Flight Of Nova

A fantastic worry-free near-future spaceplane flight sim! Instead of simplifying the flight physics or orbital mechanics to make the game more accessible, the developer made the ships you fly ridiculously good (extreme amount of delta-v, comically strong main engines, player character surviving 10G of acceleration without blacking out, impossibly good heat shielding, etc). This means that the game remains a proper sim, and that mastering it is challenging and fun, while at the same time mistakes and miscalculations carry few consequences due to the powerful ship, which IMO is a perfect combination. The crazy strong ship also means that you don't HAVE to take the optimal route and can have fun with crazy trajectories! The game is made by a single developer, and you can see it. The models and textures are kind of ugly, the tutorial is terrible, the UI leaves something to be desired. However, none of that is really enough to detract from the experience in any way - I feel like the developer made the right choice to spend their time focusing on what's actually important for the target audience (the flight model and orbital mechanics). All those things are easily overlooked once you get into the game and start actually flying. I see some people complaining about the price, but I feel like this is a niche product that has to be priced higher than most indie games to compensate for having a much smaller target audience. I see no issue there, it's worth the money if you are a nerd that this game is targeting IMO. My only real complaint is the lack of certain information that a craft like this would certainly display on one of the screens or the HUD. For example, there are no normal/antinormal orbital markers, there are no names for planetary sites on the radar, there's no way to see the prograde/retrograde and local/anti-local markers unless you're looking in their direction, etc. Would also love to see some more difficult missions for long-distance planetary transport and for off-equator orbital transport. Can't wait for the interplanetary missions coming soon!