Colony Ship - First Look @ Colonel RPG

Colonel RPG checked out Colony Ship, the game will be available for purchase on the 6th of April:

Let's Play Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game - Part 1 - Here's the new Age of Decadence!

Colony Ship is a turn-based, party-based role-playing game set aboard a generation ship launched to Proxima Centauri. The game features a detailed skill-based character system, multiple ways to handle quests, choices & consequences, and branching dialogue trees. The Age of Decadence was fantastic, this is from the same developers, so let's play Colony Ship!

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More information.

Will this game be fully released on April 6th *OR* will it be released in Early Access form?

henriquejr said:

Will this game be fully released on April 6th *OR* will it be released in Early Access form?

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Early Access the full release is expected in 2022 or later.

Couchpotato said:

Early Access the full release is expected in 2022 or later.

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I want this, Age of Decadence was an absolute masterpiece of a game. Still, I'll wait until it's released. I don't really need any other EA titles clogging up the works right now.

I'll be all onboard once this has cleared the early access stage and is fully patched and whatnot. It's always nice to look forward to a game I know I'll enjoy!

Age of Decadance was like a character progression puzzle - get a specific skill level before reaching certain area or die.

I can't wait to play this.

domein said:

Age of Decadance was like a character progression puzzle - get a specific skill level before reaching certain area or die.

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AoD definitely had shortcomings in its design but the instant death states were pretty rare and usually only if you did something extremely risky like infiltrating Antidas' fortress, messing around with ancient technologies when you didn't have much lore / low mental stats, trying to jump chasms etc. And yes there were also some combat encounters which could be nigh impossible if your character wasn't well equipped / built for combat, but again, most of these can be avoided. If your character wasn't skilled in combat then it's not wise to pick fights with multiple heavily armed opponents.

Anyway, the developers have discussed their plans for Colony Ship in quite a bit of detail and appear to be taking the common feedback on AoD into consideration.

I personally enjoyed more Dungeon Rats than AoD. Not that AoD was bad, but I felt the character had to be built in a very specific way to succeed. Dungeon Rats was more combat focused, but it was pretty well balanced and allowed for a wider variety of builds and strategies, and offered a good challenge without being staggering.

I hope Colony Ship combines the best aspects of both, because it has the potential to be a really good game.

Dungeon Rats was also a fine game, one I know I'll be replaying in the future. All I know is, with this pedigree of excellent games behind them, the future looks bright!

daveyd said:

Anyway, the developers have discussed their plans for Colony Ship in quite a bit of detail and appear to be taking the common feedback on AoD into consideration.

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I hope that doesn't mean they're going to make it easier for the people who complain that AoD is too rigid.

JDR13 said:

I hope that doesn't mean they're going to make it easier for the people who complain that AoD is too rigid.

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I think they said that completing the game will be somewhat easier but accessing secret content will be harder.

Pladio said:

I think they said that completing the game will be somewhat easier but accessing secret content will be harder.

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I'm fine with that as long as they don't allow the player to be a jack-of-all-trades. Make us have to build our character intelligently and use the skills that are suited to the class we chose.

A lot of the complaints I've seen about AoD were from people who couldn't understand why the merchant they were playing couldn't win a fight against soldiers.

jdr13 said:

i hope that doesn't mean they're going to make it easier for the people who complain that aod is too rigid.

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hahahahaaa!

JDR13 said:

I'm fine with that as long as they don't allow the player to be a jack-of-all-trades. Make us have to build our character intelligently and use the skills that are suited to the class we chose.

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Probably won't be possible to have a jack of all trades. For one thing, I believe skills will now increase only from using them not by gaining points you can invest in any skill (you can "tag" favored skills to make them increase at a somewhat faster rate and high intelligence = more tagged skills).

But also remember you'll have party members in this one with their own skill-sets.

JDR13 said:

I hope that doesn't mean they're going to make it easier for the people who complain that AoD is too rigid.

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I played a press version which is pretty much the early access version released in a few days. I think the mechanical changes since the combat demo are very low, so you can also check the combat demo for impressions.

That said, one of the key elements of the game mentioned on steam is its hard combat system, and that you are going to die alot. And I can definitely confirm that.

I also try to play these games to see as much of possible as I am not a fan of replying the games. But this also means that my characters are rather multiskilled and my main character isn't a dumb juggernaut who would have an easier time with combat but has more content locked away. So in early access I tried to solve as many dialogues as possible, steal as much stuff as possibe and well...well electrician fixes I couldnt do anything as I didnt have a character who could get into it yet.

Colony Ship definitely has these "puzzle elements" similar to age of decadence. They are often just alternative pathes though and not mandatory.

There is actually a situation (an early part of the main quest if you want to call it like that) where you have to assist one of two groups, do some quests for them and after them they tell you to help attacking. And you can tell them something like "Uhm...did I tell you that I am not good in combat?" - and with that you will not assist with the main attack but you will basically cover their back and you need to keep reinforcements away. And this then happens via dialogues.

In any case, I would say that the game is pretty hardcore, and the skills might be a bit too puzzle like still. But I enjoyed it quite a lot and I am looking forward to the final release. While they say Early Access will take 18 months, and the game is in a very good state, with regards to their usual development time it would surprise me if it releases in 2022.