Colony Ship - Early Access Version released

I'll likely do the same thing shortly. I've no intention on playing the game until it's fully released, but I certainly want to contribute to the company in any way possible.

Tried out the demo and then picked it up on GoG. May be a bit before I do a deep dive but this is looking great.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Did some first impressions on youtube in english and german

Eh, 3.5 hours preview One minute summary would sell better for us lazy watchers

I second, this game looks great. Will check it out when it is ready.

I tried to have a quick look, but unfortunately the controls don't work for me, I suspect they are hard-coded for QWERTY. So just a heads-up, if you don't have that keyboard layout, maybe it's best to wait.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Did some first impressions on youtube in english and german

How long is the EA, approximately? I only heard you mentioned it was 25% of the game content, when played through multiple times, but I haven't seen the estimation for the whole game or the Early Access on the game website. Maybe I missed it in your video, I only had the time to watch the beginning… and I don't want to see too much of the gameplay.

EDIT: found an FAQ with the answer It seems very short.

What's in the current Early Access build?
The first 3 locations (the first chapter): the Pit - container town, Armory, and Hydroponics. Estimate playtime - 4-5 hours with combat.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
EDIT: found an FAQ with the answer It seems very short.

There is no way a normal, unexperienced player will be able to finish that in this time.
While it's not huge, it does include the arena and a few other zones.
It would surprise me if anyone finished the game without the arena within 5h. And if the arena is complete (as it is in the freely available combat demo) you can spend another 5-10h for the 15 fights in the arena….because it's hard as f***

Originally Posted by Kordanor
There is no way a normal, unexperienced player will be able to finish that in this time.
While it's not huge, it does include the arena and a few other zones.
It would surprise me if anyone finished the game without the arena within 5h. And if the arena is complete (as it is in the freely available combat demo) you can spend another -510h for the 15 fights in the arena….because it's hard as f***

Maybe an old or very conservative estimation then.
Good to know and reassuring, thanks!

I usually wait till full game is released but just bought on GOG to support first week sales for Iron Tower

Win 7: there is a warning that it isn't finding some DX12 SHT, but it still starts nevertheless.
Walls of text:
Read into the dialogue texts a little bit. Problem is they aren't shown in the center of the screen, which already suggests to the reader text isn't important, that's why it was thrown to the far right. Writing is okayish, at least its not absolutely boring.

RMB to move to target:
I'm playing with a tablet, so I like to just tap (LMB) and I want my character to go to the tapped spot.. Nope, not in this game! But interestingly I can attack the enemy with LMB = tap.

Trying to find the first combat:
Combat found by visiting the court in a completely illogical, weird way: "Make your case" dialogue option starts a combat. Or is it an interrogation? With the hostage fully armed? Anyway: Combat is very minimal and absolutely boring. No excitement at all. Why do a game, which has absolutely zero fun even in its alpha state? Feels like Colony Ship was made by zombies, who died of brain-death long time ago and have been functioning on Auto-mode.

Finally I looked up Iron Tower Studio: They did the deadly boring Age of FCKAdence and another bad-boring game Dungeon Rats.

So that's why this game stinks of boredom and complete lack of fun design, however promising the graphics is. I erroneously thought Colony Ship is made by some indie team. :-o My bad.

Based on their very basic "combat" and the useless walking around aimlessly trying to talk to barely functional NPCs, trying to make sense of this alpha..
This EA-product is just a tech-demo at best. Given the fact that not-great
Iron Tower is attempting to do a third game, after creating two bad ones, I have strong doubts Colony Ship will ever be anything close to fun or enjoyable. They even fail at getting the atmospherics right. Bad, unfitting music, large Unreal engine map, which is boring to navigate and hard / annoying to investigate.

As I read more "mission" texts the game got more boring and annoying.

Refunded. Bookmark deleted from browser.

FORGETWARE™

Originally Posted by mercy
Win 7: there is a warning that it isn't finding some DX12 SHT, but it still starts nevertheless.
Walls of text:
Read into the dialogue texts a little bit. Problem is they aren't shown in the center of the screen, which already suggests to the reader text isn't important, that's why it was thrown to the far right. Writing is okayish, at least its not absolutely boring.

RMB to move to target:
I'm playing with a tablet, so I like to just tap (LMB) and I want my character to go to the tapped spot.. Nope, not in this game! But interestingly I can attack the enemy with LMB = tap.

Trying to find the first combat:
Combat found by visiting the court in a completely illogical, weird way: "Make your case" dialogue option starts a combat. Or is it an interrogation? With the hostage fully armed? Anyway: Combat is very minimal and absolutely boring. No excitement at all. Why do a game, which has absolutely zero fun even in its alpha state? Feels like Colony Ship was made by zombies, who died of brain-death long time ago and have been functioning on Auto-mode.

Finally I looked up Iron Tower Studio: They did the deadly boring Age of FCKAdence and another bad-boring game Dungeon Rats.

So that's why this game stinks of boredom and complete lack of fun design, however promising the graphics is. I erroneously thought Colony Ship is made by some indie team. :-o My bad.

Based on their very basic "combat" and the useless walking around aimlessly trying to talk to barely functional NPCs, trying to make sense of this alpha..
This EA-product is just a tech-demo at best. Given the fact that not-great
Iron Tower is attempting to do a third game, after creating two bad ones, I have strong doubts Colony Ship will ever be anything close to fun or enjoyable. They even fail at getting the atmospherics right. Bad, unfitting music, large Unreal engine map, which is boring to navigate and hard / annoying to investigate.

As I read more "mission" texts the game got more boring and annoying.

Refunded. Bookmark deleted from browser.

FORGETWARE™

I wonder if you ever realize your statements don't need to be as harsh as you make them out to be.

VD has obviously spent a lot of time on developing this to get some snide remark from someone like you is really disrespectful.

Not sure if trolling or… ?

Originally Posted by Kordanor
There is no way a normal, unexperienced player will be able to finish that in this time.
While it's not huge, it does include the arena and a few other zones.
It would surprise me if anyone finished the game without the arena within 5h. And if the arena is complete (as it is in the freely available combat demo) you can spend another 5-10h for the 15 fights in the arena….because it's hard as f***

I suspect, that if you play as a mostly talkative sort, you can probably complete the game faster.
That's how it was in AoD.

I erroneously thought Colony Ship is made by some indie team.

Uh, it is..? Who do you think made it, Bethesda?

It looks much more interesting now compared to earlier, I'll probably get it at some point… but no hurry!

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
It looks much more interesting now compared to earlier

Indeed, I played the combat demo and wasn't impressed. Back then, I didn't even know the game was going to have recruitable NPCs. I'm kind of hoping they release another demo that lets you explore a larger area and do more than just fight in an arena.

Originally Posted by Pladio
I suspect, that if you play as a mostly talkative sort, you can probably complete the game faster.
That's how it was in AoD.

Yeah, but similar to AoD you would probably need to spend tons of time in this case to identify all the skill checks and their values, and then need to make a plan in which order you would try to do them, to avoid tons of back and fourth and running around.

I mean instead of "just" doing a fight you could try to avoid the fight with a skill of 5. But you have a skill of 3. So you need to find other tasks you could solve with a skill of 3 to get it to four, to then find other ones to rise it to 5 to finally pass the initial skillcheck and avoid the combat.

If you have the perfect plan laid out, yeah, like a "short" game.

I didn't find this to be a problem if you were using a talkative character in AOD, only if I was playing a hybrid character.

Just keep putting points only in two speech skills. With 10 intelligence you never had issues with enough skill points.