Cryptstone Games has just released a demo for Star Prospector. Star Prospector is a sci-fi real-time strategy game with some RPG elements. The demo gives you full access to all of Star Prospector’s features and unlocks all the missions available in the first star system. The missions are randomly generated. Tried the demo for a few minutes and I was quite pleased with the game’s look & feel. Gameplay seems to be quite straightforward to master. Built a bot factory, a soldier bot and killed some alien creatures that were wondering around. Very simple stuff but quite fun.
For more information check out a small Star Prospector preview: Explore the Galaxy with Star Prospector – Coming Soon Space RTS for the PC. Have a look also at Star Prospector’s recently available video below. It is a tutorial video Cryptstone has assembled for us, to guide us on building our first base. Star Prospector costs $19.99 and is being sold exclusively for the Impulse digital platform. Have fun prospecting the galaxy!
Subscribe RSS
5 Comments
Related Articles:
- Star Prospector Now on GamersGate, First Patch Released and Free DLC in March
- Star Prospector Giveaway Contest [CLOSED]
- Star Prospector: New Patch and Free DLC with New Tower-Defense Game Mode
- Star Prospector Released
- Star Prospector Giveaway Contest [RESULTS]
Loading ...
Played through the entire demo. The game certainly has a certain charm about it and the demo was bug and crash free for me.
Unfortunately, the game’s very slow pacing and repetitive nature is going to be a big turnoff for a lot of players. Each and every mission I played started off with me repeating the same exact build routine. Once the economy was setup, I would produce a squad of 10 or so attack type bots (machinegun, melee, laser, and lightning bots were the ones I tried) and mop up whatever objective the level held. This same pattern repeated itself for all of the missions in the first system (the whole demo). I think it was around 6 missions or so, but it may have been more (felt like more).
The repetitiveness wouldn’t be bad if the bots moved faster, but their default speed is very slow in my opinion, especially since you are doing the same things essentially over and over again and want to get on with it. I had hoped the scout bot would move a lot faster, but no.
The RPG elements are in place and allow you to spend credits in-between levels on upgrades for your commander and unlocks for your buildings and bots. This is a good concept, but the downside is you are locked in to only a very few bots and buildings until you can level up. In game it appears that exp is given to troops for kills, and only the bot getting the last shot in is awarded any experience.
Looking ahead at available bot unlocks, it appears that several bot designs are reused/recycled with the name “Heavy” attached to indicate they cost more and do more damage. This leads me to believe that gameplay and strategy will remain largely the same as you progress, just with higher numbers and enemies with more health/armor/shields. I hope that is not the case and that there is a lot more variety.
Now, I will advise that anyone reading this should take my review for what it is, a review of the demo only. I also am not a huge RTS fan, but I have spent a bit of time in AoEII, Age of Mythology, Dawn of War I and II, and Company of Heroes.
I bought the full version. It’s nice in lots of ways but a bit slowish: bots move slow, rig is slow to before upgrades. The whole setup is right, the galaxy map etc is nicely done but the actual RTS misses a bit of spunk.
I tried the demo and was disappointed. I really like the inclusion of traditional RPG elements, but the RTS is thoroughly unimpressive. The units are difficult to control and many essential interface features are undocumented or not present (e.g. hotkeys). I don’t mind RTS games requiring some level of skill to execute, but they need to provide the players with the tools to do so. The Blizzard games are excellent examples of games which are difficult, but manageable.
Hot keys are listed in the option screen? There’s also a manual on the Cryptstone website, that is included with the full game.
Sure, I’m sure hotkeys and certain other interface features are hidden somewhere. But the game doesn’t exactly make it easy for you to discover what they are. It would be nice if the hotkeys were directly on the tooltips for the command buttons (even if they use a gridkey layout). And even if all this were included, it would still be a very lackluster RTS.