Okay, I think I’m the first one to do this. I played as Jonas Starhawk, who, after being sent 2,000 years in the future, decided to explore the entire galaxy and collect every material. And I did that, which is why it took me so long to write this comment.
Here’s proof of the accomplishment:
Me and my dad have watched Dev Diary together since September, and I was really excited to play this alpha. So with complete galaxy exploration under my belt, I can definitively state that this is a fun gameplay loop. Once the story is developed, I can see plenty of people doing different things with their playthrough. Someone might want to explore the galaxy, or get the fastest ship, maybe pledge themselves to a faction. There’s a lot of mechanics I can see getting better with more story depth getting added. I’ll get through my list of bugs and glitches before some suggestions I have for improvements on existing features.
Gameplay Glitch/Notes:
- No description of Freight Jobs in the Manual.
- Upgrade Units not appearing on Derelict Ships, but computer messages saying I’ve missed one. I first started noticing this after following a rumor to a ship.
- Game freeze when dropping any item into a door.
- Lag when landing on uninhabited planets or ship repairs. Could it be caused by items in my Landing Bay or ship in general?
- No way to restore Coolant after the system has been damaged besides upgrading the ship. I though I was being smart by throwing coolant bottles at it, but to no avail.
- Fuel in Warp Engines gets cleared when you upgrade any part of the ship.
- Some objects left in the Landing Bay can be deleted if the Landing Bay is upgraded.
- Navigating the trading posts with a cursor is clunky.
- Sometimes the residue timer makes something you’ve just cleaned 20%+ dirty.
- In the Jobs board, you can get quests for a ‘Berry Bunch’ or ‘Pea Pod’. Both are actually quests for ‘Berries’ and ‘Peas’.
- Your balance should appear in the repainting store like every other shop.
- Maybe I'm dumb, but I couldn't find any way to take off my characters glasses. I eventually got used to them, but it feels like there should be some way to do that.
- Maybe some differentiation between the hair and skin chair? Maybe the skin chair is actually a tanning bed.
Visual Glitch:
- In the countdown stage of the Warp Speed animation, number 2 shows a half rendered ship.
- Air puff texture can disappear if next to a wall at the top. It can also appear through the ship when entering warp speed.
- That damage texture doesn’t line up with the outside cockpits sensor thingies. I fixed them before I thought to take a picture, but it basically hangs out over space instead of the sensor.
- If you pick up an item while nearing/out of stamina, the emotion reaction will play. If you move immediately, the reaction stays where it is and doesn’t follow the player. Maybe since player tracking could be hard, emotions should stop when the player moves?
- Items in a Landing Bay lost their texture when landing on a repair ship. I could still interact with them even when invisible, and could glitch through them to move around. My items also appeared in the Landing Bay of the other ship.
- When upgrading a ship, if you have items laying on the ground (as I had), and the ship's arrangement moves, the items get put in this null black void area. They’re recoverable thankfully, the void disappears after they’re removed and the ship is reloaded. A similar thing happens when docking at a repair ship with items on the landing bay.
- If there are too many ship components, they clip underneath the repainting menu.
- The cursor pointing towards the ship on a landed planet clips above the menus.
Audio Glitch:
- I spun the ship around fast in the System Map. I left quickly and the spinning sound kept playing until I landed on a planet.
Suggestions:
- When in the Manual, there should be icons next to each description of the planet types. I only started understanding the differences because of attrition. Explanations for each planet type should probably be in the tutorial as well. Maybe the lawyer says “Go to the Residential planet ____ to get some new haircut options.”
- Civilized planets feel very desolate. As I was on my 50-60th Residential planet, I wondered why all these shops and medical services were on raised platforms. Why aren’t stores on the ground level, with people going in and out? If I could go down into the marketplaces of planets, they would have their own personalities and cultures. You’ve got the movement code for Zoobs, why not refine that and have residents walk around. No interaction required, just movement to make these planets feel lived in.
- While I was watching the most recent Dev Diary, one idea of yours caught my attention, sectioning off space for early gameplay. I like the idea, but it doesn’t make sense with the current layout of the map. All the systems are in this unnatural box grid, and cutting the players movement into another box seems stale. Taking a page from the Star Wars galaxy, I think the map should be circular and split into ‘rims’. This does a couple things. 1. It just looks more visually appealing. 2. It would show off the massive purple egg in the middle of the galaxy better. 3. It allows the player to explore varied types of planets as they unlock ‘rims’ through the story or other gameplay. Maybe lore-wise, the egg makes it difficult to warp jump without a powerful ship. You can still jump to it any time, but are more likely to get smashed by asteroids the worse your ship is.
- Playing off my ‘rims’ idea, I think the eventual factions the player encounters should have different areas of belief. Maybe the farther a system is from the egg, the less likely it is for them to believe it exists. Meanwhile those in the center worship or fear it.
- Another commenter talked more on this, but the day system is confusing. There's no calendar or way to track cycles yourself. The word only appears in freight jobs and while sleeping.
- I think sleeping should eventually be removed. I appreciate its current inclusion, since there's nothing besides cleaning and the small direct control game to do. But once the secondary and tertiary loops are there, I don't see any reason why sleeping can't be replaced primarily with food items. Sleeping is the player's way of saying "There's nothing left to do, let me just time skip", and I don't think the final version of the game should have that much to skip.
- I’m of two minds on the random system names and planet composition. On one hand, having a set galaxy where all players have the same experiences seems most beneficial. Plus you could flesh out the backstory of a world and by extension a crew member you can recruit from it. Other hand, randomness means a new story every time the player restarts the game. Randomness is also easier to program I imagine. I ultimately think it’s better for the game to have one structured setting (planet layouts, resources, size) and have random planet names, factions, and characters.
Final thoughts:
I loved this alpha. I only played one insanely completionist way, which isn’t usually normal for me. I can’t even imagine the story I’ll have with crewmates and taking the adventure slower. I started collecting all the items after I saw they had hilarious flavor text. And I can see how some items could be used with the new rooms and features. Reading through the menus and taskbars of this game is really enjoyable. I found a sneak peak of a repair shop faction in the Industrial Planet description, and I’m super excited for that. All my larger critiques boil down to me just wanting more to do, another feature to bite my teeth into. Can’t wait to keep playing this with each new release!