http://www.spacepiratesandzombies.com/

Demo : http://www.rtsguru.com/downloads/43/SPAZ-(Space-Pirates-and-Zombies)-Demo.html

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Review: http://www.rtsguru.com/game/401/features/154/Space-Pirates-and-Zombies-Beta-Preview.html

Think old school space ship shooter, with RPG elements and leveling, with a dash of RTS. It's a beta, following the Minecraft model of pay us now for the game so we can develop it. It's a two person developed game, and some elements need more love, but it's pretty awesome for what it is. Acquired it, and after playin it some, I'm frustrated with some of the userfriendliness of it's user interface, but impressed enough by it that I'll be buying the beta shortly.

 

Got the demo of this a couple of weeks ago, was gonna upgrade to full but I'd already spent R120 the new Mount & Blade. It's pretty much what I expected when I saw the title - that is: awesome.

Definitely worth a buy.

 

Pretty awesome, especially for a two man team. I can honestly say I've never really played a game like it before. It's a lot better than I was expecting it would be. A word of advice though, don't try playing without a mouse. You get blown up a lot.

 

Advice is to play with a large galaxy. I played with a smaller one and they're not kidding about the difficulty ramping up in between gates.

Officially on Steam in early August!

 

Just finished the demo for this and I was pleasantly surprised by the game. I went in expecting something that would be decently good fun with some rough edges that hinted at the two man team nature of it, I was wrong. I ended up with a good 4 hours of fun just off the two stars the demo let me play in.

I saw a large selection of detailed ships, each with a ton of customization options for whatever situation you encounter.

The weaponry looks and sounds right to me (the guided bomb still makes me smile when it hits its target at critical mass) and even better is the damage effects the larger ships begin to give off after they've had their shields disabled or their armor plating destroyed.

Combat in game is fast paced and can be difficult from time to time, I willingly admit trying to take on a medium classed ship with a dart was not my brightest idea but it was a good way to have fun. Ignoring that, you can have a ship for just about any style of play you like from an agile little fighter to a long range artillery gun that fires guided bombs. No matter what you choose, you will have fun with it.

The UI is easy to use, everything is explained in game and its pretty damn hard to get lost in this since its all nicely laid out along the bottom of the screen.

Mining is rather boring but I can chock that up to it being the demo and me having a limited patience after all the combat. Could be wrong though, for all I know I was close to mining in an asteroid field for high Rez deposits and having to dodge the debris or die.

Didn't even bother with the tactics panel to guide my wingmen besides setting the basic options for it, without the ability to set multiple flight paths it wasn't interesting or useful to me. This may change with the addition of more ships but I still feel that I wont end up using it.

Overall a surprisingly great game, buying the full version now and would suggest others do as well, I want to see what they can make this game be.

 

The mining I havent bothered with outside of the first hour or so, when you need the rez to get started. Once you start blowing up ships and capturing slaves/goons you can trade them for rez or data, or vice versa.

The difficulty curve is the worst thing. It's not a curve, it's a set of stairs, lol. I was owning the first few stars, then the 4th one every mission is a suicide run. Falling back and leveling up some, I see spreading out my research points was not a great idea.

Also, the save system kinda got me. I started a new game, and didn't think about how the saves work. Make a save when you're near the Clockwork, don't rely on the autosaves as the game only keeps a few of them, and they're not save slot specific!

 

Thanks for the tip on the saves, you saved me overwriting one of my saves there.

Mining I only did because of one horrible run-in during a mission that kind of wiped the majority of my rez.

Suppose you could call it a difficulty stair, I found the game hard for the first time trying to bring down a heavy ship before I had my own one, biggest pain in the ass trying to take one of those down when it has support.

Personally, I'd say go for the smaller galaxy, otherwise you will be stuck breaking plenty of weak blockades to get to your next mission. Not exactly a bad thing, just gets old really quickly.

 

But with the smaller galaxy the difficulty goes up a lot faster due to it not being spread out. One problem I have with my large galaxy I was using is, I'll have super low level stars, like low single digits, one high in the teens the as the star on the other side of the jump gate that takes me grinding to be able to kill the guards, and then on the other side, either side is lowbie shit. A little consistency would be nice.

 

Agreed, a set progression ring from the core would be nice.

I actually didn't mind the difficulty change in the smaller galaxies. I made two of them, one at 200 stars and one at 300. Really the increase in difficulty wasn't that much I found between the stars, its just when you hit that point where that massive class ship stops being a final boss in an area and instead becomes rather common that you get screwed. Even then, its only until you finally unlock a ship in that weight class that things are difficult.

I have to say that they managed a pretty interesting enemy with the zombies. Nothing worse than that hammerhead you thought was with your ally a moment ago is now a zombie and shooting at you. The take over mechanic they have was a simple one but an interesting one.

Also, Titan beam on the mothership, nothing brings a smile to my face more than seeing a heavy weight class ship getting one shotted.

 

Havent gotten to the zombies yet. Made a new galaxy for the laptop. Gotten up to level 37 in a galaxy of 300 stars. One downside I see to this now is the quest to get the Titan takes forever as the places you have to go to get the laser become wayyyyyy the fuck spread out. I see a ton of lvl 30 jumpgates and then around then low teen level stars =(

Using a Right Hook with 2 Rangers that I farmed via suicide runs and that made a massive difference. They need to balance the ships better, in each class there is 1 good ship, 1 ship to use until you can use the good ship, and 4 or 5 shit ships.

Better AI on the escort ships picking up life pods needs to be done. They're working on the loading times, theyre supposed to be 70% faster in the initial release, version 1.0 that they're going to put on STEAM shortly.

 

This game did not do it for me. I downloaded the beta and played it for a few hours but there is no way I am buying it. Really, 13eu total for such a game? Compared to minecraft it is twice as expensive.

What I had hoped for was some kind of blend between Asteroids, Sins of a Solar Empire and Star Wars Rebellion. What it had to offer was a dissappointment.

While it did give some hours of entertaining gameplay, having to go through the entire star system of repetitative missions even if they increase in difficulty, is not my cup of tea.

I see the allure and would possibly play it for free, but paying money for this shit...?

 

You will get to the zombies as soon as you breach the titan gate, dear god that took forever to do. Word of warning, when dealing with an area that may have zombies, always have at least 25% crew, it will save your ships being turned against you. Don't bother with lasers either as they have no shields, just an insane hull regeneration rate.

I preferred the Grinder for both its turret and large cannon, the missile support was always nice as well. But I have to agree with you, the amount of ships you will simply never use because of how utterly useless they are is rather large. Wait till you see the huge ships though, things are a pain in the ass to take down.

Your AI actually picks up the life pods!? Mine shoots all of them, it can be a pain in the ass so I send them to another pocket of space to get rid of them for a bit. The mineral harvesting is right for mine though, they actually go after Rez more often then I do.

 

Massive changes have been made to the game since I last played. Anyone still messing with this and can tell me if they changed it enough for a new play through? Last time I played was in Dec 2011

 

The big change is the addition of a new faction, Bounty Hunters, which includes some new ship types. The majority of the rest of the changes are more balance fixes and the like. The only thing that I recall off-hand, that stood out, is that the point defense systems have apparently been fixed and buffed up a bit, and cannons are less ridiculous. The galaxy generation also has a fair few more options.

I'm not very far in my own replay, so I haven't delved much into the new faction and it's mechanics, but so far it's an interesting addition. The new hull types are what I'm most looking forward to as I get further along.

I'm also taking it as an opportunity to check out other tech types that I didn't in first and only playthrough so far, as well as upping the difficulty level. Along those lines, I will caution that the higher difficulties do so far appear to be more grindy. It becomes much easier to take heavy losses, potentially having to flee in shame, and then end up having to spend 15 minutes (or more in some cases) mining rez just to rebuild your fleet and rez buffer.

Ultimately, it's more like the game got a fresh coat of paint and some new accessories than anything more dramatic. Whether or not it's worth replaying, I feel, has more to do with how much you enjoyed it the first time around than any changes. The changes alone are probably not enough if you were indifferent to the gameplay the first time around, unless one of the tweaks addressed a specific grievance. That said, in theory the entire experience should be improved overall.

Short version: Not really, but if you're in the mood for this kind of game, the changes are enough to maybe choose it over an alternative title.

 

I did like it once I figured out a playstyle that worked for me. Early on the small ships just aren't worth a crap against anything bigger, so I'd zerg rush the gates that were slightly higher then me a few times and grind out blueprints for a better ship, then rinse/repeat. After several suicide runs I'd have enough to get the next class of ship. After I figured that out, I enjoyed it for what it was.

 

Played the demo. Loved it. I want this game so badly.