Starscape

If you like arcade shooters and don't mind spending half of your time mining asteroids for minerals, you might actually like this. However, arcade shooter fans will be more at home with this than most others as the game starts to get quite hectic towards the end. Maintaining mineral reserves, protecting the mobile spacestation, and repairing your ship and the station even during the fights will get quite common tasks. Asteroid mining is more required by research and development of new ships and ship hardware than for repairs as some of the larger enemy ships actually leave some minerals or hardware to be used for repairs, often in sufficient numbers. The other part of the game is spent hunting the bigger ships, mostly mining vessels as their destruction detracts the enemy's ability to produce more units within each zone, and to find grid information for important locations not normally shown in the grid map. The game world is split into five zones, each larger than the last, which you can explore in any order you wish but jumping more than one zone will spell certain doom as you need the technology from the previous ones to survive (and unlock the more powerful hardware). The grid and zone maps work in some semi-turn-based fashion, with time passing when you move or when you hit the skip time button. Time also passes freely when inside a grid node, where the game runs in real-time - the enemy continues to produce new units, harvest other grid nodes, and move forces around, even bringing reinforcements occasionally in while you spend your time there. Overall it's a nice game, but towards the end, especially the final boss, you start wishing you hadn't touched the game in the first place - unless you have masochistic tendencies with video games.


Sanguine # 2009-03-02 14:02:16

With most of its crew missing and its weapons systems ruined the space research station Aegis is all but lost. As the last remaining pilot you must help rebuild the station's defences, acquire alien technology and create your own uniquely configured set of fighters. By mining the asteroids within the grid dimension, valuable resources can be harvested to fuel the Aegis' molecular furnace and build devastating weaponry. In the warp you will encounter allies to aid in your struggle to escape, uncover the terrible purpose of the evil Archnid race and learn why you and the rest of the crew were brought here.

* Beautifully rendered 32bit colour graphics
* Instant action mode for quick thrills
* See how long you can last in survival mode
* Thumping music sound track and sound effects
* Five weapon technology threads to find and research, only the first is available in the demo
* Five different zones to explore. The first is available in the demo and the rest are much bigger
* Make alliances with friendly aliens and trade technology
* Direct and protect your space station as it fights alongside you
* Create your own "garage" of unique space fighters tailored to your own specifications
* Mine the asteroids, gather raw elements, research new technologies and build new items
* Recover missing drive components and rescue your crewmates before escaping "The Grid"

Moonpod - # 2007-05-09 02:14:04 - official description

real-time combat - some nodes are devoid of enemy presence (especially after you've destroyed them all), so this is somewhat inaccurate, but (more) enemies can warp in at any time (sort of), so it's sufficient.

Sanguine # 2009-03-02 14:14:31

software: Steamworks API, Windows 98, Windows Vista,

display: raster

Minimum:
* Windows 98, XP or Vista
* 300 MHz Pentium II CPU
* 16 MB VRAM
* 3D accelerator
* 110 MB HD space

Sanguine # 2008-11-07 12:58:09

similar to
Swarm (Windows)
Space Pirates and Zombies (Windows)