Hailing Frequencies Open – 6/12/17 – Biggun Incoming!

Welcome to Monday y’all! Wow what a busy weekend, let me telllllllllllls ya. I didn’t write one of these things on Friday because I was super duper wiped after making essentially six videos. Let’s get the non-space stuff out of the way first. I did a stream of my current non-space gaming obsession, LOGistICAL, to try and sell it to more folks (which seems to have worked! Yay!!!). It was also nice to get some more time with the game.

I then made a bunch of videos for one of this week’s games, so we’ll start with that one. Navalia is an interesting game. It’s a mix of conquest, combat, spaceship construction, research and resource management that takes a bit to grok, but once it does, it flows very nicely. I’d already had a little time in the game before starting a new campaign, and in this first video, I took over a local resource system from some alien queens in order to bring in the resources needed to build more ships. I had a great time with this one.

Later on Friday I spent more time with LOGistICAL, as well as the newly-released beta for Lightspeed Frontier, which is coming along REALLY nicely. The new tutorial really helps get one into the swing of things, and the clear icons totally tell you where to go to do stuff like mine or fight. I maybe spent an hour or so with it, and had a great time. Following that, Saturday I barely got in any gaming time at all, but yesterday I played an excellent game for a few hours in order to make the next series of videos.

Star Fleet Armada is graphically a throwback to the space adventure games of the 80s like Starflight. If you can look past the graphics, however, you’ll find an insanely deep game of exploration, combat, fleet and resource management and much more. It’s a really, REALLY fun game that I can’t stop playing. Finally, this week brings us my look at The Long Journey Home.

Which is an excellent game with some need for refinement. The controls are a bit…much. I felt like I was fighting them more than anything else, which did sap a bit of fun from the rest of the experience, but overall I had a really great time with this title.

Tonight the only gaming I intend to get is recording some footage for tomorrow’s Deep Sixed podcast, which I’m really looking forward to.

Now you might think, “Brian, you were a bit terse up there.” That’s because the bulk of my writing energy went to writing the news below, and there’s a huge amount of it, so let’s dive right in! ;)

• Disputed Space got a teensy patch which improves movement, after another small patch. I have this one and need to try it soon. OH, it also dropped on Steam today as I was writing this!
• Epic Space Online has a new trailer showing off the game’s 3D revamp, which looks great!
• Avorion’s Alliance Update has a massive amount of new features, and is now.
• Gangs of Space has an alpha test coming up this weekend!
• Stellar Monarch has a massive update which fixes and adds a tons of little things.
• The developer of Icarus Starship Command Simulator has some awesome features coming!
• Avalon: The Journey Begins will be launching a new update soon with a lot of fixes.
• There’s video of some of the recording sessions from the first Wing Commander Orchestral album covering Wing Commander Prophecy.
• Star Fleet Armada Rogue Adventures got a new patch which fixes typos and such.
• Rogue System has entered alpha with their latest patch! Yay!
• Empyrion has hit alpha 6.0, which adds a ton of stuff. I really need to revisit it.
• Starbound has a big new update focusing on the space portion of the game.
• Navalia has a new update with more fixes.
• StarShip Constructor will apparently be hitting Steam early access sometime this month.
• Station 21 – Space Station Simulator got a teensy update which adds some random events.
• Starship Theory has a video dealing with oxygen venting.
• Spacecats with Lasers got a patch which adds languages and more.
• Astrobase Command is moving forward after their devs took some time off after their Kickstarter.
• Dimension Drive apparently has an almost-finished world! Yay!
• Remnants of the Precursors has been downloaded 500 times, apparently! Yay!
• Interstellar Rift got a little bitty patch that fixed, like, two things.
• The Long Journey Home got a big patch which adds refined game start stuff and more.
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords got a massive patch with modding refinements and more.
• StarFringe: Adversus is done, as development has shut down. Not surprising, sadly.
• Finally, Void Vikings added education-based progression.

We have some sales today! First up, the only notable items in Steam’s Weeklong Sales are BossConstructor (best deal here, honestly), Dawn of Andromeda, Starship Corporation, Beyond Space and Horizon. Finally, IndieGala is having an amazing 1C Mega Bundle which includes all the Star Wolves games, for example, as is a steal.

That’s it for today y’all! Thanks!