Opening/Random Thoughts
Hey friends, happy Monday! I hope y’all had a lovely weekend! Mine was busier than I intended, but still it was good. Had a karaoke birthday party for my sister-in-law on Saturday, and almost lost my voice as a result (I stopped after my third song) and got a good amount of gaming time in as well. Sadly I got less sleepy time in, but whuddyagonnado? How was your weekend?
I’m excited though, because my video card should be shipping today, so I just ordered ALL the other parts. This way, hopefully within the next week or two, depending on when everything arrives, my new PC should be built. I cannot wait y’all. I put off this upgrade for a while due to the wedding and such, but now I think the wait will have been worth it.
Today’s Video(s)
In today’s look at Helium Rain, we build our first station, a research station! Once it’s up and running, it’ll give us one research point a day, which do come in handy when you want to unlock specific technologies like better stations and the like. We also get our freighter built, and spend likely a little too much time trying to figure out trade routes. Trade routes are still a touch confusing in this game, but I eventually got it to work, and began making a decent profit off of it too.
Today’s News
- Parkan: Iron Strategy is apparently coming to Steam soon, along with new games Eternal Space Battles and OnSpace.
- BossConstructor got its third free DLC today, which adds new modules, an improved UI and more! Time to revisit!
- Starfighter: Infinity showed off its new Meteor Burger neutral space station, with playable arcade games!
- Gaia Beyond has a big Halloween update called Pumpkin Pursuit with a new Pumpkin Gun, undead pirates and more!
- Executive Assault 2 has an interview on Kotaku UK, which is a great read! It also got a fairly big patch the other day.
- SimpleRockets 2 has a new trailer and a release date: November 8th! Yay!
- Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II has a new dev post up about the game’s factions! They also have more info on upcoming betas, as well as their release update for next year.
- Space Impossible has a new dev post up regarding Alpha 16, which looks like a doozie.
- Star Traders: Frontiers got a big update that adds new guns and more.
- Outer Wilds has a new dev post about the Hearthian race in the game.
- Starflight Remake has a dev post about new planetary clouds, which look great.
- No Man’s Sky has a small development update that teases larger things coming.
- Interstellar Rift has a development update about some new toys coming up in the game.
- Interstellar Prime has a new gameplay video up from the devs, and it looks pretty cool!
- Hellion is getting a Rude Awakening update on 11/29 apparently. Not sure what that involves yet, but we’ll keep you posted.
- Star Trek Online has a new 2018/2019 roadmap which is almost entirely Discovery-related.
- Worbital has resumed its beta, and has upcoming beta weekends you can sign up for.
- NEXT JUMP: Shmup Tactics now has achievements! Yay!
- Solaroids: Prologue got a big update that adds local multiplayer! Yay!
- Shortest Trip to Earth got a big balance patch which hopefully makes the game more approachable. ;)
- Stellar Tactics got a really big patch that adds more perk levels, new devices and more.
- Celestial Command got redesigned warp gates as part of its latest alpha update.
- Stellar Monarch got a sizeable patch which revamps the interface a bit.
- Helium Rain got a patch which redesigned its manual docking HUD, tweaked the flight controls and more.
- Reassembly got a fairly big patch which adds OSX Mojave support and more.
- Hunternet got a patch which allows you to change your loadout, among other things.
- Landinar: Into the Void got a patch which adds quite a few little things.
- Beat Hazard 2 got a tiny patch which fixes some visual intensity issues folks were having problems with, as well as one that fixes AWS issues for Linux users.
- ΔV: Rings of Saturn got a small patch with some player-based feedback-based fixes! There’s also another patch which adds a colorblind mode, among other things.
- Star Singularity got a patch which fixes some crashes and made the minimal resolution 1280×1024, another which fixes some loading issues and another which fixes some urgent issues.
- Vendetta Online got a small patch which rescales the VR cockpit and a few other things.
- Dreadnought got a pretty big patch — though they’re hilariously calling it a hotfix — which fixes a ton of issues, supposedly.
- Space Beast Terror Fright got a massive, massive patch which changes how the entire multiplayer system works.
Today’s Deal(s)
- Steam’s Weeklong Deals have a decent amount of space games, such as the wonderful ADIOS Amigos, the developer of which we’ll be talking to on the podcast next week!
- Fanatical is having a Paradox Sale which of course includes Stellaris-related stuff.
- IndieGala has Star Trek: Bridge Crew on sale for $19.99, which isn’t its historic low, but is still pretty good.
What I’ve Been Playing
- Gaia Beyond – Due to the Halloween update mentioned above, I decided to reload this one and give it a whirl. Unfortunately, it still has the same issue it has the last time I played: It takes too long to get anywhere. I don’t mind games with a lot of travelling — it can be a lot of fun if done right — but I don’t wanna go on a road trip where I’m forced to stay at 35 MPH, which is exactly what this feels like. The entire time I’m like “C’mon, let’s go, I have things to do.” Hopefully, they’ll fix this, because there are a lot of games, such as 3030 Deathwar, Starcom: Nexus and other that do this way, way better.
- Cliff Empire – This got talked up a lot in our Discord, so it was cheap enough to take the plunge, as I love me some good city builders. So far it’s fascinating, and I’m reminded that I need to be more patient in these types of games because I expand too fast. Every time. ;) It’s really great though, so far way, way better than its price would indicate. ;)
- Garden Paws – Podcast co-host Spaz backed this and got two alpha keys, so he gave me one. It’s a really pretty game, but I need more direction.
- Eden Rising – Supremacy – This is shockingly fun. Third person combat with tower defense. I’m only about an hour in, but it’s an open world game with a LOT going on, and both single and multiplayer. I dig it!
- LOGistICAL 2 – This revamps much of the gameplay of the original, making it both more focused and deeper. I’m still wrapping my mind around it, since I’ve a lot of hours in the original.
- Chaos Sector – I got about ten minutes into this before noping out. Unskippable cutscenes, a terrible interface, confusing gameplay. Yeah, I’m done.
That’s it for today folks. See y’all bright and early tomorrow for our Helium Rain podcast!
