Avorion

[Pob255]

Don't know if anyone's looked at this yet, an intresting space sandbox game, not a true voxel-based game more of a random-sized-block-based game.
Yes it is another early access type thing, but as with the better ones there's already modding support and mods out there, plus there's a free demo.
There is multiplayer, the single player is basically setting up a local server and connecting to it.

The graphics are rather old looking but there is something about them I like, it's connected to the fact that if you were building actual spaceships that never go into atmosphere then they'd be lots of blocks and simple shapes bolted together.
It's all OpenGL based and doesn't work too well on intel IGP, at least not on this HD3000 (i5-2500k igp)

Free Demo on the dev site https://www.avorion.net/demo/

There's a couple of decent let's plays on youtube, https://www.youtube.com/user/Lathland https://www.youtube.com/user/StoneLegionVideos

It's a bit bare bones now I think but I can see a heck of a lot of potential and modding should open it up even more.

One to keep an eye on me thinks.

[Ttaskmaster]

This looks like Freelancer got caught in a love triangle with LEGO™ and Minecraft, while having a bit on the side with Nexus: The Jupiter Incident...

[Pob255]

exactly what's not to like

[Ttaskmaster]

I loved Freelancer, hated Minecraft and was alright with Jupiter... not managed to complete a single LEGO™ game yet.

[Pob255]

Well I played the demo for a bit, it's rather restrictive.
You're locked off to a small square of the galaxy, ok that's not so bad, you still get a base feel for the game.
However that square is locked into the first tier of material, iron, which means any ship you make is very squishy.

I've bought the full game now and I'm enjoying it so far, physics is a bit more newtonian than most and I'm still trying to figure out how to best build manoeuvrability, not helped by some recent changes the dev made.

[Pob255]

Well I now have 27hours played according to steam and I'm still enjoying it so far.

even though I've died a couple of times due to crashing into rocks, very annoying when your brand new ship you spent hours making and rock mining for the resources goes BOOM! good bye resources, good bye best weapons and modules now you've got to try to cobble together something to get back there and pick them up before they despawn or and npc nabs them, at least the ones which dropped rather than exploded.
Also died once to pirates, didn't keep a close enough eye on my hp.

There's the core of a good game here, it's a bit fiddly in places, esp building, ui needs a bit more work.
one tip I have for anyone wanting to try this, if you want to build a pretty ship then do it in the sandbox mode, it's the same but unlimited material and money, once built save it off you can then swap your current ship out for it in the normal game as long as you've got the resources and credits to pay for it.
And turn the collision damage down, I've got it set to 75% and it's still a bit brutal, beware that afterburner it will kill you.

[Pob255]

Well I'm 100+ hours in now and still not board with it.

It's definitely still in development, there are bugs, balance issues, a lot of minor QOL changes needed and the end game still needs a lot of work.
but it's fun and I've got sucked into ship design.



and my latest ongoing carrier

Let's see if anyone can guess what I've based this ship off