Octopus Overlords

Been having a lot of fun with this one as of late. The graphics are not all that great (ie the interiors and ship exterior), but it does have a charm to it and more than makes up for it in gameplay. What's amazing about this is that it's developed by a single guy and it's constantly being developed. What I really like about this is that you have a ship interior that you can walk around in that you can also customize. Get to your pilot seat and you can lift off seemlessly. There are no loading screens aside from when you initially load into the game. You travel somewhere, land, go through your airlock and boom, you're on the planet surface. There's also an FPS mode that feels very 90's.

Rumpy wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2023 11:58 pm Been having a lot of fun with this one as of late. The graphics are not all that great (ie the interiors and ship exterior), but it does have a charm to it and more than makes up for it in gameplay. What's amazing about this is that it's developed by a single guy and it's constantly being developed. What I really like about this is that you have a ship interior that you can walk around in that you can also customize. Get to your pilot seat and you can lift off seemlessly. There are no loading screens aside from when you initially load into the game. You travel somewhere, land, go through your airlock and boom, you're on the planet surface. There's also an FPS mode that feels very 90's.

"Balls-up action"?

Where I come from, if you "balls up" a task or activity, you do it very badly, making a lot of mistakes.

My brain autocorrected that to "balls-to-the-wall action" without stopping to think about whether "balls-up" is even a real expression.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 12:25 pm

"Balls-up action"?

Where I come from, if you "balls up" a task or activity, you do it very badly, making a lot of mistakes.

Heh, you know until you pointed it out, it never occurred to me, but in this game it could still be true, as it's very easy to make a mistake in this game by becoming overwhelmed. When you get into an encounter with other ships, they can very easily overwhelm you in numbers, and in my case it's often ended very badly

Oh, one very cool thing about this game is that your ship can catch fire. You can put it out with a fire extinguisher by trying to stop it from spreading. Or you can use the airlock.

Max Peck wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 1:00 pm My brain autocorrected that to "balls-to-the-wall action" without stopping to think about whether "balls-up" is even a real expression.

Balls deep, obviously.

Anonymous Bosch wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 12:25 pm "Balls-up action"?

Where I come from, if you "balls up" a task or activity, you do it very badly, making a lot of mistakes.

Not just where you come from, it's the same here. It's almost the same as "Fucked up".

You got to love Octopus Overlords. Come for the witty game reviews, stay for the two day long conversation on balls in phrasing.

These days when I hear space sim, I first think of games like KSP or Juno, and wondered how balls up action fit in with those.

Failure, lots of failure.

Alefroth wrote: ↑Wed May 17, 2023 12:26 pm These days when I hear space sim, I first think of games like KSP or Juno, and wondered how balls up action fit in with those.

When you are crashing to Earth head- first, your balls are technically upwards.

So is this plot based, or another Antarian Truck Simulator?

It's plot-based, though it's very free-form, ie lots of exploration in a procedurally generated world. You get the story via datasticks/decrypts scattered in wreckage sites, but it's all text-based narrative. You'll also find upgrades for your character and different ammo for your ship. Some too will be found in alien bases or mines, ie the FPS mode.

To be clear, there's no trading system in the game, and no NPCs. It's more space combat/fps with lots of exploration. Certain things you'll have to discover before you can do other things, ie I'm working on acquiring a jetpack, which will let me access ship remants floating around by docking to them with my ship and flying to the airlocks. That one is considered late-game content. That in turn will allow me to access a grav-bike to make planetary exploration easier. The ship physics are fairly good and you can adjust how difficult it can be to pilot.