The EVERSPACE project launched back in August 2015 on Kickstarter. Asking for €225,000, the team managed to raise a total of €420,252 by the end of their campaign. It advertises as a single-player 3D space shooter with rogue-like elements and non-linear storytelling. The Alpha Version I played showed that the game was well on it’s way in terms of gameplay, but they haven’t gotten around to many story specific aspects of it just yet. The game is highly aware of this, making a note on the start-up screen making sure that fact is known to the player.
The main part of the Everspace game’s Alpha takes you across a series of Space maps, called sectors. Each sector has their own set of different jump points, taking you from the left side of the map over to the right as you progress. You’re free to leave individual jump points after a few seconds, exploring the map is entirely up to you. The game only gives you so much fuel though, and that resource can only be picked up across jump point zones. You can travel space as fast as you like, but eventually you’ll run out of fuel if you’re not careful. At the end of a sector is a jump gate, that launches your ship to the next sector. You can gain fuel, gas, and ores, by mining specific asteroids in a zone. To gain plasma, you have to steer your ship into the plasma field, and wait for it to collect itself. But, most of your loot comes from killing enemy turrets and ships.
The Terran units are friendly to you, unless you fire upon them. They are naturally hostile to Outlaw faction ships, but neutral towards Alien faction ships under the same sort of agreement that you have. Basically it comes down to the Outlaws shooting first, causing a fight between different groups. You can sit back and watch the two sides fight each other, scooping up all the dropped loot for yourself afterwards. Sometimes, these containers are in the middle of a minefield. You can still reach them, but only after blasting at each individual space-mine first. You can also lure enemy ships into the minefield as well, satisfyingly taking them out that way.
Enemy ships came in several different varieties, providing different kinds of tactical space combat. Drones are the grunts of the space wars. They’re easy to kill, but can cause significant amounts of damage if left unattended to. The next step up from that is the “Scout” level of fighter. They’re similar to your own ship and know how to navigate the battlefield swiftly. The Chief ships pack a lot of firepower. They tend to use explosive missiles, which cut into your ship shields pretty quickly.
There’s visible cracks on your ship’s windshield the more damage you take. Your individual ship components can be broken as well. Get your secondary weapons shot out? You can’t use missiles until you repair that part of your ship. Your ship’s sensor get destroyed? Good luck finding your way around the map, because you won’t be able to see relevant points of interest (asteroids, enemy ships), and you’ll have to spray and pray to survive. It’s certainly one of the most compelling parts of Everspace, however. Having to deal with your ship’s parts and maintain them gives the subtle feeling of realism the game needed to shine, even in it’s alpha state.
Let’s talk ship upgrades. This is the part of Everspace where you make permanent progress amidst a rogue-like system of gameplay. For every Everspace run, you acquire a certain amount of credits. These credits can be exchanged in-between rounds for a variety of permanent ship upgrades, that carry over to each subsequent play-through from then on. But you can also find blueprints on your runthroughs, giving you permanent access to fancy devices and missile types. These drop from enemies themselves, as sort of a rare item.
By the 33rd run, I had managed to get to the end of sector 4. You can draw a few conclusions about Everspace from the statistics and end screen alone. It took me almost two hours to reach that point, and I had killed 120 enemies along the way, acquiring a decent sum of 20,000 credits in doing so. The blueprints I obtained from loot drops will be available on every subsequent run afterwards, giving a more competitive edge to my ship from the very start.
If you feel gutsy enough, there’s a series of bonus challenges you can take on. The reward is a modest amount of credits, but it’s a decent pursuit for the Everspace completionist. They get fairly tough later on – one challenge demands you reach sector 2 without taking damage, while another asks you to reach sector 3 with zero equipment installed on your ship.
Even at this early stage, it’s easy to see that Everspace has something interesting going for it. The standout for me was the damaged ship parts mechanic, making gameplay more difficult if a part of your vessel broke. But what carried me along was a solid combination of exploration, combat, loot, and progression, all working together at a balanced pace. It can be said in confidence, that I look forward to the Everspace beta. The direction and positive steps that the Alpha took, make it obvious that the game is on track.
Check out their website if you’re interested in the upcoming beta.
