By “Space Game”, i mean the type of spaceship game where you fly around in a spaceship, earning money and reputation by taking on various missions.
The big one I play at the moment is Elite: Dangerous, but whilst it is very, very in some ways (the graphics, the ship designs and such), it’s a bit shallow on actual story. So what else is out there?
I’ve been playing a little Starpoint Gemini Warlords, which has been pretty good but there doesn’t seem to be much actual spaceship flying in it - you kind of choose where you want to go and it just kind of goes there, there isn’t the “dogfighting” that Elite does so well.
Rebel Galaxy is a fun little thing too, although it’s only in a 2D plane, it has some decent broadside-style combat, but ultimately I found it too shallow to hold interest.
I have played Eve Online, and I suspect that it might actually be brilliant if I had the time and money to devote to it, but I don’t.
Star Citizen might be good if they ever finish it, which they won’t because they are making more money with the perpetual development than they ever would selling it as a finished product.
Kerbal Space Program, which fulfills the requirements but was perhaps not what you were thinking. It offers something quite unique. It gives a good name to “edutainment” which is a difficult thing to do.
Heat signature is like a space pirate game mixed with Hotline Miami and a stealth puzzle game. Also something to check out.
It’s been a loooong while since I last played a pew-pew-zoom game (in fact, it’s been a long time since I haven’t had to dust my joystick period. SHUT UP IT’S NOT AN INNUENDO, even though yes, that too) but X-Wing Alliance, Freelancer, Tachyon:The Fringe and I-War were all fucking great. Yeah, I know, graphics. But still.
I have particularly good memories of Starlancer, too. Even though the Internet tells me I’m wrong about liking that game.
Space Engineers and Empyrion are a lot of fun if you like scavenging/engineering/building. You can start on a planet with a crashed ship or almost nothing and build a base and eventually a spaceship that you can fly to other planets/moons.
Elite Dangerous is really the best overall though for the combination of realism and fun. I too wish there was more story or at least the populated universe seemed more interesting.
I’ve had a lot of fun with an earlier build of Empyrion, and I see there’s more to it now. I don’t really see it as the same genre, although there’s a fair amount of crossover with the spaceships. Maybe I should take another look now it’s had a few updates.
X4: foundations is pretty good. The series has a long history of being released as workable, but non-tuned(menus and interface are clunky as hell for example ). And this one was no exception. It’s slowly getting better, and they have a history of eventually getting things to a real fun state. I wouldn’t give a huge recommendation for it currently, but another 3-4 months of patching and enhancing it will be worth a good look for people not long times series fans.
Seconded. Previous games all took about a year to get to a reasonably bug-free state. That’s not great, but the studio has historically continued to maintain and improve their games, so I give them a bit of slack.
Be warned, though, the games do tend to become spreadsheets in space. Running a galactic trading empire is hard work.
I used to play Elite in one of it’s previous versions (the one that came before First Contact). I loved the care they were taking to mirror the local star names. I assume the planets were fictional, but they tried to make the actual size of planets and distances between objects in space theoretically consistent. I learned space is really big, and you have to go really fast to get around. Planets are little specs in all that black that turn out to be really big when you get near them, are going way too fast, and hit them. Dogfights were fun too, but I could do without them. Just making deliveries in the allotted time and docking with a space station on the other side of a planet was enough challenge for me.
I know this has nothing to help the original OP and I apologize.
freelancer wing commander privateer one and two theres a few others on GOG.com … .now if you don’t mind sailing ships theres the 3 sid meier pirate games …….