Space Pirates and Zombies

Fantastic old game. If you're familiar with Starsector and want more like it, this game was how a lot of people Starsector bc they played this and wanted more of it, 14 years ago. It's definitely not just more of Starsector or an inferior version of it, though. Starsector is a big sandbox game that gives you all of the mechanics and unlocks all of the gameworld right out of the box and tells you to go off and make your own adventure (I once impressed the dev of SS once by going off to the corner of the galaxy the second my game started and beat the at-the-time end-boss with the weakest ship you can start in. lol); this is not that, this game is an RPG first and foremost, a lite business sim second, a lite strategy game third, and then way in last place an okay action game. This game is about a slow-grind progression tree where you are unlocking new tech & mechanics that you can completely rework your fleet around, with an element of randomness and hunting down what you want. You need to level up a skill *and* actually find the blueprints to a part to use it. If you find the blueprints first accidentally you can decide to put points into a skill to use it, if you level up a skill for something else but get the skill for a part in the process then you might decide to make a detour to go get that blueprint. It's quite unique in that way, & if the game vibes with you it's a really chill grindfest; it's one of the best after-work games I've ever played, it really scratches a "filling out the tech tree" itch that I always have. Another key difference from other games; one of the progression trees you are working your way up, is the actual galaxy itself; you can't go wherever you want, you have to unlock each area by beating a boss fight or convincing a local faction to unlock the exit for you (by doing warcrimes for them which turns up the difficulty on a future boss fight), but the galaxy itself branches out and hooks back together, with each area having a different difficulty level and different blueprints to find in them, and long-term goals of where to get that requires killing your way across the whole galaxy. So charting your way thru the galaxy is an actual Thing you have to do, it isn't a Ubisoft game where you just hold W and point your mouse towards the nearest enemy and fall asleep at your desk until the game is beaten. You CAN find yourself getting run over by a threat that flatly out-classes you, and you do get punished for finding it out the hard way. (DO NOT touch the galaxy generation settings until you know what they do, none of them are cosmetic they completely change how the game plays & you won't realize for dozens of hours in to a run) On that note, also unlike Starsector, this game is About losing your entire fleet and then having to build back up by going back to an earlier area you skipped bc you were too strong for it in the fleet you've now lost, clearing it to rebuild your fleet back up, and then going back to the harder areas again to give it another shot. There are no save slots (IIRC, there may be but I never used it) so there's no save scumming until you win 100% of fights (SPAZ>SS in this way), this is like elden ring in that it remembers your failures, except if elden ring deleted all your gear for getting wiped on a boss you weren't ready for and told you to go to an easy dungeon you hadn't done yet to get the money to buy new weapons and armor. It doesn't take as long as you'd think, the money to rebuild ships doesn't take nearly as long to grind as it does to unlock the ships and their parts, but there *is* inescapably an element of grind to the game. It just has to be said. However; in a bad game that can make the experience miserable, in a good game that can make the experience meaningful. For me it was the latter. (There is a mechanic to circumvent this system by going to a mining station in the free mining shuttle you get when you get wiped, collecting the crumbs of the NPC's mining operation until you can afford to replace your fleet, and you can even order your ships to do it automatically and then go AFK. You're not Supposed to do this, and it's definitely much less fun than the intended method of going back to early-game content you skipped, but again, this was an after-work unwinding game for me so I actually liked doing this, and I would have liked the game less if there was a checkpoint or save system to negate my failures instead of having my b***s put on an anvil and hammered flat until I learned my lesson about from a level 30 boss to a level 52 level and acting like I belonged at the big boys table). One additional note; if all of this sounds interesting to you, I'd *highly* recommend playing with a specific mod that fills out the game's tech tree with more stuff (there's actually several but I only remember my favorite). If the gameplay loop of the tech tree hooks you, it takes longer to beat the game than the content in the tech tree holds up. Search in the steam forums for a thread called "Big Fight For Beef mod (request)" and use the latest link in there. And, in case you care, the dev(s) are a one/two-man team who are delightful to interact with, very obviously genuinely love this medium, are still making (FANTASTIC!!) games after all of these years that always work differently from how other people are making them (seriously No Creeps Were Harmed is the best tower defense ever made, and probably will hold that title forever), and they deserve your money.