Starcom: Unknown Space

Game Title: Starcom Unknown Space
Released: September 2, 2024
Game Length: 30 Hours
Grade: B

Features

Setting: Kevin Lin has been an indie game developer for quite some time dating back to 2013. He hosted Wx3 Labs, LLC and made Starcom: Nexus in 2019. He later revamped the game with an overhaul and released a sequel in 2024. The game straddles the line by keeping clear of any sort of base building you might find in 4X games like Stellar while still providing you some sort of ship building like in Starcontrol 2. There are a number of ways you can flee battles as there is no self-contained space fighting other ships.

Options: In addition to some accessibility options like colorblindness, there is a difficulty meter that modifies how much damage you and your enemy ships may receive in battle. There are many ways to travel with the help of your autopilot by clicking on objects from your map or edge of your screen, cruise control so you don't need to hold the forward button all the time, and pinning Commander Log notes directly on the map with keyword search capability. You can choose to highlight investigate to activate beacons that are yellow for unscanned areas, magenta for unsurveyed areas, green for trade outposts, or blue for other interactions. 

Weapons: Although you may need to unlock some of these features beforehand, there are some very interesting toggles available through the ship systems that come in handy when there is a lot going on in battle. Plasma cannons can be switched to Autofire where the AI will take over and fire them towards anything that moves. This includes shooting down missiles, firing at asteroids, and shooting towards enemy ships without requiring a targeting reticle. It will not be concerned with conserving energy for other systems. Lasers have a similar feature that only targets enemy ships. Fixed Guns can be switched to Smart that will only allow you to fire if they are likely to hit an enemy ship. They will only fire on floating debris in this state if they are targetted. Missiles can be modified to fission for larger explosions or swarm that split to overwhelm the target.  

Travel

Stations: The game has some very sophisticated ways for you to travel between the solar systems already established by alien races. The first transit is called a flinger that makes you fly at near light speed until you reach your destination. The second is the wormhole that lets you instantly teleport to key location hubs. There are also one-way wormholes that requires a device you can obtain at the start to activate. These build solar systems in a different random location for each playthrough. Right-click a place on your map and your autopilot will automatically determine the best route through a number of flingers. The feature does take awhile to determine how to go around other ships and will conveniently avoid being burned up by running into any stars. 

Propulsion: The game also establishes pretty early that you can travel openly through the void. There can be some very interesting encounters if you travel out of planetary orbit. Derelicts of dead ships, dispatch nodes with messages, and remnants of the past can all be found between solar systems. Some banter can occur between the officers too. Eventually, your sensors will pick up some star before you stray too far out. The only thing that gauges your limits is your resources and patience. You can equip your ship with various wings (a pair of each only) and increase your acceleration with more or better engines. Late in the game, you can also use a warp drive to "hop" through small sections of space. 

Ship

Resources: Every part of your ship will require some form of resource. You can earn much from surveying planets, using your tractor beam after destroying enemy ships, blowing up asteroids, collecting wreckage from derelicts, trading with other ships, or visiting markets on certain planets. The most basic is aluminum with advanced materials requiring titanium. Energy weapons will require yttrium and diberyllium for lasers. Your ship will need iridum for deflectors, gold for engines, copper and chiralite for energy reserves, platinum for utilities, and etherine for ship upgrades. You essentially need some kind of resource for each new form of technology you unlock.

Research: The most interesting part of the game is how you slowly build-up your humble ship with the most basic turrets to giant dreadnoughts with missiles. Each time your officers find something cool in the universe, you will earn research points. Get close to a neat star, watch a comet fly by, or carefully observe a singularity without tearing your ship apart will net you some points that can be spent to upgrade your technology. How you progress, whether you want to go faster or increase your damage first, is entirely up to you.

Technology: How do you discover new gadgets and gizmos? You steal them. Artifact fragments from defeating enemy ships or trading can be reverse engineered to supply your ship things like guns, missiles, fighter bays, and shields. There is an entire guide on what to do. Some of these upgrades can even shift how your devices work like turning the havoc system from a defensive to offensive tool or changing the structure of missiles for different scenarios. A few upgrades are only available after you reach that point in the story. 

Shipyard: The most generous and sophisticated system is how you attach your ship modules together. You start with the bridge that allows you a certain number of blocks. You fill those spaces with objects from a number of subcategories. The bare minimum you want on every ship is one survey lander, a scanner, and at least one engine. Other than providing a few empty spaces ahead of your guns, most objects don't have any sort of limitations when building. If you don't have enough resources to build everything, you can initiate planning mode that tells you what resources you need while trading with aliens. You can change the color (after you obtain the upgrade) and save your ship configuration.  

Maneuvers: Although you can't run into planets, ramming into other objects is still a possibility. You can go forward and back with your ship. You can put a boost to your engines like how you sprint in other games. Your ship can slowly or rapidly lose integrity flying too close to stars or singularities. Parts of your ship do not fly off in battle, but they can be temporarily disabled if damage is dealt to their location on your ship. The crew on your ship, which can be increased with more quarters, can be upgraded with a call to battlestations that increases energy production and repair rates. There are buttons to activate your shields and havoc system as well. Although it is possible to hold onto a sliver of your ship for a long period of time, sustaining enough damage can destroy your ship and force you to load your last saved file. 

Exploration

Planets: As you travel the universe, the traces of a star will be the first thing to appear. Unknown planets will become visible as you get closer to the solar system. The game encourages you to scan and explore every single planet you come across for resources and information. A quarter of them will have no anomalies. Half of them will register something that you will receive like research points from what your officers observe or a possible investigation with your survey team on the surface. Every planet will have an image with a short description on the screen. Sometimes, the game will ask for you to roll the dice to see if anyone will be injured for a short time, the type of resources they might discover, or if their search inevitably comes out empty.

Events: There are at times where your officers will not be able to successfully pass the roll of the dice. If the anomaly is important enough, the game will provide you another chance after you dock with your space station. These can include finding unique artifacts or other mission-related tasks. You can do this an infinitely number of times. A person who is unwilling to go through the effort can "save scum" and roll the dice until it comes out favorably. Sometimes, the game allows you to retreat to your ship before passing a skill check. Occasionally, you will find a planet that you can revisit without any additional prompt. These are kept hidden until you fulfill certain obligations for a mission.  

Missions

Discovery: One of the biggest drawbacks of the game is how much they want you to play detective. You need to find and analyze artifacts, converse with aliens on their ships, retrieve information from planets, and most importantly locate key points across the universe. Missions will list the bare minimum and stay active, sometimes without any additional text, if there is anything more to discover. One mission will start with a simple report of where some traders are being attacked, but it is up to you to patiently wait until your sensors ping the stealth ships when they phase through space in need to recharge. Another requires you to search key words in your Log and initiate the locator icon to figure out where a random alien mentioned something specific about your mission. There are numerous posts from players online who have found that one part of a mission can't be completed until you trigger something else entirely unrelated like in the case of paying for protection before asking about information about a scepter artifact. The game doesn't tell you that there are ways to make peace with practically every race, including how you can find that one ship that overshot their planet.

Creativity: Because the game doesn't lay out everything in front of you, there is a bit of leeway to finding some interesting things doing some unorthodox methods. A space station that is protected by a shield can't be explored until you disable the shield by landing on the nearby planet, or you can manually push the station with your ship just far enough out of reach. Follow the blue probe casually flying around until you discover a wormhole to another system. Be stubborn by flying away from everything and encounter a void reaper. Instead of going home, travel to another singularity that brings you to the ark ship. Having trouble collecting enough iridium for a special trader? Paint your ship the same color as his and enter the alien's space all on your own. Not everything is so black and white in outer space.

Summary

Review: There is some passion built into the universe with how you can build your ship and negotiate with aliens. The interface is rather slick with the ability to search through logs and travel between solar systems. Building your ship is rather intuitive with how you gradually learn new technology by reverse engineering the parts that fly off your enemies. The biggest problem with the game is how much you have to figure out on your own with limited markers and vague notifications towards your next objective. The game also tries hard to tell stories by setting your planet surveys to fail on occasion. Although I don't recommend this game, there was still a bit of charm to find if you do decide to play it.