Spacey Game Newsies and Dealsies 1/31/14: The Holy-Crap-That’s-a-Lot-of-News Edition

Hello my friends, and welcome to Friday! It’s been a nutty week for me, so I apologize for the lack of stuff, but I’m going to try to make up for that today with one Hugh Jass news post. Please join me as I dive into the deep end of this newsiness pool!

• The Last Federation – Hey, lookit, finally some footage of this game we discussed on our podcast a little while back! Check it out!
• Star Citizen – A ton of stuff, so let’s not waste time. The Next Great Starship contest begins today, then in-game we have a look at Aegis Dynamics, news fom the Kaizen system and the first episode of Dateline: Sesen. In the real world we have concept shots of an asteroid hangar, a joystick poll, a new lore builder looking at the navy and another episode of Ten for the Chairman. Moving away from the official site, Stick and Rudder has a look at the squad system, and YouTube user starwolf has a video looking at the Constellation. Whew!
• EVE Online – If you missed it, a massive battle totalling over $300,000 in real-world losses (based on the in-game currency that can be traded for real money) erupted a few days ago once a rent payment was missed, basically. CCP estimates around 7,500 players have taken part in the fracas, which looks pretty impressive. Somewhere in the midst of this, CCP also managed to launch Rubicon 1.1 which fixes a bunch of stuff.
• Kerbal Space Program – Eurogamer took some time to review the game while Polygon spent some time look at the people behind it along with the game’s history. Both articles are awesome. :)
• Star Ruler 2 – Thanks to Space Sector for letting us know about a Devstream (their word, not mine) of the game recently, which clocks in at nearly two hours. Wowie. You can also learn more on the podcast we had with ’em a while back. ;)
• Elite Dangerous – The latest development diary talking about multiplayer has been released, and you can read all about it on Rock, Paper Shotgun. :)
• Sierra Ops – I’d never heard of this game until the Indie Games Weblog mentioned it. It looks kinda nifty, and also has an IndieGoGo page going going, so check it out.
• Wing Commander – Lots of news out of the CIC recently. First, they’ve announced the winners of their 2013 Best Website of the Year contest, and the winner is Howard Day’s Concordia Hanger! Congrats Howard, that thing is AWESOME. They also found a Let’s Play of Prophecy, a review of Wing Commander 2 on Rock, Paper Shotgun, a wooden model of a Confed Hellcat and some art depicting Kilrathi cap ships.
• PULSAR: Lost Colony – Not just one but TWO video dev updates for your viewing pleasure over on Kickstarter (and below)!
• Predestination – Their Kickstarter finished VERY successfully indeed, so yay! They also did a livestream answering questions and talking more about the game. We hope to have these folks on the podcast soon, so stay tuned.
• Beyond Beyaan – Thankfully Brent is still alive (his words) and has an update covering asteroids and more!
• Eterium – The final version of the beta is nearing completion! YAY! The demo was also updated as well. Can’t wait to play more of this bad boy.
• GoD Factory: Wingmen – A new blog post details some of the rewards the players receive for completing tasks during a match. They’ve also reached beta, apparently! Yay!
• Limit Theory – The month is over, which means a new development update! YAY! Can’t wait to watch it! This one covers the a new HUD and more. (Edit: Links fixed, thanks Josh!)
• Rodina – The votes are in, and apparently Brendan will be working on the nuts and bolts of the game next, including damage and fire in the INSIDE of the ship. LOVE IT.
• Starpoint Gemini 2 – RPGWatch points to a preview of the game on GamerFitNation along with two more previews on Monstervine and Twinfinite, while I found the preview on the Escapist entirely on my own. ;)
• Wayward: Terran Frontier – On their Kickstarter, they have a post covering modding as well as a partnership with Curse, while on their website they announced their own wiki! Yay, I love wikis! Seriously, I love ’em, so awesome all around. Oh, they also have a patch for their alpha as well (sorry folks, putting this together in and out of order).
• Deep Space Settlement – Over on Twitter (grumble grumble) there’s a new screenshot of some sexy space paneling. They also have a video on how to build a cruiser.
• Galactic Civilizations III – Space Sector has a community Q&A with some of the devs behind the game, which is nice, lengthy and detailed.
• Approaching Infinity – According to a new blog post, you can now purchase an early access version of the game via Itch.io (whom I’ve never heard of) as well as enter a level design contest.
• Space Engineers – A new dev blog talks about the multiplayer release of the game and how it’s going.
• Drox Operative – There’s a review of the expansion over on RandomNPC.
• Distant Worlds – Prolifit YouTuber and Awesome Person Das24680 has a new video in his series of Let’s Play videos on the game.
• Imperium Galactica – According to Indie Retro News, there’s a new version of OpenIG with a bunch of minor fixes to the open version of this fantastic game (seriously, it’s awesome).
• Kinetic Void – There’s a new version of the game, according to their Kickstarter, that includes skybox generation, mining drones and more. Might have to try this one again.
• Galaxy Union – James Allen has a video review of the game on his YouTube channel.
• Astrobase Command – A new blog post details what they hope is the, short, mid and long term goals for their project, which look pretty reasonable.
• And Here the Wheel – It’s balls to the wall time for this Elite: Dangerous tie-in novel and its author!
• Trek73 – Over on what appears to be the official site for the game (where I got a copy for my review at least), there’s a lengthy new post detailing game tactics and usage. Good stuff if you want to give the game a try.

Wowie, you guys, that was around a week’s worth of news. ONE WEEK. 2014 is gonna be buuuuusy, and I hope I can keep up. We’re not done though, as I found some deals for y’all! First, as part of Steam’s current week long deals, you can get SpaceForce: Rogue Universe and Genesis Rising each for $1.25, which isn’t bad as both of these games are at the very least a decent time. Next, GameFly has a sale on several early access games, and this includes:

• Kerbal Space Program for $17.99
• Star Lords for $14.99
• Starpoint Gemini 2 for $11.49
• Horizon for $18.74

Just a little more folks! In interesting related stuff, Jim found this thingy that lets you assemble 2D modular spaceships. Then, Rock, Paper Shotgun has an article about a space shuttle simulator in a caravan. Not making that up. Finally, Jumpgate pilot Xog took our recent podcast and made a video of him listening to it while flying around the game.

Oh my god, that post took over two hours in total spread out over a few sessions to put together. Two. Hours. I need a better way to do this, or more time, or something. ;) Don’t worry, I’ll keep doing it because I love you crazy kids, but still, wow. Anyway, have an awesome weekend folks, and may you enjoy lots of gaming time. :)