Grauken
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2013
- Messages
- 13,325
So I've been playing around with the demo of Stellar Terminus that was released at the end of last month. It's a turn-based, party-based blobber where you collect enemies into your party, explore sci-fi dungeons in the very far future (suns have gone out, relicts of old civilizations orbit black holes and you can enter those, explore them, strip mine parts into components, research stuff to upgrade both your spaceship, your equipment and the enemies that are willing to join your party.
The demo starts weirdly enough in the recent past, 80ies or so, where you're hired on a one-way mission into the future. The first level annoyingly is pure fluff where you go around and read descriptions of stuff. Once you make your way to the launch pad you're off to the real gameplay parts.
You arrive in the far future, orbiting a block hole with a few options where to go. Each of the relics orbiting the black hole represent a dungeon. I had only enough fuel to go to one place, a 3-level dungeon, but you can later research how to upgrade your ship drives and get more fuel in the dungeon.
This is how the dungeons look like. Very minimalistic but also very stylish that doesn't really comes across screenshots well.
You initially only start with two party members, yourself in your suit and a helper robot, but occasionally enemies ask to join your party, which you should and then you can increase your numbers. Currently I have only enough potential for 4 but as you can see there are 5 slots so likely that will get filled eventually. Spare part members can used in other ways later.
Combat looks like this. It's turn-based, with initially single enemies, then groups. I expect sooner or later I will also meet enemies that take up more than just one square of the grid. For each of your party members when they are up you can chose attacks, debuffs and other stuff. Attacks usually have different attack patterns, sometimes just a single square, sometimes a line like the Laser Shock here (quite useful), sometimes more exotic. Attacks come in three different types, and enemies and your party members have also attack and defense values based on those types.
What's really neat is how you can equip your party members with a variety of parts you find all over the dungeons.
Lots of different parts to find with different effects on them, or you can disassemble them into components, if you need some specific components for research.
The research screen. Only one project at a time, and research happens while you explore the dungeon. Usually requires some components and adds lots of different things.
This is one of the things you can explore, where you use spare robot friendlies to expand your capabilities.
So far the demo has been quite addictive. The gameplay loop is pretty simple, go into the dungeon, explore, fight, collect and mine components, and occasionally trade parts with some of the NPCs in the dungeon (simple interactions, there is no NPC dialogue or anything). It hasn't been difficult, I didn't have a party wipe yet and even if any of your party members is destroyed they get back to 100% once you reach the ship again. You're limited by oxygen which drains while you're out exploring, so you have to look for that. The game might become more difficult later, but so far if that's something you're interesting in it might not be your cup of tea.
The game is also pretty overwhelming sometimes, in terms of GUI. It's mouse + keyboard, but some stuff requires the keyboard, some the mouse and it's not always intuitive what is needed when. You figure it out with a bit of patience but it can be annoying sometimes. There's also a lot of text with lovely descriptions of the backsground of enemies and whatever happens in the dungeon. But reading lots of information initially is rather necessary to get the hang of things.
On the steam page the description says: Multifaceted procedural generation algorithms extend their logic and randomness across sectors, locations, and encounters. I honestly have no idea what exactly it means. The first dungeon I have explored has been persistent and never changed, but whether the dungeons are hand-crafted or just generated upon a run, I can't say. The dungeons themselves look rather simple, so I wouldn't expect super-complex ones and my guess is they are procedurally generated and not hand-crafted.
The demo starts weirdly enough in the recent past, 80ies or so, where you're hired on a one-way mission into the future. The first level annoyingly is pure fluff where you go around and read descriptions of stuff. Once you make your way to the launch pad you're off to the real gameplay parts.
You arrive in the far future, orbiting a block hole with a few options where to go. Each of the relics orbiting the black hole represent a dungeon. I had only enough fuel to go to one place, a 3-level dungeon, but you can later research how to upgrade your ship drives and get more fuel in the dungeon.
This is how the dungeons look like. Very minimalistic but also very stylish that doesn't really comes across screenshots well.
You initially only start with two party members, yourself in your suit and a helper robot, but occasionally enemies ask to join your party, which you should and then you can increase your numbers. Currently I have only enough potential for 4 but as you can see there are 5 slots so likely that will get filled eventually. Spare part members can used in other ways later.
Combat looks like this. It's turn-based, with initially single enemies, then groups. I expect sooner or later I will also meet enemies that take up more than just one square of the grid. For each of your party members when they are up you can chose attacks, debuffs and other stuff. Attacks usually have different attack patterns, sometimes just a single square, sometimes a line like the Laser Shock here (quite useful), sometimes more exotic. Attacks come in three different types, and enemies and your party members have also attack and defense values based on those types.
What's really neat is how you can equip your party members with a variety of parts you find all over the dungeons.
Lots of different parts to find with different effects on them, or you can disassemble them into components, if you need some specific components for research.
The research screen. Only one project at a time, and research happens while you explore the dungeon. Usually requires some components and adds lots of different things.
This is one of the things you can explore, where you use spare robot friendlies to expand your capabilities.
So far the demo has been quite addictive. The gameplay loop is pretty simple, go into the dungeon, explore, fight, collect and mine components, and occasionally trade parts with some of the NPCs in the dungeon (simple interactions, there is no NPC dialogue or anything). It hasn't been difficult, I didn't have a party wipe yet and even if any of your party members is destroyed they get back to 100% once you reach the ship again. You're limited by oxygen which drains while you're out exploring, so you have to look for that. The game might become more difficult later, but so far if that's something you're interesting in it might not be your cup of tea.
The game is also pretty overwhelming sometimes, in terms of GUI. It's mouse + keyboard, but some stuff requires the keyboard, some the mouse and it's not always intuitive what is needed when. You figure it out with a bit of patience but it can be annoying sometimes. There's also a lot of text with lovely descriptions of the backsground of enemies and whatever happens in the dungeon. But reading lots of information initially is rather necessary to get the hang of things.
On the steam page the description says: Multifaceted procedural generation algorithms extend their logic and randomness across sectors, locations, and encounters. I honestly have no idea what exactly it means. The first dungeon I have explored has been persistent and never changed, but whether the dungeons are hand-crafted or just generated upon a run, I can't say. The dungeons themselves look rather simple, so I wouldn't expect super-complex ones and my guess is they are procedurally generated and not hand-crafted.
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