Though the advertisement, the main webpage of the website, and even the beginning of the game weren't very impressive, I decided to give this a fair chance, since I love Astronomy.
I've played this for about 3 hours, working my way through the tutorial and up to interstellar travel. I'd like to say, for my impression so far, this is better than it looks, especially if you enjoy learning about space. The premise of the game is to explore other solar systems, set up mining operations, and bring the resources back to Earth. You can have multiple ships, stations, and mining operations under your command. You can also PvP, by raiding other player's ships, stations, and mining ops. Corporations can be formed for unified interests, and I assume eventually corporations could own territory, attacking anyone who enters that does not belong. I'll split up the rest of my thoughts into the good and the bad.
-The tutorial is comprehensive and easy to understand. You aren't just thrown into the wild, but given a guided hand. And of course, you can skip the tutorial all together and come back to it later if you like, you're not hard coded to do what it says.
-Every major body (at least in our Solar System) has a few sentences about it, a brief summary of what it's about. I consider myself very knowledgeable in Astronomy, but I've already learned a thing or two by playing this. For example:
"The asteroid belt is the region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The asteroid belt formed from the primordial solar nebula as a group of planetesimals, the smaller precursors of the planets, which in turn formed protoplanets.
Between Mars and Jupiter, however, gravitational perturbations from the giant planet imbued the protoplanets with too much orbital energy for them to accrete into a planet. Collisions became too violent, and instead of sticking together, the planetesimals and most of the protoplanets shattered, creating the asteroid belt."
-This is a thinking game. You can't simply nilly willy travel everywhere. You have to conserve your fuel and other resources, otherwise you'll go bankrupt. It adds this sense of accomplishment, because not everyone can succeed. I was reading the message boards and a lot of people are having trouble turning a profit.
-Interface is very easy and intuitive. You can get to almost any menu with 1-2 clicks from any other menu.
-Pay to win doesn't seem to be a problem. While opponents can get ahead by speeding up processes, they don't actually get a distinct advantage. VIP (Premium) allows you to have more than 3 ships and 3 stations, but otherwise get no unfair advantage over you. There are a few 'officers' which get you minor bonuses, like +25% combat ability, but aren't game breakers. You can also buy everything using in game credits.
-Game has multiple avenues to success, from raiding other players, setting up fuel depots for passing ships, or setting up mining operations on distant, unexplored systems.
-The pictures for conversation are, I'm sorry, bad. I honestly think they might be better replaced by some kind of comm picture, like "In Communication", or some such. Of course, this doesn't effect gameplay.
-The bigger ships you buy look exactly like the old ones, just with new stats.
-Tutorial has a few typos.
There really isn't much bad about this though, mostly poor presentation.
Anyway, if I continue to enjoy this, I'll probably make a B12 Corp at some point. Good job with this. I really do enjoy the exploration feel of it and the information provided.
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Topic: Astro Galaxy: New space exploration 4X browser game (Read 20054 times)