Starcom: Unknown Space

The flexibility to research, explore and build is enjoyable . . .

It's a pretty simple game, but good fun for the money.

Overall, a decent game with a mix of space fighter / RPG / resource management. The ship building is a neat aspect and it feels nice to design a ship of your own design albeit subject to constraints. In terms of a 'score' I'd give it a solid 7 out of 10. Definitely one to pickup on sale though (as I did). The good: combat feels satisfying, the story is broadly interesting and neat, controls are straightforward as are most of the game mechanics. The bad: whilst the broad story is interesting, its told in a somewhat obtuse manner. Whilst I don't want everything spoon-fed to me, the number of new terms in this universe, races, faction, etc. combined with the techno-mumbo-jumbo (for a layman like me) and the okay, but somewhat lacking, Commander's log made the story difficult to get into and enjoy. Thankfully, the Steam Community and Reddit were there to get me through some quests. The Universe, whilst large, also feels somewhat undercooked outside the main story. There are numerous factions but most are just 'there' with only one seemingly substantial non-main storyline (the Nimion one) i.e., breadth but not enough depth. Another annoyance is the research points used to unlock skills - as earning them is somewhat arbitrary, you don't know the max, and you cannot easily reset them - it restricts experimentation in the quite large and interesting (ship) skill tree such that once you pick a weapon type, you're kind of committed. The game also doesn't go heavy on the ship / crew management stuff, which for me made it feel undercooked (others might find that good if they want to focus more on the combat and story, notwithstanding the aforementioned points). As mentioned above, a solid 7 out of 10 but definitely one to pickup on sale though (as I did).

Starcom: Unknown Space really gave me some old school Star Control 2, and Solar winds vibes. (Old Gamer I guess) it was easy to pick up and down, Had interesting events going on in the game, and the ship-building was quite fun. Overall, definately worth a look.

I actually beat the game. which is rare. i usually get bored. 10/10 great game. ship building and modifying. really enjoyed myself.

Overwhelmingly positive +1

Absolutely loving this game. The level of thoughtful text and story writing is high. There's no pressure to play a specific way.