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Between the Stars - space action game with RPG growth and real time combat - now on Early Access

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Codex Year of the Donut
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1393754749/between-the-stars

http://www.isolatedgames.com





About This Game
Between the Stars is a space action game with RPG growth and real time combat that places you at the helm of an interstellar cruiser. Your mission will be to protect the civilized world from the Children of the Sun, a faction that dominates border planets in the known universe. In order to undertake your mission you must cross the galaxy, face new challenges at each warp jump, and make difficult decisions that affect your ship, crew and the world that surrounds you while upgrading your ship's equipment and fighting in battles to survive.

Fight3.jpg


  • Fight in intense space battles in real time.
  • Use special abilities on your ship in the right moment to mark the difference on the battlefield.

ShipCaptains4.jpg


  • Unlock, upgrade, personalize and buy different playable ships and their systems in order to conquer the galaxy.
  • Create a captain and develop them throughout the adventure. Level them up and acquire different attributes depending on your decisions.
  • Explore the stellar map and its events generated in a procedural universe.

NewTravel.jpg


  • Visit space stations and planets across different sectors that make up the galaxy.
  • Hire and upgrade your crew in order to face the dangers of the universe. Ensure their safety and cover your casualties, as well as level them up.

Improve.jpg


  • Hundreds of text based events that will pit your capacity as well as your crews against countless dangers.
  • Craft, salvage, and investigate new weaponry in order to augment your offensive capabilities.
  • Decisions made in one event could change the evolution of the entire playthrough.
  • Enjoy a standard difficulty mode or play with permadeath on for a challenge.

Anyone try it out yet? Has pretty good reviews so far.
 
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Modron

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Seen some people toss the name around here and there but haven't seen any real impressions yet myself.
 

Raapys

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I tried the pirate version. The space gameplay is simple, the scripted events okay(though the event combat was terrible in the version I had). There were very few useful components and weapons though, and the story/plot writing is atrocious. Just two or three simple types of generated missions. Nothing to research. The space combat becomes a cakewalk almost immediately and the plot fights are scripted to hell(can't kill this target yet!11).

The gameplay systems in place kinda imply the game has some potential, but at the moment they're just not used.
 

Commissar Draco

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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
Cruiser looks cool and game has some fun dice resolved adventures and this is only one good thing I can say about the game, the combat is too easy, the game works really slow on my comp (is this unity powered?) and you are playing as some wombyn in pajama and your crew is rainbow team... Yes you fight the white cis men for Republicuck I got it from the intro I demoed. There is very little things to research so far but its early access pre beta so it might get better but I doubt it.

Avorion here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/445220/Avorion/ Let you build your own cool ships so why pick this?
 

Skdursh

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I'm about to give this a trial run because it looked pretty cool in some Youtube videos, but the comments here don't inspire much confidence, but then again when is the Codex ever positive about anything that isn't at least 10 years old?
 

Jinn

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This game looks pretty damn cool. Maybe this thread should be moved to General RPG, Infinitron? Not all that much traffic through Space Game sub-forum and I bet a lot more people in GRPG would be interested to discover this. The developers essentially describe it as a space action-RPG.

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on it. If they make good progress in the next few months, I'll be supporting it in Early Access.
 

Jenkem

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Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I helped put crap in Monomyth
The final version is now available!
Greetings, Captains!

The final version of Between the Stars is here, and with it comes some new additions. We have also fixed some outstanding bugs, so this will be the most polished experience of the game.

The full campaign features over 160 main events, but also over 200 side quests. You have 25 ships to choose from, and you can customize them with the numerous available weapons and abilities.

The final moment has arrived: rise up against the Children of the Sun and save the galaxy!
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/727130/view/4141694364908319735

it's finally out of early access...
 

BrotherFrank

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So far not hating it, reminds me a lot of Freelancer 2.
The systems ain't super deep though so if you looking for something like star traders frontiers in terms of ship management this won't scratch that itch.

Biggest pet peeve for me so far is your crew starting crew being rng, so i got 3 of my female officers who have the exact same harley quinn haircut which is annoying even if you don't really see their faces most of the time, usually just the names during the CYOA bits.
I could totally imagine a scenario where some unlucky sod gets a bridge crew looking like they were handpicked by a DEI consultant firm, there is even a weight slider so more customisation options then baldurs gate 3 in that regard. Which again makes it a shame you can't just edit your crews looks and are stuck with what you get.
 
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holy shit balls cocked in fucks. worst camera and controls ever. i had to join the air force, i could ride the euthanasia coaster and just yawn, but damn, 5 minutes into the tutorial and i had *severe* motion sickness (never experienced before ever) and headache. technically, with my medications, i can't get headache.
i docked at the first station, with the ship constantly blocking the view during approach, and i don't want to continue.
but i tried to continue, and found grey thin fonts on grey buttons. who the fuck made this game? stevie wonder? either him, satan, or somebody else who actively hates humans.
aaand the tutorial bugged. game-breaking bugged.
 

BrotherFrank

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Guess i'll expand a little more since played more of it since last post.

Overall i'd rate this game as ok, 6-7/10 region (and i'm old school so 6-7 isnt a bad score in my book, i often say 7/10 games tend to be my fav because that's the flawed gem category). I'm favorably disposed towards it because it pleasantly surprised me in some ways, but i was also kind of let down in that i expected more detailed rpg and levelling systems then what is actually in the game, to the point that now that i lost interest and played something else it's hard for me to return and finish the run.

Can't be arsed to structure a coherent tldr so gonna be lazy and just bullet point random thoughts:

-Music is okayish, some themes i like and fit space opera vibe nicely, so suits your flying around space just fine
-Space is pretty, as it should be
-I never put much thought into it until madmaxhellfire pointed it out, but yeah can confirm when in battle i'm basically on a rollercoaster and swinging the camera in every direction like a madman. I don't mind it and even kinda enjoy it tbh but i can understand why some would loathe it.
-Travelling around the galaxy or from Poi to Poi feels just about right. Usually less then a minute of travel between them assuming you ain't intercepted by pirates. So little downtime other then when you need to dock with stations.
-CnC is a lot better then what you'd expect, and picking the right dialogue options tends to matter. Ideally i'd have to replay things to see how much it impacts the story truly though.
-Writing is decent, some sidequests are fun and were the primary reason i persisted with the game.
-You get a lot of perks, both good and bad for story decisions or rng. This annoys people but i ended up liking it, building a list of + and - quirks that provided a decent overview of what my captain is actually like. Even if getting "innaccurate" (your weapons are less accurate) due to failing a fairly difficult finesse check was mildly vexing (finesse being a captain skill and since no one else covers those, chances are your captain is going to be failing a lot of those.)
-Although there's cnc for dialogues, ship and upgrades is linear, ships are unlocked at a steady rate and within the players means, there is no saving up to buy an early bigass ship in this title. Considering how freeform a lot of space games tend to be, i feel this is worth mentioning, i remember freelancer having more freedom here for sure.
-The dice roll systems used for skills....actually kinda works? I guess it's ttrpg like really, like something out of L5r where every 2 points in a ring gave you another dice for skill checks, because that's exactly what this game does. Every skill check is score equal to above x on a d10, with each die only counting once rather then adding up, so the higher skilled an officer is the more rerolls you get.


Levelling systems:
This is its own category because i hate it yet respect it at the same time. I am going to need to rant a bit here to convey why i feel the way i do.

Your officers come in 3 flavors (engineering, science, security). Each department has 3 stats (so for science its medicine, analysis and...shields i think it was?). So 9 stats in total (your captain has their own 3 skills separate from the rest but principle is same). Now due to how the game works you are penalised for having rainbow officers in most skills: you have to specialise because skillchecks are based on the highest stat and a lot of functions like say manufacturing or analysing things for blueprints, are tier dependent, the tier depending on the skill lvl.
This does not hold true for some skills which never get checked and for whom every level is a flat +2.5% shield or whatever per level, in which case rainbow ahead i guess but you won't know that to begin with.

You need at least 1 officer of each type, so 3 slots taken automatically, leaving you 5. This means you have 8 officer spots to cover 9 stats, leading to the closest to build creativity you can get within this system: which officers do you take and what specialities will they cover and what will be your dump stat(s).
Once you've decided that, you never have to think about this again because every level up is just automatic: oh my medicine dude levelled up, wow i wonder where i'm going to put the single point..probably in shields, nah lol need to max out medicine first because of how skills work. When you've maxed out a skill, then you can think of putting points somewhere else but this is hardly riveting.

Now why do i still say i respect the systems here even if don't like them? Because as basic as these stats are, they do end up mattering for the most part. +2.5% per level to a stat isn't exciting but getting +1 dice to skill checks is huge, see the last bulletpoint made. There was something intrinsically satisfying about seeing a 9+ difficulty medicine check and having my chad medical officer drop 6 dice to ace it.
Thus as simplistic and unexciting to get levels as it is in this system, i cannot deny it matters in a clear and mechanical way.

I think the devs must have felt the systems were shallow too because they added a medal system as a bandaid solution: you can assign medals to your crew, every medal is unique and unlocked by conditions accrued naturally as you play (which also means you cant just hand rookies the best medals you have). Medal effects is a flat +% buff to some stat, nothing too exciting.
 
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