Hailing Frequencies Open – 6/7/17 – Backlogged to Heckfire

Welcome to Wednesday my friends! I’m sorry I didn’t write one of these yesterday, but I tell ya, that early morning podcast with the Sirius Online folks — which was fun as hell, by the way — just knocked me on my ass. I felt fortunate that I worked from home yesterday, because I was soooo pooped that driving would’ve been a risky proposition. It wasn’t all bad though. Beyond the podcast, I got to spend time with my cats AND play some LOGistICAL on my lunch break. GOD I love that game. Seriously. Love. It’s just such a fun mix of strategy and puzzle that I wish I could explain better. I keep thinking of doing a video for it, but I’m not sure a video would do it justice. It’s not super visually appealing, and there’s a lot of waiting while trucks do their thing, but would y’all wanna see one? If so, let me know below in the comments.

I also have been spending a lot of time going through the tutorial of Star Fleet Armada Rogue Adventures. This game came out of nowhere and has basically blown me away with how great it is. Seriously, it’s so great. It might look older, but that lack of graphical fidelity belies of depth of play that is just, so far, astounding. There’s simple so much here it’s silly, and I don’t even thing my usual five-part series will cover it all, so I might even do more. I have to get through this tutorial first, and keep reading the manual.

Now, onto videos! First up are more Icarus videos. I love this game, seriously, love. I’m pretty much learning on the job, but the more I learn the more I want to play. In these videos I make a bit of progress, but have to start over due to a patch invalidating save files. I’m still having a blast though. Videos two and three are the latest.

We then, on the opposite side of the coin, we have StarSmashers, a game that made me so angry my fiancee came in the office to check on me because I was yelling so loud she could hear me through a closed door. Seriously, this game infuriates me. It has a turn-timer mechanic — which is fucking STUPID in a single player game — that makes the game hostile toward the player, I feel. I only put in two videos before uninstalling it in disgust. Avoid this garbage unless you like poorly-designed games. If you wanna hear the yelling, just watch video two.

Tonight, since Nicole has a lesson, I’ll be playing The Long Journey Home for a series next week. I have to make three series for next week, since three games came out and, since I have a half-day on Friday, I can actually do it. Basically it’s gonna be The Long Journey Home tonight, Navalia — which I’ve been enjoying — on Friday and Star Fleet Armada on Sunday, so y’all are gonna get a ton of content next week. I just hope nothing ELSE comes out because not only am I lacking in time, but I’m sure folks’ wallets are feeling it as well. Regardless, it’s a crazy busy time for space game releases.

Speaking of crazy busy, there’s a lot of news, so let’s hit it!

• Antarix launched its IndieGoGo campaign, so go check it out.
• Children of the Galaxy got its monthly patch with new planet diplomacy stuff! They need better patch notes though, seriously.
• Interstellar Rift got a new dev blog talking automation, a new patch that added an automated cargo transfer relay, and you can now also buy the soundtrack as well!
• Remnants of the Precursors got a new video showing off the some new UI improvements, which look great. They also have some screenshots as well.
• VEGA Conflict has a dev update looking ahead at the rest of 2017.
• The latest Hard-Light Productions Newsletter is now live with news of several new campaigns for Freespace Open!
• Impulse: Space Combat (which I still need to purchase) got a new patch which adds graphical enhancements and such.
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords got a patch with a ton of fixes and tweaks.
• Infinity: Battlescape has some more base work in progress shots.
• Space Tyrant is about to hit early access and has a final patch before it does.
• Heathen Engineering’s Terran got their first patch in a while, and includes several major updates, most notably to organizations.
• Predestination has a new patch with new menus, starbases and a lot more! I need to revisit this thing.
• Starwalker is going through a reboot of the entire game, which is good because they weren’t received so favorably when they hit early access a couple of years ago.
• Finally, Space Impossible got a big patch that brings, among other things, the return of the tractor beam. I need to revisit this too.

Next up, we have sales!

• GOG began their Summer Sale, which includes a free copy of Rebel Galaxy with your first purchase! There’s way too much to mention, but if you’ve had some space games on your wishlist over there, go check it out!
• IndieGala has a Simply Super Bundle which includes the really fun SuperCluster: Void!
• Finally, House of the Dying Sun is on sale until June 12th for some reason.

WHEW! That’s it for today folks! Thanks for reading, and have a great one!