Right, I went ahead and picked up the DRM-free version of this game to give it a whirl.
The first thing to note is that despite this game touting "thrilling roguelike mechanics," I attained the win condition in one try, with one of the least-generous starts (you must unlock more generous starts as you play). I may be a Codexer, but I'm not THAT good, especially not at roguelikes as they're not my forte. The game is clearly designed only to challenge retards.
The clone theme is obviously one of the game's big motifs, so I'll explain that here. Enemies regularly drop glowing green orbs called Biomass, which is then hoovered up and stored in a Biotank (a modular ship room). Biomass can be used to create new clones, to research new types of clones, to research enhancements to existing clone types, to research special alien abilities (these are similar to SS2 psi powers), and finally it also powers med stations throughout the ship and in the landing craft, where you can hold E to regain +50 HP per 1 Biomass after a few seconds. In order to research new or enhance existing types of clones, special DNA-themed drops must also be collected from the various enemy types throughout the game.
There are a total of ten clone species. Stat-wise, clones come in four flavors: average normies (average stats, applies to humans and a few others); nerds (enhanced speed and intelligence, but reduced HP and pathogen resistance); Chads (enhanced HP and resistance, reduced intelligence); and Neanderthals (greatly enhanced HP and resistance, greatly reduced intelligence, possible outright immunity to one damage type). As you can see, there must be repeats of these four types among the ten species, but these are differentiated by the atmosphere that they breathe, which is a logistical consideration. (There are five different types of atmosphere, produced by a few plants specific to each type, which must be planted in Greenhouse modules and tended to in order to create and sustain crew capacity, alongside universal Crew Quarter modules.)
Clones serve as extra lives for the player in the event of your death (you can choose up to two specific successors if you have a Respawn Chamber module), they tend the greenhouses, they can be assigned to man the workstations in each module, they serve as (generally piss-poor) security in the event of enemy boarders or alien infestation, and up to two of them can accompany you on away team harvesting missions (and act like suicidal retards, generally) or be sent on away harvesting missions without you present. Also, you must have a certain number of them breathing a certain atmosphere type (both depend on RNG) to attempt the game's win condition, which is called Genesis, basically the colonization of a new planet.
Moving on from strict discussion of clones, most ship modules perform some type of active "work." The Bridge controls scanning nearby star systems, for example, while the Tractor Beam module allows you to beam salvage (and possibly also stowaways and/or space AIDS) aboard. Each module that performs work contains a main control terminal and two or three workstations. Once a specific type of work has been chosen at a main terminal (for example, beaming aboard a patch of scrap iron), a progress bar appears on the workstation readouts. The only way to budge this progress bar is for clones to man the workstations, and how quickly they budge it depends on their intelligence stat. There's always a spare terminal for the player (who's also a clone), and intervening directly massively speeds up progress, but of course you can only be in one place at a given time. This may sound annoying, but it's actually not too bad. A number of functions, like refining ore, tending the greenhouse, and finishing up scanning on the Bridge (you'll want to intervene for a head-start scan of the immediate system), can safely be left to automated crew members, especially if they're specialized a bit into intelligence.
The shipbuilding is certainly mildly interesting and does have tactical and strategic considerations. You can also change the wall, ceiling, and floor color of each individual module (or the entire ship at once), and customize the text on each over-door text plate in each junction or corridor. There are a total of 27 modules that I know of so far, not counting upgraded/advanced versions of the same module, which mostly applies to the Cloning Facility (advanced versions allow research of stronger clones and alien abilities) and the Workshop (allows upgrading of some weapons, deployable turrets, and deployable force fields; also, where you select available weapons and construct new ammo, turrets, and force fields). There are seven possible levels to build on (you start on level 0), though most modules require enough room on the 3D ship model that you'll in practice only ever want/have three "decks." Some other modules I haven't mentioned so far include:
- Corridors, Turbolifts: You know what these are.
- Hangar: You launch resource-harvesting expeditions to planets from here. Robots called Robotniks (you can build more, find upgraded models, and they can be destroyed by invaders) retrieve the spoils and deliver them to storage/depot modules or to the Refinery for processing.
- Medical Research: Here you research various types of space AIDS that may infest your ship, in order to learn how to cure them.
- Reactors, Shields, Hyperdrives: No work is done in these. Reactors passively provide building capacity (every non-reactor module requires some energy), Shields provide shields which protect against pirate-like space enemies, and Hyperdrives increase your grid sight range and hyperjump range.
- Zen Pool/Cantina/etc.: There are a few types of these modules with unique aesthetic designs. They're for crew relaxation and increase passive healing of clones no matter where they are on the ship; unassigned crew may hang out there.
- Security Gate: Can be set to manual or automatic, and prevents boarders or critters from passing through.
- Decontamination A/B: Two configurations of a room that gasses any humanoid or alien invader as they pass through, and (I believe) insta-kills space AIDS trying to spread through it.
- Panic Room: A tiny room with two pre-deployed turrets, two pre-deployed force fields, and an antechemaber that gasses any enemy attempting to pass through.
Now, the main ACKSHUN gameplay here comes in two and two-halves flavors, so we'll call it an even three. The main one is harvesting expeditions to alien worlds. Alien worlds come in a variety of terrain types and may be brightly lit in various atmospheric colors, dark, or dark and foggy (very annoying, adds to challenge for sure). It's all random glitz. Your shuttlecraft will land in a small playable circle of terrain, around which are always mineral outcrops, occasionally plants, and often one, sometimes two, or even three special points of interest further out into the playable circle. You gather minerals (which are used to build/research modules, weapons, ammo, and as hyperjump fuel) and plants with your harvesting tool, while at PoIs, you must wait in one small area for about twenty seconds while downloading data. PoIs are essentially treasure chests and can yield new weapon schematics, new modular ship room schematics, passive suit (character stat) upgrades, special data items that allow you to pinpoint some locations of certain resources or alien species on the galaxy/system maps, or the exact location of an actual upgrade item (consolation prize).
Of course, enemies of various kinds appear to rush the player while he's distracting gathering resources and retrieving data. There are three general types: Creepy-crawlies, which are always small and range from crab-like critters to grubs to tentacle monsters; humanoid/human-like, which resemble humans and typically move and fire some kind of weapon in human-like fashion, the most dangerous enemy type by far; and what I call "shamblers," slow-moving, creepy things in wildly varying configurations with odd and often potent abilities. The enemy variety is okay here, the aliens are nice and alien-ish, and there's an okay variety of weapons, but of course it's all a bit thin and not quite enough.
Second game mode is REPEL BOARDERS mode. On board your ship, if you lack shields or if your shields go down and you're in the same sector as a "pirate" ship (they're alien species called Framen and Mechanics, but pirates is essentially their role), they'll endlessly beam aboard at intervals and into random ship modules unless and until you jump away. If you find yourself in a situation where you can't reach your bridge or can't use the controls long enough to jump away, it's game over as they'll continue to appear and wreck everything until your ship goes up in flames. Now, this mode is potentially interesting (and defeating a certain number of Framen and Mechanic boarders in one game is a requirement to unlock certain starts) and fun, except for the fact that they spawn both endlessly and randomly. The fact that you can't beat them is just disappointing and means you MUST jump away even if you want to fight a lot of them, while the fact they can spawn seemingly anywhere initially limits (but does not eliminate) the efficacy of defensive modules such as the Security Gate and Decontamination.
You can place turrets anywhere you please, including plastered all over every module in your ship, and these will assist deterring invaders. You can also place deployable force fields. Your crew will fight back (very incompetently) and use healing stations to heal themselves, and species with enhanced HP and good alien abilities can help them hold their own a little bit. Mostly, though, your crew and defensive measures only keep boarders down to a dull roar/somewhat contained. It's up to you, the captain, to make sure the ship jumps away sooner rather than later and wipe them out. Meanwhile, they can damage the power nodes to your various modules and potentially destroy the ship.
The 2.5th game mode happens in the Tractor Beam modules. When you beam salvage aboard, it might contain a few creepy-crawly or even humanoid stowaways, but the worst is Space AIDS. When infested by Space AIDS, you'll see a few mists of spores for a moment as your only hint and warning, after which the AIDS begins to spread. This comes in various forms manifesting as biological masses that spread invisibly and accrete on various surfaces in ship modules. It can look like green foam, grey fungus, shiny pink foam, etc. Many can infest crew members and spread, and many can cause creepy-crawly infestations in the crawlspaces of your ship (all modules have crawlspace for this specific reason, to allow infestations that might take place without you noticing) or cause full-sized aliens to form from the masses, or even all three. You must purge the unclean before it destroys your ship and research diseases so that you can cure infected crew. If you don't already have a cure, I've found the best cure is for the captain to perform a summary execution. They're clones after all, they'll come back. It's perfectly ethical.
The final game mode comes when attempting the win condition. You must reenact Starship Troopers in order to secure your colony and your win, and if you fail, it's game over right away, no respawning into a clone. I won't say much about this other than that you cover more ground than usual while shooting aliens than in the standard small harvester circle.
Whew, I've said a lot, haven't I? While it may take a while to describe, the thing is, I've basically described THE ENTIRE GAME to you, despite the lack of visuals and specifics. Yes, it's all spread a bit too thinly. Even after my one game that resulted in a win, despite not discovering every single clone type, alien species, and weapon, I pretty much know what to expect from every game moving forward. It's just more upgrades and sidegrades, basically, and different ship layouts and atmosphere mixes.
I will say, though, that I do quite like the surreal, bizarre, slightly creepy, alternate-universe like atmosphere of many of the clone, alien and creature designs in the game. Alongside the quasi-retro vibe of the weapon and ship module designs, it's all fairly atmospheric and immersive. However, this is all pretty much just eye candy and doesn't pertain to the gameplay.
