Welcome to Into the Stars my friends! This game is something of a mix of Oregon Trail-style survival with FTL-style choice making, along with a few mini-games sprinkled in for good measure. In this entry, I start on the easiest difficulty to get a feel for the game, and last quite a bit longer than I planned, which is why this entry is longer than usual. Regardless, it seems as if the easiest difficulty level might’ve been the most boring, as not much really happened. Regardless of this, I lost thousands upon thousands of colonists along the way for a variety of reasons. The goal of the game is to take your ship, the ARK-13, across a large portion of space to Humanity’s new home. Along the way you have to land on planets and trade with vessels to acquire the resources needed for fuel, food, oxygen and so on. I honestly found the gameplay here a bit dull and slow, as it took what felt like FOREVER to get from one planet to the next. I get that space expansive and yadda yadda, but when the journey is kind of bland, it doesn’t help the game. Along way, you also have to deal with problems in the civilian population, which gives the game a bit more to do between planets. However, all you really do with these crises is assign a crewmember with the appropriate skill to deal with it, and they determine how quickly or slowly it gets dealt with, which is a bit boring. The most exciting stuff is planetary stuff, wherein you can land a shuttle and deal with events, or do some mining. These can result in new items and materials, or on the opposite side of the coin, DEATH. ;) I’m going to eventually revisit the game on the next higher difficulty level in the hopes that it’s less boring, but for now, please enjoy this fairly lengthy look at the game, and thanks for watching!
