Building your own spaceship from the ground up and sending her off on missions is an idea I can definitely get behind. In “Starship Corporation”, you’ll be able to do exactly that. The game is still in an Alpha state, so I wasn’t able to play with all of the game’s features. However, I was able to try out the ship building portion of the game to see how the design function worked. Before I reel off my first impressions of the Alpha, I’d like to quickly thank David Murent from Coronado Games for hooking me up with a free preview copy.
Starship Corporation
When I got to the main menu, I saw a few different options. The galaxy map and shipyard sections were both under construction, as were most of the settings in the option menu. The game was playable without things like screen resolution settings, but my screen was a bit low-res and didn’t take to Fraps (the recording software I use) all that well. I was able to create a profile and check out my total assets on top, but didn’t see my available balance anywhere. For example, I was able to start construction on a ship that 5,300,000 credits, but it wasn’t clear as to why I couldn’t build some of the other ships.
The menus I could access involved “construction”, “technology”, and “crew management”. The technology menu listed a wide variety of different purchasable techs and seemed to double as a library of sorts. From what I was able to gather, players will be able to purchase techs from here to give them more options to use during the ship building process. The construction menu was a bit more involved, allowing you to switch between decks and place rooms with a couple of mouse clicks. You’ll need to run power lines from your generators to your rooms, provide life support for your crew, and many other things. The crew management menu is just what it sounds like, though it also appears to include missions that you can embark on.
Hope you’re not prone to sensory overload…
My first impressions of the game were overall positive. I really enjoyed the freedom I had in designing my own ships. With that said, the game could stand to use more work in the “tutorials” area. For the majority of my play experience, I had zero idea as to what I was doing and only through trial and error was I able to figure things out. I wasn’t sure how some rooms related to one another, for example. There are tutorial videos available on the official site which helped a little, but I usually prefer to have the help while I’m playing. Tooltips and some other ways to make the game “newb” friendly would also be welcome. As it stands, those without a lot of patience may easily become frustrated with the game…I for one found it challenging and a bit overwhelming. It’s important to remember that the game is still under development, so we may see changes related to the learning curve addressed in a future build. It looks like the Alpha is open to everyone, so I included a link to it below. Feel free to check it out at your leisure!
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You can learn more about the game and try out the Alpha by visiting the official site, here:
http://www.starshipcorporation.com/
http://www.starshipcorporation.com/media/downloads/
You can help bring the game to Steam by voting for it on its Greenlight page, here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=95094343