Into the Stars Preview

Space, despite its great darkness and seeming emptiness, is an incredibly beautiful expanse. Despite that, I would venture to say that few games have ever really captured that beauty. Too often incredible vistas are replaced by star-dotted black spaces, and while that’s understandable given the vastness of it all, I’ve long awaited a game that captures space in its true form. My very first impression of Into the Stars completely astounded me. A single spacecraft floated in the centre of the screen, in the middle distance a vibrant green planet with wisps of solar dust floating around it. Stars twinkled in the distance while moons and asteroids stood as wonderfully textured obstacles in the dark, but strangely colourful sky. It may have been an exaggerated and compact version of space, but it looked fantastic.

We can all rant over and over about how graphics don’t make a videogame, but in that brief moment I was totally sold on Into the Stars. I knew nothing else about the game, yet instantly I could see the potential. Let’s ground things a little though, because as great as the game looks, I certainly am a believer in the ‘graphics are made to enhance’ philosophy. Thankfully, developer Fugitive Games also seems to be making a highly accomplished space exploration game to work in tandem with those beautiful visuals. If you’re a fan of FTL, Out There! or other games in that vein, then you should really pay attention to the following.

So yes, it’ll be very difficult for Fugitive to avoid the ‘prettier FTL’ comments, and in fact the developer I spoke with essentially said the same thing. For fans of that game, I can only hope that you’ve got a penchant for more space exploration. What Into the Stars may do however, is bring a lot of new eyes to the genre at large. The game is currently available as part of Steam Early Access, and while it’s far from a finished product, there’s actually quite a lot of content to play through. Plus, the procedural nature of the game means it’s a relatively unique experience every time you play. Starting with a basic spaceship, you have to kit it out with parts and fill it up with the resources that should carry you through space.

There are a fair number of choices when it comes to ship customisation, each of them encouraging you to play in a slightly different way. Once your ship is loaded up, it’s off into the endless (although pretty) void of space. Well, it’s not actually endless. In fact, the whole aim of the game is to reach the other end of the game area as you slowly run away from an alien threat. That constant push to avoid the more powerful enemies is a fantastic motivator, and while FTL deals in turns, Into the Stars is all real-time. The more time you spend extracting resources from planets, or saving fellow humans from falling colonies, the closer the dreaded Skorn (the game’s baddies) get to you. With a warning voice announcing their proximity to your ship, things can get a little tense at times.

So, that’ll prevent you from overly exploiting a single planet, but it also gives each search a brilliant sense of peril. What you’ll actually be doing on that planet is entirely up to you; there’s the option to mine for additional resources, thereby incurring a solid minigame in which you move the drill through the resources you want. Or you could launch a recon mission that sees your spacecraft recruit new crew members, gain ship improvements or maybe, well, fall into a trap. All of these missions, including the mining, are given a chance of success that depends on the competency of your crew members. Obviously the aim is that you’ll grow attached to these crew members - although at the rate I was losing them I found that a little tricky...

Combat is another important element of the game, although it’s another somewhat unusual element that plays further on the real-time style. When locked in a fight, you’re charged with placing crew members on different parts of your ship, be it lasers, cannons, shields or the medibay. You can then use these sections to fight the battle, selecting each section in real-time and using them on enemy ships. This is further complicated by a weird colour-code mechanic in which you have to fire weapons that are coloured differently to the enemy ship’s shields. Equally, you have to activate shields, at the right moment, that match the enemy lasers. It’s odd, no doubt about that, and while I didn’t quite get on with the mechanic during my playtime, I can see the possibilities.

Into the Stars, as mentioned, is a worthwhile venture even at this early stage. There’s a lot more to come (heck, the devs have even mapped it out on Trello!), and no doubt the game will grow and morph during the development process. ‘A pretty FTL’ may be a fitting title, but I’d bank on Fugitive Games making it mean much more than that by the time the full game releases.