Last edited by a moderator:
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
Starcom: Nexus - top down open world space action RPG
- Thread starter Reapa
- Start date
This is one of the games I got during the recent winter sale, and it really got me hooked. 2D space exploration game somewhat similar to SC2, with minor RPG elements. I tried many of those "2D space RPG" games but this is the only one that managed to hook me immediately. The game has a lot of unique content in a handcrafted galaxy, so there's always something interesting to discover, which makes exploration fun and exciting.
You fly a small scout ship that gets transported to an unknown galaxy through a rift in space. The space station you were supposed to deliver crates of ancient pottery to also gets transported there, and it serves as your base of operations. Your goal is to explore the unknown area you find yourself in, going from solar system to solar system and gathering clues. You meet alien races, some of which are immediately hostile, others can be bargained with (but if you're careless you can piss them off and turn them hostile).
There's a bunch of resources which can be gathered by exploring planets, destroying asteroids, or from the wreckage of ruined enemy ships. Those resources can be used back at the home base to add new modules to your ship: additional generators, weapons, engines, shields, etc. You also earn "Research Points" from exploring planets, discovering space anomalies, trading technologies with aliens, etc. They're basically the game's experience points: with enough research points you can unlock new techs which improve your ship's parts or unlock new parts to install.
What makes this game so fun is the huge amount of stuff you can discover. Derelict ancient spaceships you don't know the origin of, but can maybe decipher if you find enough of them. Gargantuan abandoned space stations which are similarly unknown. Many planets contain unique little encounters where you can choose what to do with the things you discovered: will you investigate a bronze age civilization that built pyramids, or will you stay clear of them as to not interfere with their development? Will you try to restart an ancient computer's AI to earn research points, even though it might backfire and harm your crew? Sometimes, a discovery you make can only be fully analyzed later. I found strange graffiti in a cave and later discovered a database on a different planet that allowed me to decipher the language. I could then return to the planet with the graffiti, translate the text, and got coordinates to a faraway space station as my reward.
My favorite discovery yet were fast travel accelerator rings built by a civilization that wanted to evacuate its planet. They built the magnetic accelerator rail to send a colony ship to a faraway star system. But on the moonbase next to the second ring, I found logs that said "WARNING: SECOND RING OUT OF ALIGNMENT WITH FIRST. WARNING!"
If you start up both rings from the planet's central control station and use them, they will yeet you into empty space, far away from any solar systems, because the second ring is out of alignment. If you heed the warning and bump your ship into the ring while it's switched off in order to nudge it back in position so it points into the same direction as the first ring, it will send you straight towards the solar system that civilization wanted to evacuate to!
In that solar system you find a planet settled by small furry humanoids who arrived in a scout ship. They tell you that they've been waiting for the big colony ship to arrive for 20 years now...
Very cool game. Lots of fun. Exploration is a real joy due to all the unique handcrafted content.
Screenshots:
You fly a small scout ship that gets transported to an unknown galaxy through a rift in space. The space station you were supposed to deliver crates of ancient pottery to also gets transported there, and it serves as your base of operations. Your goal is to explore the unknown area you find yourself in, going from solar system to solar system and gathering clues. You meet alien races, some of which are immediately hostile, others can be bargained with (but if you're careless you can piss them off and turn them hostile).
There's a bunch of resources which can be gathered by exploring planets, destroying asteroids, or from the wreckage of ruined enemy ships. Those resources can be used back at the home base to add new modules to your ship: additional generators, weapons, engines, shields, etc. You also earn "Research Points" from exploring planets, discovering space anomalies, trading technologies with aliens, etc. They're basically the game's experience points: with enough research points you can unlock new techs which improve your ship's parts or unlock new parts to install.
What makes this game so fun is the huge amount of stuff you can discover. Derelict ancient spaceships you don't know the origin of, but can maybe decipher if you find enough of them. Gargantuan abandoned space stations which are similarly unknown. Many planets contain unique little encounters where you can choose what to do with the things you discovered: will you investigate a bronze age civilization that built pyramids, or will you stay clear of them as to not interfere with their development? Will you try to restart an ancient computer's AI to earn research points, even though it might backfire and harm your crew? Sometimes, a discovery you make can only be fully analyzed later. I found strange graffiti in a cave and later discovered a database on a different planet that allowed me to decipher the language. I could then return to the planet with the graffiti, translate the text, and got coordinates to a faraway space station as my reward.
My favorite discovery yet were fast travel accelerator rings built by a civilization that wanted to evacuate its planet. They built the magnetic accelerator rail to send a colony ship to a faraway star system. But on the moonbase next to the second ring, I found logs that said "WARNING: SECOND RING OUT OF ALIGNMENT WITH FIRST. WARNING!"
If you start up both rings from the planet's central control station and use them, they will yeet you into empty space, far away from any solar systems, because the second ring is out of alignment. If you heed the warning and bump your ship into the ring while it's switched off in order to nudge it back in position so it points into the same direction as the first ring, it will send you straight towards the solar system that civilization wanted to evacuate to!
In that solar system you find a planet settled by small furry humanoids who arrived in a scout ship. They tell you that they've been waiting for the big colony ship to arrive for 20 years now...
Very cool game. Lots of fun. Exploration is a real joy due to all the unique handcrafted content.
Screenshots:
Finished it. The ending was somewhat derp (I really wanted to join and support the "bad guy" but all I could do was either oppose him or surrender, not actively help) but other than that, it's an excellent game.
It was pretty short at 21.5 hours to finish, but it stayed fun and engaging from start to finish. The biggest focus of the game is its exploration, there's a ton of hidden shit to find based on hints you collect during planetary exploration.
You can find a star map that points to a system in deep space which is outside of your scanner range during normal exploration. But the map is the wrong way around but based on your own explored map you can deduce the location of the system.
There's a bunch of cryptic hints that end up telling you the location of a system hidden in a nebula, which require you to find a star of a certain color and then head "west" from there.
Lots of cool shit to find with little handholding. Great game that deserves a lot more attention than it gets.
It was pretty short at 21.5 hours to finish, but it stayed fun and engaging from start to finish. The biggest focus of the game is its exploration, there's a ton of hidden shit to find based on hints you collect during planetary exploration.
You can find a star map that points to a system in deep space which is outside of your scanner range during normal exploration. But the map is the wrong way around but based on your own explored map you can deduce the location of the system.
There's a bunch of cryptic hints that end up telling you the location of a system hidden in a nebula, which require you to find a star of a certain color and then head "west" from there.
Lots of cool shit to find with little handholding. Great game that deserves a lot more attention than it gets.
Tyranicon
A Memory of Eternity
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2019
- Messages
- 6,044
This is right up my alley. Do you control just one ship (with drones and fighters, etc), or can you get a fleet?
Anonymous Wife Scholar
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2020
- Messages
- 1,284
Thank you anon! You are a good anon! Can you tell me anon if Starcom game does have cute wifes anon! Can you! Thank you anon! You are a good anon!
Only one ship with a bunch of drones as an optional component. Single character space RPG basically.
What the fuck.
Tyranicon
A Memory of Eternity
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2019
- Messages
- 6,044
Bought it. Pretty neat game for the price. A few strange design choices though:
- All ship captains of the same race are essentially the same character (will remember meeting you, quests, etc).
- Very linear, at least in the first 10 or so systems
- Gameplay can be described as planet-scanning simulator
Anonymous Wife Scholar
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2020
- Messages
- 1,284
Do you know the English anon! Do you! Does Starcom game anon have cute romance wifes anon! Does it! Can you comprehension anon English language anon! Can you! Thank you anon! You are a good anon!
Jack Of Owls
Arcane
I have this in my library and was all set to play it a few months ago because it was supposedly closet to Starflight/SC2 (it's all about returning to the womb and those early germinal days of gaming for me) but I got distracted and never got around to doing a playthrough.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
beat it in about 20 hours, pretty fun but the ending was a big nothing. I guess it's a sequel hook?
basically the product of crossing star control 2 with starflight
what I'd like to see in a sequel is more races and better ship customization
the writing(anomalies, derelicts, general exploration stuff, etc.,) was pretty good though
probably the modern game that feels most like SC2 in spirit that I've played.
basically the product of crossing star control 2 with starflight
what I'd like to see in a sequel is more races and better ship customization
the writing(anomalies, derelicts, general exploration stuff, etc.,) was pretty good though
probably the modern game that feels most like SC2 in spirit that I've played.
Last edited:
luj1
You're all shills
bro this isnt an RPG.. looks fun and SC-ish tho
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
Definitely straddles the line, makes more sense when you're playing it.
- Joined
- May 13, 2009
- Messages
- 27,215
Finished this last night. Enjoyed it right up until the end, where it degraded into mush.
It has a lot of things going for it, but also some things that detract from it. On the detracting side there's the UI. It's trying to be minimal yet practical at the same time, but when you can't read enemy 'signals' on the edge of the screen because the UI gets in the way, then you have a problem. Also, the missiles don't have a visible cooldown timer (to show us how long until the next missile is ready) which is inexcusable in today's gaming. It's also missing indicators for stuff like whether the booster is active or not, what secondary weapon is currently active, and so on. More is needed on that front.
There's also a lot of untapped potential. I got through the entire game using a ship that has 20 modules, and I only had to refit to a different build once to solve a timed quest. The ship builder allows for literal leviathans with friggin' laser beams on their heads, yet there's no need for it, save for e-peen purposes.
But as stated, the absolute highlights of the game are the writing and the exploration... that is, the writing related to the exploration. When it comes to the main quest it's only passable. My biggest gripe is that the circumstances clearly tell the player that the 'event' didn't just leave everyone stranded in an unknown galaxy, but that 'event x' also happened along the way. Until you get to the end, where the Big Bad informs us that "Nope, it was actually 'event y' that happened" in some desperate measure of creating a plot twist.
The aliens encountered are shallow and stereotypical. There's your typical insectoid race, your typical reptilian race, your typical avian race, your typical arboreal race, your typical robot race, etc. Only the Phage stands out somewhat, both for having a creepy image and a creepier backstory, but they're here and gone in record time, gamewise. More missed potential.
The exploration aspect is so good that it almost makes up for the shortcomings, and most of the puzzles are really clever. Smug moment for me; there's a series of broken-down cargo ships that can be fixed and placed on auto-pilot. At first I thought they were just making a hasty exit, but then I realized they're all heading towards the same spot on the map. So I went there... and found a new system.
Do I recommend this game? Absolutely, but get it at a discount to minimize disappointment.
But what I like the most is the upcoming sequel, Unknown Space. It seems that the developer got a lot of feedback, incorporated it into a new game and is releasing that "soon". More minerals, more ship stats, crew members with skills that need checking during encounters, it's gonna be more of an RPG than Nexus. And no, it's not a sequel, but more of a 're-hash' of the Nexus game, with improved elements. You know, like how Richard Garriott made the first Ultima-games.
One to keep an eye on.
It has a lot of things going for it, but also some things that detract from it. On the detracting side there's the UI. It's trying to be minimal yet practical at the same time, but when you can't read enemy 'signals' on the edge of the screen because the UI gets in the way, then you have a problem. Also, the missiles don't have a visible cooldown timer (to show us how long until the next missile is ready) which is inexcusable in today's gaming. It's also missing indicators for stuff like whether the booster is active or not, what secondary weapon is currently active, and so on. More is needed on that front.
There's also a lot of untapped potential. I got through the entire game using a ship that has 20 modules, and I only had to refit to a different build once to solve a timed quest. The ship builder allows for literal leviathans with friggin' laser beams on their heads, yet there's no need for it, save for e-peen purposes.
But as stated, the absolute highlights of the game are the writing and the exploration... that is, the writing related to the exploration. When it comes to the main quest it's only passable. My biggest gripe is that the circumstances clearly tell the player that the 'event' didn't just leave everyone stranded in an unknown galaxy, but that 'event x' also happened along the way. Until you get to the end, where the Big Bad informs us that "Nope, it was actually 'event y' that happened" in some desperate measure of creating a plot twist.
The aliens encountered are shallow and stereotypical. There's your typical insectoid race, your typical reptilian race, your typical avian race, your typical arboreal race, your typical robot race, etc. Only the Phage stands out somewhat, both for having a creepy image and a creepier backstory, but they're here and gone in record time, gamewise. More missed potential.
The exploration aspect is so good that it almost makes up for the shortcomings, and most of the puzzles are really clever. Smug moment for me; there's a series of broken-down cargo ships that can be fixed and placed on auto-pilot. At first I thought they were just making a hasty exit, but then I realized they're all heading towards the same spot on the map. So I went there... and found a new system.
There's a abandoned ship that can be found hidden away on a planet. If you disassemble it you find a tracker, which can lead you to other ships hidden away in deep space. I noticed that these 'Mary Celestes' were all parked in deep space routes between two systems, and that they were pitch black and almost impossible to spot. "Better be careful not to crash into one," I thought, and resumed my journey. Some time later I'm whizzing through deep space at ludicrous speed and recall that there's a 'Mary Celeste'-ship along the way. "What are the odds I crash into that tiny little shi-*SPLAT*"
GAME OVER
"Pretty damn good odds, I'd say."
GAME OVER
"Pretty damn good odds, I'd say."
Do I recommend this game? Absolutely, but get it at a discount to minimize disappointment.
But what I like the most is the upcoming sequel, Unknown Space. It seems that the developer got a lot of feedback, incorporated it into a new game and is releasing that "soon". More minerals, more ship stats, crew members with skills that need checking during encounters, it's gonna be more of an RPG than Nexus. And no, it's not a sequel, but more of a 're-hash' of the Nexus game, with improved elements. You know, like how Richard Garriott made the first Ultima-games.
One to keep an eye on.
The jet stream of your ship is bigger when it's active
Nice, thanks for pointing it out. Wishlisted immediately. As an explorefag, this was one of the most fun games I played this year.
- Joined
- May 13, 2009
- Messages
- 27,215
The jet stream of your ship is bigger when it's active
I noticed that, but it's not always visible, due to zoom-out distances and such.
One other thing: While the music is good, the same can't be said about the SFX, especially the UI-noises. Hovering over options makes a noise which cuts into my ears.
I just binge played it during my holidays. I really liked the discovery/exploration/upgrading cycle. I think having the crew be 100% red shirts you would willingly sacrifice for 1% chance of getting something was a missed opportunity, though, but it would have been difficult to make it different (only FTL and its clones managed to do so, and maybe Star Traders: Frontier, but it is quite abstracted).
I tried the various game weapons, but ended up using only upgraded starting plasma guns, as the other weapons didn't seem like a noticeable upgrade. Some of the riddles were really inconvenient to solve, but I had a good time with the game.
The ending was disappointing indeed, and as Tyranicon pointed out, it is weird to talk to cloned mind linked alien captains.
I tried the various game weapons, but ended up using only upgraded starting plasma guns, as the other weapons didn't seem like a noticeable upgrade. Some of the riddles were really inconvenient to solve, but I had a good time with the game.
The triangulation for the Avian nest for instance, given how there are zero tools to do so in the game.
The ending was disappointing indeed, and as Tyranicon pointed out, it is weird to talk to cloned mind linked alien captains.
J1M
Arcane
- Joined
- May 14, 2008
- Messages
- 14,626
The codexian ending doesn't have a cliffhanger.
oldmanpaco
Master of Siestas
This was my biggest complaint in the game. The crew basically acted as HP for the ship. Some type of officer progression (like say Starflight) could have made the game much better. Hope that's in the works for the sequel.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/863590/view/3426703545266442156
Starcom: Unknown Space
Starcom: Nexus Follow-up entering Early Access December 14
It's been almost 3 years since Starcom: Nexusgraduated from Early Access and I've spent most of that time working on the follow-up title. Based on player survey responses, I've kept the core gameplay close to the original, while at the same time trying to improve a number of features. While I'm immensely proud of Starcom: Nexus, there were a number of aspects that both players and I felt could be improved such as the appearance and layout of ship modules, improved mission tracking, autopilot etc.
The game is neither a direct sequel, nor a reboot. I won't say more for the benefit of players who want to avoid spoilers, but it again has you as a newly minted commander exploring an unfamiliar universe.
Many of you have already participated in the rounds of closed betas that have shaped the new title. If you haven't, there will still be at least one big round of tests before Starcom: Unknown Space drops out of warp into Early Access. Playtest invites are sent to random subscribers/survey respondents.
Significant changes from
Starcom: Nexus
:
So if you enjoyed
- A new story with a new universe, characters, aliens and mysteries
- Completely revamped ship-building system featuring multi-hex modules and higher-quality models
- Faceless crew replaced with a command crew that progress in rank and skills
- Improved mission tracking system
- Numerous QoL improvements, like destination autopilot
- Improved VFX and UI
- Lots more!
Starcom: Nexus
and want more of the same but better,
Starcom: Unknown Space
enters Early Access on December 14, 2022.
holla_cabezas_de_mierda
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2006
- Messages
- 2,961
sequel looks really good
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.