Developer: Cydonian Games
Publisher: Cydonian Games
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Voidship: The Long Journey – Review
Traveling to Mars, exploring the galaxy, space tourism, it seems humanity can’t wait to get away from Earth and jump into the unknown. Unfortunately it seems that Mars is rather far away and it takes ages to actually get there, let alone discover the rest of the galaxy. In Sci-fi this is often fixed by special engines, cryo sleep, warp speed and such. However in reality it would mean that you would probably die before reaching your destination, which is somewhat of a bummer. The only way to solve this problem is to have babies in space. Now image changing a diaper with a rather fluid and smelly content in a zero gravity environment.
Story
As we all know by now, creating AI will get humanity into trouble. However this time the danger doesn’t come from the AI trying to kill its inferior maker. The Terran empire, also known as us the humans, makes the disastrous mistake to temper with AI and unknowingly break an intergalactic law that forbids the creation of true AI. Even before the humans could perform any kind of Turing test all Terran worlds and spaceports immediately got swarmed by an unknown alien race and destroyed. A small ship with a few survivors must now make its way to some mysterious coordinates. If you didn’t already get the Battlestar Galactica vibe, then there it is. Unfortunately this will take you to a galaxy far far far far away which means the original crew will die before reaching the end of the journey. Luckily along the way you’ll be able to pick up new crewmembers. There is little story development after the intro movie. You build your own story as you continue to upgrade your ship and hire new crew members. Each of these new crew members has some back story as to where and how he joined your crew.
Graphics
Voidship: The Long Journey is played in a 2D top down perspective and games in this genre do often stick to a more familiar retro feel. You can’t compare these graphics to a hyper realistic 3D shooter for example. But they are good in their own right. The graphics are very sharp and colorful with good attention to details yet they do keep a retro feel to them when you look at the ship. The background on the other hand is very beautiful and detailed. It often gets hectic when you are being attacked by dozens of enemies and all your turrets start shooting. Because of this you lose a bit of the details and it can become a bit of a lightshow. There is a good amount of diversity in enemies, ships and crewmembers. They manage to keep the endless darkness of space interesting.
Sound
The background sound shifts from a classic style music with piano vibes which makes you feel small in a big universe to an upbeat electronic sound when you enter combat. This combination works really well. The sound effects of the different weapon systems sound distinct enough to help you keep track of things if the screen gets a little clustered visually.
Gameplay
Voidship: The Long Journey is a 2D top down space shooter with a strategy map. The core of the game is to upgrade your ship with more firepower and the best crew you can get, as you’ll be fighting for survival against waves of enemies who have but one sole purpose to kill you.
You have a “universe” map which consists of several tiles. On this map you can decide which level to play next. Eventually you will be wanting to make your way to the tile marked as the exit, reaching this tile will take you to the next star system. These maps are randomly generated which increases the replay value. You don’t have as much freedom as you might think, you can skip a few tiles here and there but that is it. Doing the not mandatory tiles to reach the exit can yield you extra resources in cash or crewmembers. Be aware because some tiles might contain an ambush.
As mentioned before you can upgrade your ship in two ways, you can buy/find pieces and attach them to your ship, like more cannons, lasers, missile launchers and shields. This happens in a very intuitive way, you drag items on a tile grid and snap them to already existing ship pieces. There is a wide variety of weapons to choose from, cannons, turrets, launchers and support systems including shields and repair units. Most of the smaller weapons can fire in all direction but some of the bigger ones can only be fired in the direction they are mounted on the ship. This adds a small additional layer of tactical decision making to the ship building. The more weapons you add to your ship the more management it takes in battle, some weapons will fire automatically but some of the bigger ones that have a cooldown will require you to aim yourself. Your ship is modular and so are the enemy ships, this means you can focus fire on specific systems first. Disabling heavy hitters or shield can really turn the tide of battle in your advantage or in that of the enemy.
The other way to upgrade your ship is to assign different crew members to different tasks. Some crew members will be better at certain things and provide bonuses to the ship but they might also have negative side effects as well. Since crew members age and eventually die you will be forced to bring in new blood and rethink the assignments from time to time. Losing a really good crew member can be a pretty emotional setback but should not make you lose a battle.
There are two ways of controlling your ship which are called RTS or shooter mode, either you control the ship with the mouse by clicking more like an RTS game or by using the arrow keys on the keyboard like a shooter. The game stays the same but it gets a different feel. Once you try both you’ll quickly have a preferred method.
Conclusion
Voidship: The Long Journey is an enjoyable 2D top down space shooter. The ability to upgrade your ship and crew keeps you busy and actively exploring non mandatory tiles. The fact that the map is randomly generated is a plus as it does extend replayability a lot. The map itself isn’t very impressive visually but in practice you spend very little time on it.
Voidship: The Long Journey - Review,
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