Deck & Conn

Lovely little game. Perfect bite sized experiences that put you in command of a patrol boat in space. I liked reading through the crew bios, and imagining that I'm sitting at my console thumbing through a data pad full of profiles. This game isn't AAA, and does not have any sort of engaging story. Personally, as a dad with a full-time job, I don't really miss the deep involved storylines or hero identity. (I'm already living it) For those who'd like a low stakes, sub-space patrol game hunting down ships and defending cosmic faring merchant vessels, this is for you. Bring your own head canon, and enjoy the ambient background hum of electronic equipment as well as the occasional beep or boop. (No mid patrol save feature doesn't bother me.)

It's a pretty simple game without much meta progression, but a lot of that should be readily apparent from the store page. Personally I enjoy its vibe a lot and find it fun to boot up, do a patrol, and move on to something else for awhile. Your mileage may vary, but it's not as bad as some are making it out to be. The mid mission saving issue is already fixed. We'll have to wait and see how long official support continues, but I don't feel like it needs a whole lot beyond some minor bug fixes right now. I mean, more ship classes and such would be great, but I won't be upset if it doesn't happen either.

This is a really fun game that combines the routine of a patrol with action. I really like that this game doesn't just skip from battle to battle. That would be pretty boring and we have plenty of games like that already. In Deck+Conn you conn your ship through the entire patrol, which makes it feel so much more immersive!

Lovely lil game. I think I may always want a bit much from it, but I finished out 8 patrols and feel like I got my money's worth for sure and there's more left to do.

A very solid start for an early access game. But as a full release, it leaves a lot to be desired and without any sort of acknowledgement of incompleteness or roadmap that suggests it might change in the future I must assume this is the finished product. The gameplay itself is very reminiscent of old Trek games. There's a solid base to work from there. And the UI is delightful. However that seems to be all there is to the game. A very poorly thought out dynamic campaign leaves you patrolling one area of the map forever. You're allowed to move about and chase enemies elsewhere, but you must always fill out your timecard at your assigned sector to get credit for a patrol. Hunting down enemies is equally frustrating. You get contact reports communicated to you, but 90% of the time they're outdated. You can do long range sensor sweeps, but there's no way to differentiate between enemies and neutral traffic in those sweeps so you end up chasing a lot of pointless contacts. There also seems to be no real logic to the traffic. All of it seems to just wander around randomly to some extent without organization or objectives. The game also plays incredibly slowly thanks to the turn based system. If you're alone in a sector, it's not terrible. You make a slow crawl from one point to another. But it's steady. But if you ever end up in a sector with more than one other visible ship, that crawl turns into a mind numbing wait while each ship takes turns crawling one square at a time. Once again, the UI is beautiful. The flavor is right there. I WANT to participate in this world that's been waved in front of me, but once I get there it's all shooting at cardboard cutouts. Absolutely no depth. No thought put into any of the systems. Give us SOME sort of indication that this isn't the final product and I'll rescind this review. I want there to be more there. Give us back those surplus Quinoa messages. Give us SOMETHING.

A tentative negative review. If it's on sale, buy it. Otherwise, meh. It's exciting at first, and it can be fun, but there's more cons than pros for now. I don't hate this, and it's fun to play, but I just can't give it a positive review. PROS: - Tiny (less than 200 MB), quick to learn, very fun and immersive. - Interesting lore and vibes. - Lovely pixel art. CONS: - Lackluster tutorial isn't super helpful and misses some important details, - No save option? I didn't really struggle with this but it seems every single forum user thinks it's crucial otherwise they'll refund the game and firebomb Microprose. - Poor gameplay loop which mosly involves spawning in, going to a place, doing a patrol, going back. - Unsatisfying progression with barely perceptible upgrades: getting a better gun or shields doesn't really feel like it makes any difference. - The price is way too high for what little this offers. I've played games for free that had more content than this as of now, and I definitely feel like I could've spent 12 Euro somewhere else.

TLDR: A fun space tactics game which is both enjoyable and unique as an indie game. If you like tactics or space combat, and don't mind 2D pixel graphics, this is probably a game you will enjoy. Pros: Very unique kind of game these days. Most space combat tactics are only at the high levels of admiral, not many where you're just a lone captain in the war machine. The combat is really well done and is the star of the show. Lots of little things like balancing accuracy vs. velocity on the railguns, your distance from the enemy, and especially the brutal energy management, all add up into one tough but fair experience. One of my best moments was when I FTL jumped into the corner of a sector... which an enemy destroyer also jumped into the same time I did. We literally could not move any closer, and both of us were recovering all our power after FTL jumping, and I made the very risky decision to engage it head-on instead of retreating as a mere corvette. It was extremely short and vicious, and I made it by the skin of my teeth with critical damage to multiple systems, including the hull, only surviving due to having a fully upgraded ship and a lot of good luck. Good value for the current pricepoint (~12 to ~15 USD) In terms of bugs, I've had only two minor ones relating to gameplay. Haven't had any crashes, and I don't think I saw any visual glitches, but I may have missed them. I know a lot of people aren't fans of pixelstuff, but I like the graphics personally, especially being at the actual desks/stations on the ship, the little officer bios, even being able to choose which kind of drink you have on your table is pretty immersive. This game does not go severely into depth of the individual systems and how they work, so you can remain focused on actually being the captain of the ship instead of micromanaging, and this syncs up well with the mechanic for crew working under you performing their job better/worse depending on experience. The tutorials are, shockingly, extremely well done for a 1-man indie project. The encyclopedia is convenient and covers everything in the game, and giving the player a free-use checklist is a great way of teaching you the basics without annoying handholding. Mehs: Saving is only enabled for after you finish a single scenario, or in campaign mode, when you RTB and end the patrol. I personally like this as it requires you to pay attention carefully instead of quickloading on every minor mistake, and I don't think it's that big of an issue with how quickly campaign patrols go (for your reference, of my 8 hours of playtime, ~30 min were in tutorials, and the rest were spent on 5 campaign patrols, so your average patrol could be around 1hr30m depending on the assignment and your playstyle), but I have seen a lot of people say they would like saving on the battlefield so be aware of that. No way to communicate with other friendlies in a sector. I get that this isn't like Armored Commander II where you have a squadron closeby you give orders to, but it would be nice if you could tell a friendly "Enemy ship spotted at X,Y coordinates" or tell a neutral merchant "Evacuate to the north/south/west/east". Doesn't appear to be any way to see your overall "impact" throughout a campaign. I've only played 5 of 8 patrols in a campaign, but so far it seems like the frontlines are totally static with no ability to win or lose territory, there's no "OUR SIDE has X ships available, ENEMY has Y ships available, Z many ships destroyed/captured/in repairs" etc. Cons (personal preference): This game would benefit massively from Steam Workshop support, custom maps, custom ships, custom scenarios, or preferably all 3. A gargantuan missed opportunity by the dev and my personal biggest gripe with the game, since the graphics are so basic it would be really easy for players to crank out mods given the tools. Very light on music. Not the biggest deal but it would be nice to have an option for some more space ambiance a-la KSP. No "commendations"/"service record" screen; you're only able to see a rudimentary log for individual campaign patrols. It would be nice if we could track our sink/seizure counts of specific classes of ships, see our colorful ribbons, so on, in one unified screen, like Sea Power or Falcon 4 (both also MicroProse games!). Could really do with more missions in campaign than just "Patrol mostly friendly sector" and "Patrol mostly hostile sector". What about something like being attached to a big fleet attacking/defending a particular system, intercepting/guarding a convoy, VIP transport, and so on? Issues (objective problems): No ability to adjust starting parameters for campaigns seems like a really obvious oversight. What if someone wants to crank up the enemy ship count and make it hard, or reduce enemy aggressiveness to suit their playstyle more, adjust starting points and so on? This would also do well if saves were added; you could make an ironman mode for those of us who like that, like X-COM.

It's roughly half of a game, and painfully buggy to boot. I don't get it to be honest, it's got all the bones for a fantastic game, and then none of that matters because you softlock, the game just gives you the same mission over and over again, or a plethora of similar issues. It really could be something great, and assuming the developer actually sticks with it, maybe in 6 months to a year it might be, but right now it's just an early access game that isn't labeled as such.