Indie Space Sims - post 'em if you find 'em

[Jed]

One of the best looking upcoming space sims is Babylon 5: I Found Her. There is a "prequel campaign" available, I've given it a try and it seems real polished, great graphics, decent (if strange) voice acting, and realistic Newtonian physics. The physics kick my ass, though...

We all know Escape Velocity: Nova, Flatspace, and Beta Blocker.

Hajo, Rogue-Like developer and regular forum-poster, may or may not finish his space exploration CRPG which might be named Space Traveller or Arxigle Xentrophore or maybe something else. I kind of just like "H-World," myself... Keep me in mind for the alpha, beta, etc., Hajo!

I keep meaning to give Space Empires: Starfury a shot, but I hear it's less than, um... stellar. Yeah.

There's a series of space sims titled Starwraith. They're actually up to number four. Considering I've never really heard a word about them, I don't know if that's good or bad.

There's also the Smugglers series. I've played around with Smugglers 3, and I think it's a lot of fun. It plays like a turn-based EV:N, even has TB combat. I think it's fun, but more for a short distraction on your lunch break than a full-on epic adventure. Everyone should give the demo a shot. Apparently there's an add-on that adds a lot of new features.

Lastly, and I realize that it's not actually an "indie" game, and of course I realize that a lot of people won't care, but Battlecruiser 3000AD has been released as freeware.

Also, maybe one the admins could sticky this post?

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Space Empires: Starfury is pretty decent, IMO.

The Starwraith series is okay too, but I just can never play them for too long. Don't know why.

Battlecruiser makes me cry when I think about it. That game had potential and I wanted to like it, but just could never bring myself to play it for more than an hour.

Consider me for alpha and beta testing as well, Hajo.

 

[Jed]

Space Empires: Starfury is pretty decent, IMO.

How are the controls? That's usually what makes or breaks a space sim for me.

How does the combat play out?

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

How are the controls? That's usually what makes or breaks a space sim for me.

How does the combat play out?

Well, first, I must point out that I find this game decent. But it's decent in a mild distraction sort of way due to it's simplicity. Combat is nothing majorly complex and plays out rather quickly. The controls mirror this as well. They are simple as long as you know the hotkeys. Still it fills the gaps of boredom rather nicely.

 

[Jed]

What are the qualities you like about it?

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

What are the qualities you like about it?

To be perfectly honest, not much except the fact there's alot of modability options for your ship. The random campaign generator isn't anything stellar, but serves it's purpose for a quick fix.

 

[Jed]

Is there only a random campaign generator? Or is there also one stock OC?

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Is there only a random campaign generator? Or is there also one stock OC?

Unless they've updated recently, there is no stock OC. It's all generated randomly. I'll look into it later, just not right now. Gotta play some Bloodlines.

 

[Crnobog]

Starfury does have premade campaigns, 3 or 4 of them iirc, but they all can get boring pretty quick as there are only 4 mission types:
-get some cargo from A to B
-kill a specific enemy
-defend a ship (which is just 'kill enemy before he kills someone')
-kill all enemies in a sector

I don't think it could even be called a space-sim, because all objects are located on a single flat 2D plane, so you can only move left-right and forward-backward.
The combat is fun though - there are lots of different weapon types, each weapon mount has a certain firing arc, the ship's systems are fully customizable, just like in other Space Emires.
The problem is, once you get the biggest ship and some powerful weapons (which can be done relatively quick if you just shoot everyone in sight and sell their cargo which often brings alot more profit than mission rewards) there's no point in playing more. Enemies get progressively stronger as you level up and you gain access to higher-level equipment (like, Meson Blaster mkXIII instead of mkXII), but the campaigns are not interesting enough to bother with finishing them.

And it seems the trading system is broken. When I played it some two months ago, the latest version added a 'Commodities' tab in the trading menu, but there are no commodities to trade. You can only get them on cargo hauling missions or by attacking freighters. It probably got fixed by now though.

 

[Crnobog]

There's also
Epiar - kinda similar to Flatspace but with prettier graphics
Vega Strike

 

[Jed]

There's also
Epiar - kinda similar to Flatspace but with prettier graphics
Vega Strike

Hmm. Judging by the screenshots, Epiar looks a lot like EVN. I'll have to check it out and compare. Have you played Vegastrike lately? Last I played was about a year or so ago, and there wasn't a whole lot to do. Though it does look real nice.

 

[Lemon]

Starshatter - Its sort of Falcon 4 lite set in space.

 

[Jed]

Starshatter - Its sort of Falcon 4 lite set in space.

Is Starshatter an indie game?

 

[Hajo]

Hajo, Rogue-Like developer and regular forum-poster, may or may not finish his space exploration CRPG which might be named Space Traveller or Arxigle Xentrophore or maybe something else. I kind of just like "H-World," myself... Keep me in mind for the alpha, beta, etc., Hajo!

"Space Traveller" is registered by some company, so I had to rename the project. "H-World" is the name of the engine, "Arxigle Xentrophore" is the working title of the space game module.

I have no idea if I'll be able to finish the project. But I'm confident I can get it to a playworthy thing In 1996/1997 I was working on a similar project already, but it went into hibernation for some years when I was working on Simutrans. In early 2003 I tried to merge the remains of the old project with my new "H-World" engine. After that most of my time was spent on Simutrans again, and also on upgrading the "H-World" engine with new features. Currently it seems I'll be able to focus my efforts on "Arxigle Xentrophore", but there are really many things to do, so don't expect big results soon.Currently it's like a big puzzle, some pieces fit together already, others are lose and some are even not yet existing.

 

[Lemon]

Starshatter - Its sort of Falcon 4 lite set in space.

Is Starshatter an indie game?

The pricetag says no but it is a one man effort.

Vegastrike - Open Source, Privateer like in nature. The GUI is poorly thought out and much of the Planetside art is awful, still it may end up something better.

(and now I notice Vegastrike has already been posted)

 

[Jed]

Found another: Wazzal (not to be confused with Whazzup!) is self-described space privateering game on the order of FlatSpace with snazzy-looking graphics. How does it play? I don't know. Too much work and school is killing my gaming time...

First GGG, now this--what other free, downloadable goodies will the Germans come up with next?

 

[Sol Invictus]

Isn't GGG wacky disgusting German bukkake/piss porn?

 

[Avé]

Isn't GGG wacky disgusting German bukkake/piss porn?

Bukkake only as far as I know, but yes. Although I prefer not to look at that kind of stuff...

 

[Jed]

Isn't GGG wacky disgusting German bukkake/piss porn?

Don't forget the anal!

 

[Astromarine]

Bukkake only as far as I know

Ah, the sweet sweet bliss of ignorance, how I long for it...

 

[Jed]

The Babylon Project is a Babylon 5-themed total conversion of Freespace 2. It's a stand-alone, so you don't need Freespace 2 to run it, either.

 

[LCJr.]

Transcendence

http://www.neurohack.com/transcendence/index.html

Interesting little game. Sort of rogue-ish. You start with a small ship and kill pirate ships and bases. Once you take them out you loot them, use or sell the loot and try to make your way to the galactic core. Nice graphics and fun to play. Gives you a rundown of how long you played how many enemies you killed, etc.. when you buy the farm which is pretty often for me.

Far Colony

http://farcolony.sourceforge.net/index_en.html

Still in Alpha but slowly making progress. Build a colony and explore space game. Designer says combat isn't the main focus so not really a 4X game. Others have said the concept is similiar to Outpost but I haven't played that one so can't comment.


Saw Vega Strike mentioned a few times, current version is 4.3 and is looking much, much nicer. Some of the station exteriors and base/planet interiors are at professional quality art and some is still the old placeholder art. Missions are still the simple haul cargo, defend, escort and kill such and such but the campaign system is being expanded. Got looking the other day and the first release was in Feb. 2001 so they're definately in it for the long haul.

Besides that it's the engine used for the Privateer Remake. There's several other planned mods for it but the only one I've noticed that has releases is Vega Trek(Star Trek mod, to boldy go where EVERYONE has gone before).

 

[chaedwards]

Privateer Remake, using the vegastrike engine, currently at version 1.1.

http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/

Haven't tried it yet.

 

[Screaming_life]

Entropy - a space trading/piracy/bounty hunter/free form styled 'Elite genre' game, attempting to bring modern technology to the era.

The feature set includes:

* Transitionless, seamless game play and graphics, from Galactic to Planetary to Cityscape scales
* Elite style space-trading game in space, with Hardwar style game play on surfaces, with many new and unique features to both themes
* A universe consisting of billions of unique planets, cities, cultures and trade items, with both real and procedural star systems
* Server based massively multiplayer economy, resources, story and universe, influenced by singleplayer gaming
* Fully realised planets with cratering, canyons, polar caps, trees and alien flora and fauna
* HabNet - Interact with the Entropy universe from outside Entropy.

 

[flabbyjack]

Starport

Starport: Galactic Empires!!! (shazam!)
www.starportgame.com

Features :
Galaxy Map - hundreds of star systems! The galaxy map will let you plot a course through the systems to your destination
PvP - Dozens of players online at any time, attacking each other with homing missiles in fast action controlled mostly with the keyboard
Warp fuel - Fuel is dolled out to the tune of ~500 per day, so that even if you aren't an obsessed chain smoking monkey gamer you have a chance at being one of the cool kids in Starport.
Great community - Except for our admin and all-around-god Toonces, he can suck my balls.
Erm... more! Yeah! (check the site dumbass)

This game really took me by surprise, I stumbled upon it from Penny Arcade advertisement and I've been playing it ever since. There's over a dozen different servers -- games are two weeks long(then servers are reset) but recently they've added a permaserv, where corporates boat to control dozens upon dozens of planets, and a 4-hour server, for fast and furious action.

Oh yeah, and its free!