VoidExpanse – Preview
VoidExpanse is a space game that combines several genres such as action, RPG, simulator and shooter in one and is brought to us by the Singapore-based independent game development studio AtomicTorch Studio. To clear things up, you can’t compare VoidExpanse to the typical space game Kerbal Space Program. In fact, you can look at VoidExpanse as a Diablo-like game, or any other RPG for that matter, except that this one takes place in space and your enemies are not fantasy creatures but space pirates.
VoidExpanse wouldn’t be much of an RPG game unless you can create several classes and currently there are 6 classes to choose from: Adventurer, Engineer, Fighter, Prospector, Scout and the Trader. Each of these classes have their own rewards and specializations. The adventurer is more of an all-rounded class with no real perks but the prospector tends to have a difficult life by gaining so much money that it’s the perfect target for pirates. You have plenty of free reign when you create your character as you can customize it from the top to the bottom by changing his face, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, hair, beard, clothes and even accessories. As you can see, there’s plenty of categories to create a character to your liking but the actual choices are quite slim so far (between 2 to 6 options to pick from). Currently there are no gender-options but this is a feature that is planned for the future.
Leveling up can be done in many ways but the most common one is questing. While you are docked you have access to places such as the canteen, where you will be able to find several individuals that have a job for you. These jobs can be anything, from killing space pirates, gathering materials to finding treasure chests far away. One downside is that these quests do not change with the galaxies. There’s also a shop where you can buy upgrades and sell items you’ve picked up from your adventure in the galaxy. For now there is no interaction with the planets themselves but this is yet another feature that is planned. The skilltree in VoidExpanse has some resemblance to many RPG’s with several trees to level: piloting, combat, engineering and other. The slight difference lays in the skillpoints that you can use to level these branches. Unlike other games, you will gain several Points, which you can use in any of the different categories. Certain skills have a higher cost but the most common cost is 5, 6 and 10. Up until now there is no way to reset your skilltree but you will be able to unlock everything rather fast, so there is no real need for a reset.
Three out of the 6 available factions will be allies from the start. You can join any of these factions but some factions require you to gain more reputation with them. This can be easily done by simply doing jobs for them and wandering in their systems. You can easily see your standing with any of these factions but what is even more neat is that you can also see how these factions stand against others.
If you want to build an entire army, the multiplayer is your best chance. It works almost the same as singleplayer except that you will be able to team up with friends or random strangers. To make it even more interesting, you can also enable PVP. On a server with the capacity to have 64 players, this is a death trap.
The graphics in VoidExpanse are as you would expect from a space game. Various colors change the scenery for the galaxies you can venture in, stars are scattered across the universe and last but certainly not least there is space junk! From small body parts to massive ships. You can literally find any kind of junk.
As VoidExpanse is in alpha, bugs are expected but you will not come across that many. The only bugs I have been able to find is certain item icons disappearing while the item is still in that slot and that one of my worlds vanished. However, these bugs are taken care off quite quickly, which results into a smooth alpha testing of a game that looks nearly finished.
Conclusion
All-in-all VoidExpanse has the potential to become a great space shooter with a heavy focus on RPG where you will need to complete quests, gather materials and loot boxes to obtain better gear. The variation in sizes of the galaxies, the different classes and the complete customization of your ships will lead to dozen of hours of enjoyable gameplay.
The Alpha version of VoidExpanse is already released for PC, support for Mac and Linux will come soon.
VoidExpanse - Preview,
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[…] The beta of VoidExpanse will be released late 2014. They aim to release the full game early 2015. We’ve previewed the game a while ago, in case you missed it, you can always read it here. […]