[after playing the 'classic' mode, half of the huge issues I had with the game are not there any more. there is at least a possibility that the dev accidentally had some ultra buggy alpha version enabled for testing or whatever in the 'career mode' - whose only difference, by description, should be that the galaxy is randomized... but there were *so many* things that are completely different and work actally, like a static solar system, no click issues, better RPG-esque mechanics, and a few minor things that soured me on what I thought was 'the game' when it was really just a broken career mode. -- so read the next part knowing that is does not wholly reflect on the classic mode.
the criticism about the style vs. substance, way way too few goods/materials and so on stands though: after leaving the first solar system, arriving at "the galaxy" and finding out it's just the same goods (with 2 things extra) was so demotivating, I stopped playing the classic mode too.
I love this genre, but a game like that needs details and depth, not "cozy" pixel art normie bait trash.]
review from a few days ago:
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I had rated this as a strong positive, but after playing more, I want to feed everyone of the few devs this game has to some disgruntled shark-oktopus monster.
2 main reasons:
a)
I need (I counted) an average of 10 mouse clicks and constant adjustments to arrive where I want to go.
the ship CONSTANTLY deviates from the course because of some nonsensical "the planets move, bro!" nonsense that makes the game essentially unplayable. you can not fly the ship, you have to select where you want to arrive. AND THEN COURSE CORRECT and over and over until you arrive.
and all the while some IDIOTIC popup blocks your mouse half the time while you try to do that.
75% of my clicks on where I want to arrive are NOT RECOGNIZED. I have to click 20 times before the ship even starts moving.
this is absolutely unacceptable
secondly:
the scroll wheel operations my hand has to do is just insane for a game with that little data on screen at any time.
HUUUGE but low rez icons/mini paintings of materials, max 6 at a time on screen, when I'm sitting at a 4k screen -- 90% of the screen realestate is unused and the game's UI is worse than AAA garbage tier lazy console ports.
everything that should be big is small and everything that should be small is big. it is made by people who do not play games or do not have the pleasure of enjoying all the different kinds of pain when your fingers give out from scrolling and clicking through a game that has the complexity of an american TV series.
EVERYTHING is centered around making entering and exiting information as click intensive and ugly as possible. I think this is the main drive behind this abomination, a psychological and physiological experiment to see how much pain you can extract from the typical fan of a genre like this, i.e. some guy who had his fingers blessed by 30 years of UI interactions.
I can play 8h of path of exile, no problem, but 1h of this, when you're being fast, is pure agony.
there are hundreds of games that show how to do UI right, how to do human to machine interactions correctly:
-- maps should always should have edge-panning
-- you give hotkeys for things a player will almost always do
-- the hotkey that opens a menu is ALSO closing that menu
-- right click on empty screen space closes the menu / goes one step backwards in the menu
-- you do NOT give tiny screens for things that make up the whole gameplay loop:
----- trade should FILL THE SCREEN or 90% of it.
----- you make icons/ mini paintings of resources HIGH REZ so people can differentiate between goods. this style over substance crap is just so pathetic. a game where the breadth and differentiation between resources is paramount, they make fuzzy, low rez pixel art mockeries of things the player should instantly recognize and be excited about spotting
you can upscale any damn image with AI or make consistent art in higher resolution with ease these days.
------ you show the max amount of availability instantly, without the player having to click a few buttons to find out that there's really only 8 units of this extremely common resource, and it's not a UI bug or the game breaking
------ you give a price history, if the player has been at the port consistently
Eve Online did that right over 20 years ago. WHY ON FREAKING EARTH do you act like this is some brain melting super science?
do you want a trade simulator or a bad font / bad UI / bad QoL / bad user interaction / premiere carpal tunnel training simulator?
your starting point for every UI / QoL / interaction design in the game is seemingly: big blurry PIXEL ART. we got that! fantastic! what else do we need?
that's it! every decision starts and ends at the "art style" and the "style over substance"-obsession the devs have.
first make it FUNCTIONAL and a JOY to operate, T H E N decide what normie bait sentimentalisms you throw in there to make it look "cozy" or whatever.
why not do static, good looking solar systems? do you have any idea how long it takes for this crap to actually rotate? a lot less than flying from place to place at hyperspeed. it's nonsensical and offensive. it ruins the game.
make it smooth, good looking, easy to operate, ELIMINATE EVERY CLICK you can.
if you want planets to "move", then do it every time a player enters a planet. during flights, it's static. player enters station, buys stuff, leaves, planets have moved a bit.
so when you enter or return to a star system or stay a long time, you're still getting the "immersion" but none of the clunk, performance issues (on low systems potentially) and hassle programming pathing and so on. you'd save yourselves endless trouble AND make the game way more fun to play.
make info available IMMEDIATELY upon entering a system. when you arrive at the planet, the player should IMMEDIATELY see the effing market. pressing E or F or V or ... should open contacts, another should open a well scaled general mission screen (NOT WINDOW! STOP IT WITH THE WINDOWS! FILL THE WHOLE SCREEN!!!!) that shows as much info as possible in an easily legible way that has no need for scrolling.
info should be filtered and or sorted by range, money, size, risk or whatever a player wants.
all and any key should be rebindable.
solely relying on esc or mouse click on a tiny X in the corner is GARBAGE. these are FALL BACK way to interact, when everything else fails. NOT NORMAL INTERACTION.
the reason is that they are unergonomical and out of the way, stressing users' fingers needlessly.
you close menus the same way you open them. you use right click to go backwards in menus. you use tooltips and hover-over info to display additional info.
why the f do I need to click "dock" if 99% of the time 99% of players will want to dock.
why is a scan not possible at any time? why can't you auto dock, and if someone wants to "patrol", it should be an option and we just assume the guy went to his ship, undocked and patrolled if he clicked "patrol". why force "dock" to be a button so you can be "logical" as if anything in this game makes any real life sense or is "scientifically accurate"
NO LISTS when not necessary.
when necessary, slim, legible, compact.
have a damn inventory like in an RPG on your ship.
why can't I sell gadgets I bought?
if I find loot in space, why does the game squirm and twist itself into a pretzel? why does ctrl + click not just fill the cargo I can pick up and leave the rest in space? the "how many???" interaction can stay as is, but I want a keyboard shortcut to choose "pick up all I can, leave the rest"
if you think "oh this wouldn't *really* bother anyone" then you don't play games all day. this gets bothersome after 1 of these things and before this thing is done. you instantly remember 10 other games who had a clever solution to this...
