Deep Sky Derelicts

[Paingod]

Deep Sky Derelicts, a $16 game on GOG with 4.4 stars and Steam with 77% Approval, and currently in Early Access.

I picked this up a few days back because I thought it looked like Darkest Dungeon in space. I was partially right, but it's not at all. Aside from the "gritty" art, there's little in common. That doesn't make it a bad game - but it means you should temper your expectations.

Deep Sky Derelicts is essentially a game of shallow resource management with card-based combat.

Using the word "shallow" sounds bad - and can be. Since I started with Darkest Dungeon as my basis, if we compare the two... Darkest has you managing light levels, sanity, health, inventory, and cash. Light levels determine sanity losses, loot levels, and enemy difficulty - risk & reward. Sanity is a precious commodity that needs careful management. There's tension that builds with each component, making a savory experience that perfectly fits the Lovecraftian backdrop. Deep Sky, by comparison, has energy and cash - and there's no tension at all to savor. Energy is a tether that determines how long you can explore ships to find loot by searching and fighting. Cash determines how well you can heal up and restore energy to continue exploring, so you can heal up and restore energy. It's a very cyclic thing and not at all savory.

That doesn't make the game specifically bad, though, and this is Early Access - so the treadmill may change. It just means you don't find the fun of the game in resource management.

What does it do well then? The other element. Combat.

Each class in the game starts with a set of skills and can be equipped with a specific array of items. Weapons, Tools, and Shields. Each item has 2 Mod slots. Combat is performed using a deck of cards for each character. The decks are built based on the items a character has equipped. You need to assess equipment's value not based on raw statistics, but based on how it will alter your deck. If you've got a strong melee fighter, you don't want to saturate their deck with lots of buffs or debuffs. If you've got a weak fighter, you don't want to saturate them with lots of attacks and just a few buffs. Classes like Technicians and Medics work best to help your team or hinder enemies, not directly doing damage. Classes like Trackers and Brutes are damage output machines, and should be attacking as much as possible.

As you use up cards in a character's deck, they're discarded and I don't think they're recycled until they can't draw something new without reshuffling. This mechanic is hidden, so I can't be 100% - but it seems this way.

The downside of combat is that there is no free healing that I've found so far, aside from a self-regen the Medic class gets - and healing is expensive. Reviving a downed character costs $300. To get them to 1HP. After that, you spend $10/HP to restore health to full. A level 3 fighter has 45 health - that's $450. You could spend $750 to fully revive and heal a fighter. As a basis for comparison, I get $500-$1000 for completing side-quests (there are maybe 1.5 per derelict), you start with $600, and a "good" haul from a single run nets you maybe $300 in profit after recharging energy. So by the game's terms, $750 is a lot. The worst thing that can happen in combat is running into enemies that either bypass your shields and hit your health directly, or hit so hard that you can't keep shields up to avoid damage. As soon as you start losing health, you're hemorrhaging money directly onto the floor.

Aside from health issues, combat also forces still-frame cut scenes for each attack - artificially expanding the time a fight takes. The first few times you see a particular enemy perform a particular attack, it can be neat - but after that it's quickly boring and I want some way to skip it. Clicking your mouse does cancel the still-frame, but you still spend a second waiting for it to load and unload on either side.

You're allowed to pick three characters for your roster. Because it's such a small number, you have to determine if you're going combat-heavy (2 fighters, 1 buffer), management-heavy (2 buffers, 1 fighter), or a mix (1 fighter, 1 buffer, 1 mixed). I've tried two layouts and did better with management-heavy than I did with mixed, but I was just learning the game with the mixed group and could probably have done better.

Exploration is performed by visiting Derelicts - possibly at a cost, possibly for free. Exploration is where the Energy tether lives. Each square you explore consumes energy to move through. Scanning for threats and loot consumes energy. Sometimes the NPC's you interact with will consume energy. The 1,000 energy reserve you go in with at the beginning depletes quickly. You do not want fights to drag on as each combat action also consumes energy. I mentioned above that Energy isn't a compelling resource to manage, and it's not. It feels a lot like an artificial barrier put in place simply to force you to go back and forth and waste money recharging it.

Moving around the map involves "pinging" (scanning) to view rooms and get an idea of their contents. Enemies, traps, and loot can be seen from the map - and your party is nothing more than a dot you push around by clicking. Part of the energy balance is scanning efficiently and not wasting too much moving back and forth across the same path.

There are some interesting elements baked in as flavor, though. As you explore, you might encounter a madman that wants to become a computer, and you quest to find a computer to help him - only to discover one that wants to be worshiped like a god. You help the two get together through dialog with both and get a reward when it's over. I've bumped into a number strange side quests and each derelict has them.

My biggest annoyance so far was getting into a punishing fight that I had to run from. The enemy group chased me all the way back to the docking port and I couldn't do anything else that run except flee. It took literally everything I had to spare to heal back up and go back out - only to discover that group of enemies were camping on top of the docking port, waiting for me to return. In order to progress, I had to submit to getting my ass kicked - which meant loading a couple of times to get a reasonably favorable outcome to the fight with minimal health loss. It didn't feel like it was in the spirit of the game to do that, but I felt I had no alternative. I couldn't afford to get hammered a second time.

So far, I'd say Steam's 77% is more on the nose than GOG's 88%. I'd give it something along the lines of a 65-70%. It's got potential and has an interesting art, writing, combat, and item mechanics, but has artificial feeling barriers tacked in to force survival stress instead of more fluid or tension-building elements. I'm expecting to certainly get my $16 worth as a budget title, but others might want to wait until release and a sale if they're not sure.

*Edit: Having pushed through the initial slump and getting some better equipment, I'm surviving combat and making money easier now. Not feeling like I'm being ground to death with damage taxes makes me feel better about the game - and having a pile of new abilities is making combat more fluid and interesting. I suppose it's safe to say the game is growing on me, and the longer I play, the more I like it.