Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • 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.

Star Explorers The Interstellar Dungeon Crawler

Late Bloomer

Scholar
Joined
Apr 7, 2022
Messages
2,956
Anyone have a chance to give this a try?



About This Game​


Notice​

Star Explorers is a game made by a single person over the course of many years - janky behavior may be experienced. You may reach out to the developer on the Steam forum or Discord server with any questions, bug reports or insults.

Version 5.0​

Earth has been destroyed, and humanity must find a way to survive. Star Explorers grants players a tremendous amount of freedom and agency in how to approach the game without holding your hand, but with freedom comes responsibility and consequences. Take risks and reap the rewards in your efforts to find a new home for the human race in this open world space exploration game.

Reviews:​

"...See, the galaxy Schmidt has created here isn't cruel. "Cruel" implies that it cares. And this galaxy is terribly, terribly uncaring..." - MagFlare – Steam User

"...This game, at its core, is about exploration, and it scratches my space exploration itch in a way that no game has since I played Starflight as a kid..." - battlescar2014 – Steam User

Planets​

Planets are formed randomly, but their conditions are based on somewhat scientific factors. The size and temperature of the star they orbit, their distance from that star, the type of surface, atmosphere, and liquids present (or not) determine how a planet will look once landed on. Players will be able to land, depart and return to planets, exploring their surfaces as well as underground cave systems repeatedly, while keeping the same features intact on each visit.

Exploration​

Fuel, ammunition and oxygen will all have to be carefully managed if the player wants to survive the long search for an earth-like planet. While many planets will be too hot or cold, or without an atmosphere, there are also worlds of liquid methane, ammonia, sulphuric acid and more, that have developed their own unique evolutionary cycles. Each kind of alien plant, tree or animal is pieced together randomly, making for a unique experience for each player.

The Star Explorers universe is not a friendly one though, it can be cruel and indifferent to the struggles of its inhabitants. If you're not careful, you might land on a planet that's just too hot, or too cold, or enveloped in a cloud of corrosive acid, and not live to tell about it. Upgrading your space suit will open these otherwise impossible worlds to further exploration.

Inventory, Upgrading and Crafting​

Exploration will allow the player to discover many things, including tools and resources that will help in further exploration. Among these are raw materials, weapons, armor upgrades and blueprints that allow you to craft helpful items. Armor upgrades will increase your space suit's resistance to heat, cold and other environmental hazards. Some weapons allow you to access areas that may be closed off to less experienced adventurers.

Caves and Ancient Ruins​

Star Explorers may be the first interstellar dungeon crawler. Traversing the dark, hidden places and caves is necessary to find the resources required to complete the game. Discover the crumbling remains of an ancient culture and learn the secrets of its mysterious people. In Star Explorers, exploration and investigation are rewarded with special items and locations that many players may never find. If you are someone who likes to look around every corner, then this is the game for you.

Generative Design​

Almost everything in Star Explorers is produced generatively. From the locations of stars and nebulae, to the surfaces of planets and their features, every location is different, and every play-through offers unique challenges. Even the music heard in game is generated in real time, and is based purely on the parameters of the player's environment. Each planet, cave and other location has a unique sound-track.

The Future of Star Explorers​

Star Explorers is still in development. You can see update announcements here on the store page, and in the community hub. A version 6.0 has not officially been announced yet. However, minor updates and tweaks still happen fairly regularly.

A broke friend of mind asked me to pick out an inexpensive Christmas gift from my wishlist so I chose this. It sounds like something I would like quite a bit. Lets get a comfy space game discussion going.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,332
Location
Massachusettes
I own it, but never played more than a few minutes of it because you have to be in the mood for these things. In days of yore when I played space games like Starflight it would have no doubt been the shit instead of shit. It gets rave reviews from its admittedly smallish fanbase and the 1-man developer is fairly regularly updating it so I'm sure it has merit if you're into this genre.
 

grimace

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2015
Messages
1,988
I own it, but never played more than a few minutes of it because you have to be in the mood for these things. In days of yore when I played space games like Starflight it would have no doubt been the shit instead of shit. It gets rave reviews from its admittedly smallish fanbase and the 1-man developer is fairly regularly updating it so I'm sure it has merit if you're into this genre.

Is there a dev roadmap for Star Explorers?
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,332
Location
Massachusettes
I own it, but never played more than a few minutes of it because you have to be in the mood for these things. In days of yore when I played space games like Starflight it would have no doubt been the shit instead of shit. It gets rave reviews from its admittedly smallish fanbase and the 1-man developer is fairly regularly updating it so I'm sure it has merit if you're into this genre.

Is there a dev roadmap for Star Explorers?
Not that I know of but then again I don't really follow development. Dude did an interesting and unusual FPS using vector graphics prevously so at least he's talented. None of his recent updates for SE have been major ones, just QoL features and bug fixes.
 

ShaggyMoose

Savant
Joined
Aug 26, 2017
Messages
593
Location
Australia
I played this quite extensively a couple of years ago. I went into it not expecting a whole lot but quite enjoyed it. As noted above, its essentially an indie (one-man) NMS with an obviously far more limited scope. Exploration is reasonably interesting for a while, mostly due to the different world types. However, world size is extremely limited and I found the caves/dungeons to be fairly lack lustre, basically just there for resource collection. Graphics are dated, but in a charming way.

The developer did a major revision between v3 and v4, but v5 is just very minor enhancements/bug fixes. I would say development has effectively finished.
 

Spukrian

Savant
Joined
May 28, 2016
Messages
686
Location
Lost Continent of Mu
I'm done with Star Explorers. Nice little game though I feel it needs more content, stuff to do, places to visit and more reasons to do so. I mean, there are a few upgrades in the beginning of the game and some more late game, the late game upgrades trivializes the game. I feel that a better route would be to incrementally upgrade the ship's fuel tanks and the suit's oxygen tanks to carry more. I feel that I came to a point where I had no motivation to collect resources anymore and I was swimmming in cash, by that time exploration had become stale but I continued playing for a few hours because I wanted to find that Alien City...

The developer still updates the game to fix bugs and has stated that he wants to add more content when he has time. I'll probably won't play this again unless there is a massive content update. Maybe I'm sounding quite negative so I should state that I had a lot of fun for at least half of the 30 hours I spent on this game.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,332
Location
Massachusettes
Developer dude is clearly talented. Hope he gets to crossover into the big time someday (or at least a much larger audience) but still maintains his vision, integrity, whatever you want to call it.
 

ShaggyMoose

Savant
Joined
Aug 26, 2017
Messages
593
Location
Australia
Islands of the Caliph has a fair number of reviews already given it is an niche indie game that has only just been released, so while I wouldn't call that the "big time" at least he is getting some exposure and income.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,332
Location
Massachusettes
I bought Star Explorers so I'll probably buy IotC to support him but also because it just seems like an interesting game, slightly reminiscent of The Quest but bigger 'n' better.
 

Jack Of Owls

Arcane
Joined
May 23, 2014
Messages
4,332
Location
Massachusettes
Also, as someone stated in another Star Explorer-type title thread here, it's too bad there aren't any construction sets for these games so modders can really fill in the game world and add tons of extra content or re-balance things to make the progression more fun and consistent until the end.
 

GaelicVigil

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 13, 2013
Messages
281
The comparison to Daggerfall is nonsense. The "planets" are like 50 square feet.

Game is fun for about an hour, then you start seeing the same stuff over and over again.
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,829
Also, as someone stated in another Star Explorer-type title thread here, it's too bad there aren't any construction sets for these games so modders can really fill in the game world and add tons of extra content or re-balance things to make the progression more fun and consistent until the end.
look in the root folder, i actually expect there's a lot of functionality to expand on things that doesn't require tools. the files that define maps, items, npcs, quests, dialogue are all unencrypted and human readable. if you wanted to make content for SE or IotC and aren't computer-illiterate, you could do it.
 

SharkClub

Prophet
Patron
Joined
May 27, 2010
Messages
1,540
Strap Yourselves In
The comparison to Daggerfall is nonsense. The "planets" are like 50 square feet.
The Daggerfall comparison clearly has more to do with the extremely labyrinthine caves, spaceships and ruins you can explore (you know, the dungeon crawling part of "the interstellar dungeon crawler"), rather than a giant contiguous overworld. Unfortunately for me that's all the dungeons seem to be. They're like if Daggerfall dungeons were solely composed of the dungeon blocks which are maze tunnels and none of the large rooms or dungeon puzzles or switches, and very very rarely do the caves/ruin interiors include enemies to fight, it's purely a game of hugging the left wall and following it to the loot chests and onward until you find the entrance again. The little automap tool you carry around with you is also extremely unreliable because instead of an easily readable representation of the layout you're in it just shows a top down representation of the map, with all of the lighting, shadows and atmosphere applied (or something like that) which can make it very hard to read in certain environments.

I've had more than my fill of the game at around 35 hours (the last few of which were just autistic completionist cheevo hunting for something that is seemingly bugged in the current version, I won't bother with the details unless someone really wants to know). My thoughts echo Spukrian's quite a bit in that around half of the hours I played I had some genuine fun with it, exploring and progressing and experiencing some of the different things the game has to offer, once you get over the learning curve with the starchart, but as soon as you're done seeing all there is to see it loses its lustre rapidly. There isn't really any replay value at all unlike the massive amount that Daggerfall has (in large part due to it being an RPG), in the end the comparison really does just begin and end with the labyrinths.

Still, respect for the dev for trying to do something here, however half-baked it feels after playing it for a few more hours than anyone should be expected to. He also seems to be a nice guy and dedicated to improving his craft so I can't fault him there. Islands of the Caliph looks a lot better (both gameplay wise and artistically) than this game, though I haven't played that one yet.
 

ind33d

Educated
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
984
good idea, should have just waited for starfield creation kit and made it a mod
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom