This is a Multi-Day Effort – Hailing Frequencies Open for 7/31-8/2/17

Hello folks! I’m starting to write this on Monday because there’s a ton of news and such to cover, and my brain is absolutely melted, so I’m gonna start putting this post together on Monday and will likely publish it on Wednesday at the latest. A lot of that news down there was put together over several days, so I hope y’all enjoy it. As I write this on Wednesday morning, I’m just amazed how busy and vibrant the space gaming scene is right now. I know these things go in cycles, and at some point we’ll have another downturn/dark period, but for now, we really are in another golden age of not just space gaming, but gaming in general.

Speaking of gaming, I’ve actually gotten quite a bit in of late, which is surprising given how close the wedding is. This past weekend, I recorded a bunch of gameplay for Galaxy of Pen and Paper, which I’ll be talking about in a moment. After that, I actually had some time to myself, so I finally dove into Titanfall 2’s new Frontier Defense co-op mode. Holy crap. Holy, holy crap that was good. I only got one session in due to time constraints on Saturday, but on MONDAY evening I did almost half a dozen matches, and holy crap did I have a good time. For one match, I accidentally took the Scorch titan, rather than my preferred Ion, but found that it was so fun and improved from before the patch, I didn’t mind at all. FYI, Titanfall 2 is now part of Origin Access, so there’s no better time to jump in than now. :) Besides Titanfall 2, I also got a little Skyrim in because I needed something I could stop at a moment’s notice (which so isn’t Titanfall 2), mostly hanging around Falskaar so I can finish up the quests on that magnificant island.

So, games of the week! We have two this week! First off, the surprising Vostok Inc. came out of nowhere in the middle of last week, so of course I had to cover it. This is a twin-stick shooter/clicker game in which you fly around our solar system (at first), making money by shooting asteroids and building things on planets, killing enemies and much more. It’s actually shockingly fun, vibrant and varied, and I had a great, great time with it.

The second game of the week was the aforementioned Galaxy of Pen and Paper. I’d never played either of the previous iterations of the game, so I honestly had no idea what to expect going into this one. What I found was a fun, funny-as-hell, and honestly fairly accurate depiction of the comedy and chaos of a typical pen and paper role playing session. Seriously, I had SUCH a great time with this one. The combat is fun, the missions are varied, the writing is hilarious and the pacing is great. Definitely top notch stuff.

Alllllright, here’s the biggie. So much news! Let’s do this!

• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is now coming out on 8/31!! YAY! They’re also going to have a stream on August 9th at 11 AM to show some off their campaign. Also, Matrix has begun collaborating with the Spacedock YouTube channel for a look at the Manticore Corvette!
• Avorion has moved its full release date to Q3, 2018. More time to get it right, I say.
• Helium Rain is coming on 8/18, just found out about it, and it looks great.
• Death Origins is also dropping soon, on 8/15, so August looks to be damned busy already.
• Ancient Frontier now has a release date of 9/14. September might be heating up as well.
• Disputed Space got a ton of patches, and now has a scoring system, a target lead indicator, more efficient afterburners and less resilient enemies.
• Astrobase Command has a dev blog post talking about its upcoming alpha release!
• Starship Corporation got a pretty big update that replaces a lot of screens, updates to the galaxy map and more.
• I’m Titanium got a small patch that fixed a few things.
• Wing Commander: End Run — the novel I’m still reading actually — is getting a mod in Homeworld Remastered.
• Starway Fleet got a decent patch that fixed a bunch of stuff.
• Avalon: The Journey Begins got a patch with new models, models and more.
• Remnants of the Precursors is getting some help with French translations and has some new Mrrshan intro artwork.
• Wing Commander: Flat Universe has made some strides in recent months. Thanks for the tip, CIC.
• Alliance of the Sacred Suns has updated its dev blog with an entry on the production portion of the economy
• There’s a new screenshot of whatever this Astrox Imperium is, and it looks great.
• Stellaris is having a video contest!
• Istrolid got a small update.
• The CRPG Addict (who I need to keep better track of, sorry) has now started looking at MegaTraveller 2!
• Solaroids: Prologue has a pretty significant new patch with lots of new features and fixes.
• Dimension Drive also got a pretty significant update that changes the flow of the game, apparently.
• The FreeAllegiance folks need help getting the game ready for Steam, now that they own the rights, so go see if you can help out.
• Galaxy of Pen & Paper is getting a bunch of fixes apparently, according to this Steam update.
• Masteroid got a fairly sizeable update too!
• Vendetta Online got some new test content that includes dynamic ship debris.
• Overload looks to be coming Q1, 2018! Yay finally!

Finally, we have some deals this week! First off, Steam’s Weeklongs only have a few, such as The Sol games, Iron Sky: Invasion and Battle for Orion 2. Finally, GOG has a massive sale with no space games, really, but some of my favorites such as the Deadlock and Uprising games.

WHEW! That’s it. Seriously, it took three days to put this together, but it was worth it. After this, the site is going dark for a couple of weeks (but for very good reason), so I hope y’all have a lovely couple of weeks, and I’ll see you back on 8/21!