Online game "Pixel Starships"

Games stylized as entertainment from old consoles like Sega Mega Drive are rarely successful. Because it's easy to make "pixelated" graphics, but it's quite a difficult task to add an idea to it that would excite the imagination and offer interesting gameplay. That's why hits of the caliber of Papers, Please appear very rarely. Employees of SavySoda studio have created their own recipe for MMORPG with a rough picture: they took the classic FTL: Faster Than Light as a basis, added something from Fallout Shelter and Clash of Clans, as well as fights in the style of Japanese RPGs and system maps, as in Mass Effect series. The mix is interesting enough to at least familiarize yourself with Pixel Starships, especially it is available on Steam for free.

To answer the question, let's go back in time to 2012, when two people revolutionized the game industry. Matthew Davis and Jason Ma worked for 2K Games in Shanghai, but at some point they decided to leave the big corporation to start their own project. Since they liked space board games like Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, they also dedicated their development to flying among the stars. The concept was simple: you choose a type of ship, equip different compartments inside, assign crew members to them and try to cross the universe from one end to the other, making a route from system to system. You can get to the finish line in just an hour, but you have to overcome all the obstacles and dangers on the way.

A couple of enthusiasts had no money. So they saved on graphics, choosing the simplest "pixel" style, and the budget was collected from the donations of ordinary gamers on Kickstarter platform. This approach was new for 2012, but in the case of FTL: Faster Than Light it justified itself one hundred percent. The game won many awards from specialized publications and won the hearts of millions of people around the world, and also changed the public's attitude to that part of the industry, which is usually called "indie". This word used to be associated with something cheap and uninteresting to a wide audience, but Davis and Ma proved that even two people, with no money, no big team, and not even a large advertising campaign, can produce a bestseller.

FTL's success cleared the way for hundreds of imitators. Among the modern ones is a small independent studio SavySoda - it creates games and releases them by itself, bypassing major publishers and getting funding through crowdfunding platforms. The team's debut project, Pixel Starships, which was first released on mobile devices and then on PC in 2023, is based on the principle familiar from Faster Than Light. You get a starship with a couple of crew members and a few compartments, and then hire new fighters, build and equip rooms, weapons, shields, various technical nodes and stations for resource production. Only together with you do it with other inhabitants of the server, because the game with multiplayer. This means that there are both PvE and PvP activities like duels.

The space story begins with the creation of the main character. He can choose his gender, appearance and name. And the appearance is represented by three options: "Awesome", "Sexy" and "A Million". There is no special difference between them, except for hair color and uniform, but still it's nice that with such primitive graphics there are such settings. The situation with adventures is also interesting: after graduation from the Academy, the hero has to choose his path. No one prevents him from becoming a pirate to rob cargo ships. Or, on the contrary, to do patrolling and rescue strangers in trouble. Whatever you do, the recipe for success is to gradually accumulate resources, improve your starship, hire crew members and upgrade each of the compartments on board. After all, this is what will ultimately save you in a critical moment.

Globally there are two modes in the game. The first one is free flight. You just move through the endless universe, from time to time meeting other travelers. Starships of clan representatives carry banners with an appeal to join their group, NPCs under the control of artificial intelligence offer to trade to get resources or, for example, valuable members of the team. But in essence nothing happens here - you just have to click on minerals, gas bubbles and dollars flying by to get a small increase to your reserves. The second mode is, conventionally speaking, all tasks, including duels with other users. That is, such activities in which not only higher risk, but also a solid prize. Here you can perform story and daily quests, unlock achievements, and at the same time learn a lot about the virtual galaxy. And, of course, fight.

You have to fight in Pixel Starships very often. You can, of course, stay out of the way, but then there will be no progress - resources are collected so slowly during peaceful flight that you can afford a small upgrade two or three times a day after the starting capital is exhausted. Rare traveling merchants will have nothing to offer in exchange, you will have to forget about completing tasks for a while, as well as about character upgrading. Another thing - rewards for battles. With them the development moves faster, and more action on the screen, and it's also a good training of tactical savvy.

Battles take place in real time (without pause) and in a separate window consisting of two panels - with your and enemy ships. You can switch between them at any time. At the same time, each of the screens displays all the compartments and equipment of both starships, and you can also see where the crew members are. In battle, you have to keep an eye on several things at once: distributing energy from the reactors, selecting targets for attacks, and managing your crew to repair units and patch up breaches in time. All of these aspects are equally important. For example, when under fire from ray guns, it is better to direct current to the power shields, and if a missile flies on board, you should maximize power to the engine - this will give you a chance to evade the warhead by maneuvering.

It's a similar situation with the little men. No one dares to chill in his bunk during an alert. One has to maintain the guns, another has to watch the engine or power plant, another goes to repair the shields, and so on, depending on how many personnel you have. Since each gun has a reload time, you have to plan your targets in advance, so that you don't end up, say, having already disabled an enemy engine, and the blaster keeps firing at an empty engine compartment.

There are a lot of nuances in the combat system. Sometimes it is more profitable to destroy the crew at once, and then switch to guns. Or, on the contrary, to start with combat systems, so that during the next salvo go to the energy sources. We can say one thing for sure: the compartments where minerals with gas are extracted and stored will interest you and the enemy in the last place. Therefore, if you have an upgraded character, which is a pity to lose, it makes sense to hide him in such a room.

On the other hand, the variability of tactics is affected by the type of enemy. You won't meet a couple of identical supostats in a row here - all of them will have a unique cabin layout, a set of guns and other systems, and everyone has their own crew. There are even ghost starships, on which the crew has turned into zombies - it's easy enough to clean them from the undead. And to ordinary people - to land, taking them on boarding. In general, FTL fans have already realized that familiar mechanics are waiting for them in Pixel Starships. Only here there are much more fights, and they are more diverse.

However, the SavySoda staff has added something of their own. In the game, you can send troops to the surfaces of planets to fight local life forms. Here, too, you'll need some calculation to assemble an assault squad of characters who are good at fighting on the ground, but not so good at space affairs. And then - to figure out with whom from the troop in a difficult situation you are ready to part with and whom you want to pump. You can even conquer a distant world in order to profit from it. Finally, Pixel Starships allows you to escape from the battlefield if you have the opportunity. For example, in space, you have to have working engines to retreat. The enemy won't run away either, if you blow up his engine first - in that case you will finish him off and collect all the trophies.

The social interactions in the game are simple, just like its graphics. You can be enemies or friends with other users by chatting, creating clans and sometimes doing joint tasks. The very first PvP-activity that opens up to you is duels, where ships of the same levels and classes are allowed to fight in the same battle. But, since you can equip these starships in different ways, the forces are sometimes too unequal. Even a tactical genius can't do anything against an opponent with a simple ship but legendary cannons and crew members. That's why it's better to start by joining some fleet to speed up your pumping, accumulate more resources and gain strength for more difficult challenges.

The main resources in Pixel Starships are three: minerals, gas and dollars - the latter, as it is easy to guess, serve as a substitute for real money. And all three of them allow you to buy something or speed up some business. And there are plenty of things to do: you can order a new hull for the ship or expand the old one, start improving any of the compartments or buy a new kind of room, replenish the crew, upgrade cannons, warehouses and shields. Literally every one of these actions requires the expenditure of materials and time. If you don't have time to wait for a level three reactor to get a level four, you can shorten the process for an additional cost. Some objects like legendary cannons and cosmonauts in general are a great rarity: to them you have to go through hundreds of battles for a long time. Well, or lay out real money from your Steam wallet to get what you want at once and support the developers at the same time.

Pixel Starships is a rare example of an online game where you really feel like you're in control of a starship crew. Especially during the battle, when you have to control a lot of little things. You can imagine yourself as Captain Kirk from "Star Trek", who orders to prepare torpedoes or direct power to shields. Of course, it all looks unattractive because of the rough "pixel" graphics. But it will go on any computer, and is available to everyone for free. And the main thing is that the game is based on time-tested ideas from hits like FTL: Faster Than Light. And the borrowed mechanics, taken together, work very well.

Zarium. March 2024