The Long Journey Home- - Star Control 2-inspired roguelike from Daedalic Entertainment

[MRY]

It is almost certain to be half off in the summer sale, given the circumstances. Probably Humble Bundled by year end. But they say they really need the support now to keep the lights on and do more patches.

 

[tindrli]

for now.. apart from awful loading speed the thing that is bothering me most is not been able to combine different metals/gasses etc in storagem space. ffs storage slots are reserved for specific resource type.. cant have aluminium and iron in a same storage row

 

[tindrli]

The game is not balanced for you to have 20-30 cargo in storage at any given time to refine or sell, that would break the economy and there would be no reason to use consumables. So you have to decide which to keep, which to use, and which to discard, based on the course you have plotted through the cluster, and what specific elements your scans have told you are present in those systems, and make some assumptions based on the planet distribution. There's lots to complain about the cargo storage system but single element rows isn't one of them.

well for me at the moment it IS!!i just want to have all kind of metals in one row .. and i dont think that this would broke anything

 

[YES!]

Is this an rpg? Or does it just have some rpg elements?

 

[tindrli]

Is this an rpg? Or does it just have some rpg elements?

dont start with this please.. its not RPG at all..

In my review I argue that players should be able to move cargo from hold to an empty row in the lander, because of these exact situations. Use/discard the copper, the next time you land the helium will take up one row. You will probably need to use either the phosphates and/or borates to refuel anyway.

i know bro.. i just wanted to save lander as much as possible and i refueled and repaired everything fuck.. how do i discard shit now? and i was going to save some rare elements for trade ....
seems like before you even jump to system you must check and compare your hold with elements in a system that youre going..

 

[YES!]

Is this an rpg? Or does it just have some rpg elements?

dont start with this please.. its not RPG at all..

In my review I argue that players should be able to move cargo from hold to an empty row in the lander, because of these exact situations. Use/discard the copper, the next time you land the helium will take up one row. You will probably need to use either the phosphates and/or borates to refuel anyway.

i know bro.. i just wanted to save lander as much as possible and i refueled and repaired everything fuck.. how do i discard shit now? and i was going to save some rare elements for trade ....
seems like before you even jump to system you must check and compare your hold with elements in a system that youre going..

Why is it in this forum then?

 

[tindrli]

Is this an rpg? Or does it just have some rpg elements?

dont start with this please.. its not RPG at all..

In my review I argue that players should be able to move cargo from hold to an empty row in the lander, because of these exact situations. Use/discard the copper, the next time you land the helium will take up one row. You will probably need to use either the phosphates and/or borates to refuel anyway.

i know bro.. i just wanted to save lander as much as possible and i refueled and repaired everything fuck.. how do i discard shit now? and i was going to save some rare elements for trade ....
seems like before you even jump to system you must check and compare your hold with elements in a system that youre going..

Why is it in this forum then?

maybe coz of story, party based, choices and consequences hahahaha i just dont want to have opinion on this subject.. im in Orion nebula it seems that sadly does not resembles Orion at all, in orbit of small unremarkable planet called "Condera" now enjoying my beer and football match

 

[tindrli]

i know bro.. i just wanted to save lander as much as possible and i refueled and repaired everything fuck.. how do i discard shit now? and i was going to save some rare elements for trade ....
seems like before you even jump to system you must check and compare your hold with elements in a system that youre going..

This game is all about planning ahead. You are given the galactic map from the very start. That is the first thing you need to look at. Read the general descriptions of the clusters, and plan which clusters you are gonna go through. That tells you what direction you need to go within the cluster. Then, depending on your scanner, you are given all the star/planet information when you enter a cluster, so now you can plan how you will make your way in that direction on a jump-by-jump basis. That tells you what resources you can expect to get along the way. Then you figure out what you can use, keep etc based on your operating needs, whether there is a refuel/repair base along the way, etc.

you must agree that it suck the fact that beside other factors you must chose sector thinking of resources that you have in your cargo hold coz you cant combine them in a same row. or i just had a bad luck and im overreacting .. bah nevermind

 

[rezaf]

Why is it in this forum then?

It's a new codex trend to move games from other genres to the RPG forum. Remember Battle Brothers.
That's one way to increase the number of RPGs, I guess.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

It's a new codex trend to move games from other genres to the RPG forum. Remember Battle Brothers.

Yeah. Battle Brothers should have been in Strategy sub-forum.

 

[tindrli]

i agree that codex is neglecting our tacticular cancer a lot

 

[Infinitron]

If the developers explicitly label it as an RPG, we talk about it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ArgbFQ0Gs

The Long Journey Home is a space exploration RPG, set in a procedural generated universe.

 

[tindrli]

If the developers explicitly label it as an RPG, we talk about it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ArgbFQ0Gs

The Long Journey Home is a space exploration RPG, set in a procedural generated universe.

holy shit since when codex gives a shit how developers label...

 

[Infinitron]

Since we got tired of fighting dumb thread location wars that don't actually help anybody.

 

[MRY]

Reading the German Steam reviews reminds me of the famous Bumblebee Man sequence in the Simpsons: "Steuerrung ist eine Katastrophe." "Das Spiel ist eine absolute Frustrations probe, auch im Story Mod wirs es nicht viel besser." "Die Landung mit dem Schuttle ist so frustrierend."

Overall, it's doing great today: on Steam, up to 72% user reviews, 25th best seller globally, over 750 simultaneous players; on GOG, 4/5 stars, the two top reviews are five stars, 5th best seller; on Metacritic, 67% and 7.1 user ratings, with some really glowing user reviews. Steamspy puts it at 7,500 owners, which, when you subtract the ~2500 they gave away, means 5000 copies sold at $35 each, almost $200,000 bucks grossed in just a couple days. For a low-budget title, that seems like a pretty good number, especially when there are so many GOG copies sold too. In short, on every possible metric it's scoring higher today than it was before, and now that the game's difficulty has been lowered to a more casual level, it should really hit its stride.

One question I have: since it is designed for console controllers, is it getting released on consoles soon? It's rare that a PC-exclusive would essentially not support mouse and keyboard but would support an X-Box controller, so I'm guessing it'll have a big console launch soon if it hasn't already. Games like Spelunky show how popular rogue-lites can be on consoles, so that might be a big market.

Incidentally, for data fiends like me, I think it's really interesting that the game's user rating is much lower for English speakers (~68%) than for non-English speakers (~75%), which is a good sign for those who prefer gameplay to story -- given how much story quality is lost in translation, it seems like the game plays better for those who are focused on the system rather than the writing. Oasis, does that jibe with your experience?

 

[rezaf]

I'm still on the fence for this one, but leaning heavily towards wait for deep sale.
From what I've seen so far, the game seems to be a case for the why so serious joker meme. Sure, there's some wacky aliens and stuff, but the presentation is so incredibly dry and the game tries to be oldskool hard.
For a SC2 "clone", I'd have expected a lot more light-heartedness and far more forgiving minigames. For a heavy duty gamer nitty gritty version of SC2, I'd have expected much more professional presentation (some speech. Deeper story. Less wacky aliens. etc.).
Strange.

 

[YES!]

Why is it in this forum then?

It's a new codex trend to move games from other genres to the RPG forum. Remember Battle Brothers.
That's one way to increase the number of RPGs, I guess.

Yes, why have tacticular cancer? What is its function if every game is an rpg unless made in Asia and then is an jrpg? So the two game genres now are either rpgs or jrpgs from what I can tell. Unless they are rpgs like Star Crawler and then they are just shit and not worth even a simple news post when released.

 

[Iznaliu]

If the developers explicitly label it as an RPG, we talk about it here.

This is the most practical and logical RPG definition.

 

[rezaf]

This is the most practical and logical RPG definition.

I agree that it's the most practical approach and that it's kinda pointless discussing in which subforum a games thread resides, but trusting the developers judgement on the matter is also a bit as if we were to create a "Good games" subforum and move the thread of every game which the developers claim is good therein...

 

[MRY]

I've been trying to find the right benchmark to figure out how well this is doing, and it seems like Flotilla is the best comparison: similar low-fi 3D visuals and hard-core gameplay, emphasis on tricky orbital maneuvering (indeed, it was subtitled "Orbital Battleship Maneuvers"), and goofy alien humor. Here's a quick look for comparison:

While Flotilla had stronger critical reviews (72% vs. 67%) and was more enjoyed by most players (88% vs. 72%), it never reached more than 80 maximum simultaneous players. Despite that, it has sold more than 100,000 copies over its life, of whom 55k were actual players, a ratio that suggests these weren't all junk bundle sales. With a maximum simultaneous players of 1,300, The Long Journey Home has shown a much stronger initial adoption. Even assuming 1/10 the multiplier that Flotilla showed, it should sell well over 100k copies itself. I realize that word of mouth matters a lot for these games, but still, it should be able to have at least 10% the tail of Flotilla. I would think that at 100k copies it would definitely recoup losses. (It's already almost 10% of the way there, having sold 9k copies already. For the record, Steamspy says it sold 1,500 copies just today which is pretty great for a game that's hardly discounted.)

 

[thesheeep]

Reading the German Steam reviews reminds me of the famous Bumblebee Man sequence in the Simpsons: "Steuerrung ist eine Katastrophe." "Das Spiel ist eine absolute Frustrations probe, auch im Story Mod wirs es nicht viel besser." "Die Landung mit dem Schuttle ist so frustrierend."

Fucking hell.
Natives with such a horrible spelling should simply be forbidden to post online. Or procreate.
"Frustrations probe"?! Come on, man, putting words together is one of the most basic things of your language.
"Hauptsächlich die Landung mit dem Schuttle ist so frustrierend das ich jetzt schon keine lust mehr habe." There's so much wrong here that I don't even.

I get a bit irritated when I see some English stuff being written very wrong. But then, English is so simple that it's actually hard to completely screw up.
But when your language has some actual standards that you need to adhere to and then you write verbal diarrhea like that, it just strikes me as especially terrible.
And hey, it's "just" German. Manageable. I can understand Finns not grasping their own language, the "official" one is such a mess that nobody even speaks or writes the written language outside of maybe essays and such, instead they came up with a simplified version and speak & write that for every day use

When I used to give IT courses with exams, I actually subtracted points for fucked up spelling / grammar.
Got some complaints, but reacted to all of them the same way: "Nobody will take you serious if you cannot even comprehend your own language."

Ahem... sorry.
That stuff just rubs me the wrong way.[/rant]

 

[vonAchdorf]

Fucking hell.
Natives with such a horrible spelling should simply be forbidden to post online. Or procreate.
"Frustrations probe"?! Come on, man, putting words together is one of the most basic things of your language.
"Hauptsächlich die Landung mit dem Schuttle ist so frustrierend das ich jetzt schon keine lust mehr habe." There's so much wrong here that I don't even.

The death of the compound, once started in the marketing departments ("Erdbeer Joghurt"), is now in widespread use by people whose attention span cannot last for a single somewhat longer word.

 

[MRY]

thesheeep The grammar Weimar Republicans have won out over the grammar Nazis, I suppose.

 

[MRY]

Kotaku has revised its view of TLJH for the worse (?) after the game was lowered to a casual difficulty level. Seems a little unfair, because they praise Daedelic for this nerfing and seem to be attacking the pre-patched version of the game:

Credit should be given to Daedalic for responding so quickly to feedback from players, even if the aggregate Steam score dropping from 'mostly positive' to 'mixed' on launch day means it's unsurprising they've acted so fast. So what exactly was so wrong with TLJH that warranted an emergency response from Daedalic? The developers seemed to have forgotten that Lunar Lander is an infuriating experience, yet made it a core feature of their game.

This certainly isn't the first time developers have made a mistake like this. Modern gaming history is marred by tributes to older games that don't really do them justice, and it feels like every month there's a new take on one of yesterday's hits. I'm not saying that every title that nods to games-gone-by is bad, it's just that games have changed dramatically in the last decades. Unless there's some deeper thinking behind it, the basic pitch is increasingly unattractive: 'remember that game everyone loved? Well here it is again with a shiny coat of paint.'

It's an interesting take, and I've seen similar ones in various reviews on GOG and Steam. IMO no one has really cracked the nut of how to make resource gathering in a Starflight/Star Control clone particularly fun. ME tried several variants, each worse than the last. Obviously TLJH is almost universally hated in this regard even by its fans. Weird Worlds removed resource gathering. The Stardock one looks pretty ridiculous with its Super Mario Galaxy marble-sized planets. FWIW, in Star Captain I had gone with the Weird Worlds approach (picked up by FTL) of removing the resource-gathering minigame altogether, but I'm not sure that's so great a solution either. Ah well.

 

[agris]

Kotaku has revised its view of TLJH for the worse (?) after the game was lowered to a casual difficulty level. Seems a little unfair, because they praise Daedelic for this nerfing and seem to be attacking the pre-patched version of the game:

Credit should be given to Daedalic for responding so quickly to feedback from players, even if the aggregate Steam score dropping from 'mostly positive' to 'mixed' on launch day means it's unsurprising they've acted so fast. So what exactly was so wrong with TLJH that warranted an emergency response from Daedalic? The developers seemed to have forgotten that Lunar Lander is an infuriating experience, yet made it a core feature of their game.

This certainly isn't the first time developers have made a mistake like this. Modern gaming history is marred by tributes to older games that don't really do them justice, and it feels like every month there's a new take on one of yesterday's hits. I'm not saying that every title that nods to games-gone-by is bad, it's just that games have changed dramatically in the last decades. Unless there's some deeper thinking behind it, the basic pitch is increasingly unattractive: 'remember that game everyone loved? Well here it is again with a shiny coat of paint.'

It's an interesting take, and I've seen similar ones in various reviews on GOG and Steam. IMO no one has really cracked the nut of how to make resource gathering in a Starflight/Star Control clone particularly fun. ME tried several variants, each worse than the last. Obviously TLJH is almost universally hated in this regard even by its fans. Weird Worlds removed resource gathering. The Stardock one looks pretty ridiculous with its Super Mario Galaxy marble-sized planets. FWIW, in Star Captain I had gone with the Weird Worlds approach (picked up by FTL) of removing the resource-gathering minigame altogether, but I'm not sure that's so great a solution either. Ah well.

I'm probably in the eXXtreme minority here, but I'd love for a Starfox 64-esque arcade-y 3rd person 3d flight mini-game to gather resources, as compared to the 2D whateverthefuck is in TLJH right now. I don't know Starflight/Star Control tho, how did they handle it?