What a game! I recently subscribed to Humble Choice and decided to complete the games that are going to be removed on February the 15th. This game is one of them. It wasn't on my radar and I hardly knew anything about it. Having played and completed the main objectives, I can confidently say that it's a hidden gem. I'm surprised not to have heard anything about it up to this point.

It's a rogue lite with an interesting twist. Most of the progress is kept after you die. The difference is you get to play with a new character with unique traits that might be good or bad. The different characters are justified in the story. You also get to lose some of the resources you got along the way. The weapon, armor upgrades, ammo and other resources are kept. The main point is to pillage ships to get resources in order to survive. It's a FPS mixed with resource management and making strategic decisions. The ships are manned by enemies who will rightfully kill you for daring to steal. The amount of enemies, security and hazards are all factors that you need to take into account. It might not be worth it if the enemies are too strong. You get some general intel before entering a ship in order to make your decision. But you also can't skip too many ships because you need fuels and food in order to survive. I love the risk and reward aspect in this game. The characters and setting are also very well realized. It has a unique and dark charm mixed with British humor. I love it!

In terms of flaws. I would have liked a type of training mode to test out the weapons and gadgets you unlock. It feels a bit too risky to try out new toys when it's a matter of life and death.

Honestly, there are so many things that I haven't mentioned. The mechanics can go pretty deep if you want to. There are also pirates and other enemies when you're moving your ship. Just know that it's a game worth playing if you keep an open mind. Its style is not necessarily mainstream but definitely give it a try if you're even mildly interested.

Playtime: 12 Hours
Score: 7/10

Been wanting to play this game for a while since it came out, and it was free on Epic, so I finally gave it a playthrough. I was interested in this game since it came to us from some of the devs who worked on the System Shock and Bioshock games, with the latter in particular being one of my favorite game series of all time. Plus I am someone who reads comics and have been passionate about them all my life, so the comic book art style was something that attracted me to this game as well! its basically like System Shock, if it were a roguelike.

Playing the game, it will definitely feel familiar to those who have played System shock, with the enemy types, the feeling of isolation in space, and the ships you move through. They definitely nailed the atmosphere and the feeling you could die at any moment. Each time you die, you play as a new character with their own traits. It is possible to swap traits out at specific machines or find these gene altering anomalies in space, which change your traits when you fly your ship near them. The gameplay loop involves your going from ship to ship, looting items, trying to find the main item you need and then hightailing it back to your ship. You also need to keep track of resources like fuel for your ship and food for your character. Each ship is procedurally generate with its own specific traits, that can work both against and for you. E.g. security bots being on your side, hazards like electrical wires, fire and radiation leaks.

I definitely enjoyed the gameplay loop of this game and the weapons are all fun to use. You do at the very least keep your weapons and upgrades when you die and just lose your ammo and supplies (but you start out with a small amount at the start of each run). I love the comic book art style and the soundtrack is also pretty awesome! The game can also be very funny at times, with some very dry British humor.

Some of the things I didn't like was the RNG aspects of it. You can have some runs where you get lucky and your having a great time playing, and other times where the dice doesn't roll in your favor and you just get frustrated. I don't mind RNG in games like Borderlands because its just specifically tied to the weapons you find, and not the levels themselves. I much prefer handcrafted levels that all feel unique from one another. After a while the ships all start to look the same and the gameplay starts to feel repetitive but the game ended for me right about when that started to set in, so it balanced itself out. I also just wish this game had a proper story campaign to hook me, as the games story is pretty basic and is just there to give the player urgency. Even if they perhaps included audio logs or lore entries for you to find, that explained why the universe is the way is, would have helped, but I understand that wouldn't really work with the games RNG nature.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game and I can recommend it to fans of System Shock or roguelike games. It does require a lot of RAM to play properly on PC, so if you don't have a gaming pc, I'd say check it out on console.