - Not much guidance on how to progress toward an endgame. Main quest clues are few and far between. All in all, I recommend it, because quirky niche labors of love deserve support! If the screenshots look amusing to you, you'll probably enjoy jumping around the star map and getting exploded for a couple of hours, and that's well worth $5.

It's an interesting project that's for sure. I love the idea. ASCII space exploration roguelike ticks a lot of my boxes. I'm going to give it a very tentative thumbs up because it's obviously a labor of love and it's still very new (this review is version 1.1) so there's the chance of some substantial updates to come, but that thumbs up comes with some reservations, which you should read because this game is definitely not for the faint of heart. It's cheap, and it's interesting, and it's worth it to me, but I think a lot of people will struggle with the issues below even more than I am. First of all, the game provides little to no guidance or hand-holding. That alone isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in combination with some of the rest of the comments I'm going to make, it becomes a major problem. All you get is a simple help screen that tells you the controls (neither rebindable nor remotely ergonomic, using arrow keys instead of wasd, only a bare handful of controls sprinkled ran...

It takes a little while to get used to the "Newtonian" movement, and it takes a little longer to get used to the power management and realize why sometimes you can't move or your shields aren't charging or whatever. Some more tooltips or UI alerts would help with that. But, once you get used to it, it is really great. I managed to die crashing into my home planet, die to pirates, die being launched into the sun by an anomaly, completely disarm my ship for a pacifist speed run, and die to a precursor fleet on the far side of the galaxy. I also sucked my entire home system into a black hole by mistake, so +1 for that but I'm subtracting half a star in my review because that didn't count as a victory for stopping the supernova. Anyway, 11/10, great traditional roguelike game with some really neat innovations. Simple and fast to play, can die on your coffee break.

Managed to capture a precuror ship and had like 50 shields. and prob the best ship possible, told my precursor ship to stand down as i was working on mind controling the crew of another one. fucked up with steering and it hit me with a singularaty gun that one shot me. didnt expect that. this happened in the system where the main Qwest item was so i was prob about the beat the game. oh well.

Good, simple game well worth it's price with an interesting story and good combat. Could use some polish but real enjoyable even just as is

I"m trying to save the home planet from its dying star but wind up triggering a nearby anomaly field that collapses into a black hole and eats said star... [spoiler] and home planet.... whoops [/spoiler]

Took me 7 hours of playtime, and I finally beat it and feel extremely satisfied for the money and time spent. Movement uses Newtonian physics, which is quite realistic but takes some getting used to, cause you have to mentally plan out your changing trajetory and deceleration and have to line up velocity vectors when trying to dock. Oh, and [spoiler]do not sell the Orbitron Device, because you need to deliver it to the starting system's terrestrial planet. If you sell it for 1000 gold, then you have to buy it back for 2000 gold, which I managed to do in the nick of time. The victory screen is also a little underwhelming, but you have to internally feel the accomplishment.[/spoiler] Here are my stats: Returned the Orbitron to Altaris on day 1830 out of 2000. Pirate ships destroyed: 19 Khanate ships destroyed: 8 Systems discovered: 22

An absolutely awful control scheme undermines this game. Basically it is a turn based vaguely Newtonian (i.e. we have acceleration/inertia) system where you plot a course via the cursor keys. In practice it means you spend a lot of time flying in circles to reach anywhere, which I found very tedious. Also in combat, why can't my ship turn in place while on a vector and fire in whatever direction like actual Newtonian physics allows? I imagine I could get used to it but can I be bothered? Not as this time. I wanted to explore planets and anomalies, not fly in circles for a lot of the time while I struggle to reach them. That said it was mildly funny when I visited an anomaly five minutes after starting my first game, hit an ion storm that drained all my energy so I could not maneuver, and then fell into a sun because my momentum carried me in a straight line into it. I tried a couple more goes but it hasn't grabbed me as I hate the steering. I'll maybe try again later but ...

Very promising. Minimalist but still very deep. Reminds me of the good old days of substance over style. Definitely retro, but enjoyable. A great break between longer gaming sessions or to relax at the end of a day, or over lunch break or similar. Please refer to this guide that explains many things that could also be in a tutorial: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2969126572 PS - be careful landing on planets - if your speed is not reduced to zero you'll crash rather than land. In a perfect world, more mouse support would rock!