Some friends and myself picked this game up for a small lan party we were going to do over New Year's. We were all a bit ambivalent about IF this game would be fun. Disparaging comments were made about the graphics. We even argued about the merits of buying from Steam or directly from the game creator.

So some time in the morning of Jan 1, we booted up the game and muddled our way through getting a server up. We didn't bother with the manual (a few of us did while we tried to figure out how to get our main screen turn on) since things appeared fairly straighforward. We settled down to our command stations, and since I didn't scramble for a specific station I was pegged as the captain. We set the game on the lowest difficulty settings and said "It's only 6 bucks. Not too much of a loss."

We finished that map in 15 minutes. We were clamouring for more, so we made the sector a bit busier, and the enemies tougher. What followed was over an hour of organized yelling, hasty planning and tense staring at our screens as we fought to save the space stations, guide errant freighters away from black holes and deal with angry space life. We all had our moments: Weapons lofted a pair of nukes and blotted out an entire fighter strike. Engineering somehow kept us intact and powered even though we barely managed to keep him ahead of our flailing. Comms got a trio of enemy ships to surrender in quick succession. Our helmsman suckered an invincible alien life form through a minefield to its death. Sensors ID'd targets and made damn certian we knew everything around us and made each beam shot count.

So our opinion after 80 minutes of fast and furious play? We all agreed on one thing. AGAIN.

Who got which seat, on the other hand...

Note: Please disregard the play time. I'm running the game without Steam, so it does not reflect my actual play time.

First of all, I would like to correct a common misunderstanding. You do not require 6 people to play. Each ship has 6 roles that can be filled with "up to 6 people". Having one person take care of one thing makes it really comfortable and this is the way, this game is meant to be played. But it is perfectly possible for 3 people to have the responsibility of 2 stations, and fly the ship with its full potential (in a single instance of game client). I have 4 friends that got comfortable with the game, and now we're running comparatively easier set games with 2 separate ships (3 and 2 people per ship). Sometimes I like playing the game solo, even though it's hard to do so and possible only under lower difficulty settings. I'd say having 5-6 people per ship is ideal, but with 3+ people the game is absolutely playable.

Second false information all over the place. You do not need a separate pc with its own copy of the game to be the server. Go in the Steam/Steamapps/Common/Artemis and run artemis.exe. First window should be set to server mode. Now run it again, and make the second window the client. I personally connect my huge TV to my laptop and become the server, use the TV for the server screen (which is also the outside view of the ship), and use my laptop screen for the client screen (which is the screen of whatever role I'm filling). Entering 'localhost' will connect to the server running on the same machine.

I realize that this is more like a troubleshoot, instead of being a review. But in the process of deciding to buy the game, I immediately recognized how awesome this game is. The questions I had were the ones I just described. You don't need this review to know that this game is awesome, it's already all over the place. What you need to know is that the most frightening part of the game (6 people minimum thing), is actually incorrect. Also; it is possible for up to 8 ships to play Co-Op or PvP modes. Talk about awesome.

Artemis is a diamond in the rough. It's very much unlike any other space sim I've ever played. The game has you play a starship bridge officer, responsible for controlling one of the ship's systems. Pretty cool and all, but there's a twist. In most space sims, a player is responsible for running the whole ship. He controls the weapons, he directs the ship to its destination, and so on. Artemis is different in that each of the ship's systems are run by other players. The bridge crew is entirely composed of humans, not AI.

There are five stations to man in Artemis: Helm, Engineering, Weapons, Science and Comms. Helm controls the ship's movement. Engineering deals with repairs and modifying the power levels of each system in the ship. Weapons handles, well, weapons and shields. Science has control over the sensors, scanning targets for information on its systems and crew. Comms handles communication with other vessels, both friend and foe.

This 5-man setup provides a lot of depth to the game, but it is not difficult to learn by any means. The actual mechanics behind the workings of each system are surprisingly simple to learn. The genius of Artemis is how the mechanics of all these systems work together to form a complete, compelling experience for everyone involved. All crew members need to have good synergy if they want to complete the mission. As long as you keep up a friendly attitude, pay attention to your fellow crewmates and do your part to keep the ship running, you will have a high chance of success.

Originally, the game could only be purchased through the developer's website. It could only be played through LAN, and it cost 40 bucks, because that version came with extra copies to be played on other computers for a full LAN party. LAN play is fun as hell, but that alone doesn't make for much mass appeal. Fortunately, the developers have realized this and have added online play. The Steam version of the game costs a mere 8 bucks, because it's only one copy. A dirt cheap price for what could be an endless amount of fun with friends? That's a steal.

If you're going to play online, you'll need to get a program called Teamspeak to communicate with other players. There is a teamspeak server that is decently populated for most of the day. IPs for servers can be found there. Its address is artemis.teamspeak3.com and its password is Artemis1. The community is very friendly, supportive, and a whole lot of fun to play with.

Give Artemis a shot. This game deserves a lot more attention. It really is unlike any other space sim on the market. It's about as close to being in Star Trek as you can get. I'll see you in Starfleet.

This is not a pretty game, there's no way around that. The sound isn't amazing either and there are technical glitches (see: Data Console). But it's fun. Really, really, fun. And you know what? That's all that matters.

Artemis is a fantastic game, best played with friends, in the same room. I know that many people play it on a VPN, but there's nothing quite like all playing together. Drinking encouraged, almost required, for maximum enjoyment.

The game is low-to-medium hardware intensity; whatever machine is running the Main Viewer should have a decent video card, and be comfortable with multiple outputs if a laptop. One of our players successfully plays with nothing more than an iPad. Support since 2.0 has improved dramatically.

The biggest issue is players not knowing the nuances of their individual roles, and what buttons are where (since they've moved since 1.6).

"It's Star Trek, Jim, but not as we know it".

Don't go in expecting the full Star Trek experience because you will be disappointed (unless you get a game master). However, if all you're looking for is joining a Starfleet ship, this game exceeds expectations and then some.

What you see is what you get: you and a group of friends fly a spaceship, each member getting their own interface.

While some interfaces may seem daunting due to the amount of information displayed (particularly engineering), each one of them is well designed and surprisingly intuitive; you'll get used to the controls rather quickly.

The gameplay is rather standard as far as Star Trek flight sim games go (mostly combat), but it does deliver this sense of belonging to a rich universe (even if the map is the size of a single solar system)

Speaking of solar systems, the world objects (or rather the lack of) are the only drawback of the game. Maybe I shouldn't expect much from game that takes up a quarter of a gig, but a couple of planets and moons wouldn't go amiss.

Overall, it's a great party game for those who love sci-fi. Just don't be caught on dreams of grandeur.

TO PLAY THIS GAME YOU NEED:
1 PC to act as the server. One player can also run the game client on this PC and man a station.
Up to 6 crew member devices per ship. They each need their own device (PC, iOS or Android). They each mann a station - helm, weapons, engineering, comms, science etc.
You can have 1 or more ships. Ships can be on the same team or competing.
You need at least 2 players per ship. You always need 1 server running.

CAN I PLAY ONLINE?
The game is designed to be played on the same LAN (WiFi network) and it is super easy to do so. You can, however, play with folks online but this requires port forwarding or Hamachi to set up.

Hope this cleared that up for you.

IS THE GAME FUN?
Yeah it's mint. Feels like Star Trek. Accessible too - I played with my parents and sister, who are not sci-fi fans, and they all loved it.

QUICK DISCLAIMER: Ignore my hours of playtime as reported by Steam. I have played a few times and most of the time I am running the EXE outside of Steam. I probably have several hours of game time now.

This game is a little buggy, a little uneven, and does not feel like it's yet been fully realized. Having said that, I can still fully and wholeheartedly recommend it, but with a few caveats that I will get to later. The bottom line is: this game is so much fun! Seriously, if you are into, or were ever into Star Trek then you owe it to yourself to get it. Artemis is a simulation of what it might be like to be part of the bridge crew on a starship like the Enterprise.

Here's how it works: You run one instance of the game as a server and then each player (up to six for a full bridge crew) runs another instance and those clients connect to the server. Each player picks one or more stations to manage (captain, helm, tactical, engineering, science, and communications) and each station gets its own interface needed to perform its functions to run the ship. So the helm gets a control layout to be able to fly the ship, engineering gets controls to manage power to various systems and mitigate damage, and the tactical officer gets to fire the weapons. The captain ties it all together, making decisions and issuing orders to other crew members. The captain has his own view which is a map with some basic information, or s/he can simply use the main view screen which is provided by the server.

The developer clearly intended originally that this game would be played by people all in the same room and the simulation lends itself well to LARPing and role-playing. An ideal setup would be all six players in the same room using their own machines and whichever machine is running the server (any one of the machines could run the server and one of the clients--you DO NOT need a separate machine and/or copy of the game to play) would be connected to a big screen tv to show the main screen. Thankfully, the latest version of the game allows for playing over the internet. My gaming group uses Skype for voice chat since the game provides no native voice chat. It works fine for us.

The server is what runs the actual simulation and it allows for setting up various scenarios in the game and tweaking all sorts of parameters to increase or decrease difficulty. The are various sorts of ally and enemy ships to encounter and bases to dock with and defend. The game has modes for multiple ships with their own crews that can go head-to-head or do missions cooperatively. One server can support up to 36 players (six bridges with each having their own crews of up to 6 players).

Each role has different things to do to keep the ship running smoothly. Admittedly, some stations are more fun to play than others. Also, some stations feel very heavy on the micro-managing and others feel like there's not much to do; many people complain about the communications station for being sort of thin in this area. I actually don't mind playing Communications Officer You can hail friendly or enemy ships, monitor distress calls from friendly bases or ships being attacked, demand that enemy ships surrender, taunt enemy ships into attacking, direct friendly ships away from deadly areas of space, order friendly ships to attack, prepare bases for docking to improve refuel and rearm performance. And most importantly, you have the button to set off the red alert klaxon. As Communications Officer, you may also get side quests from friendly forces which usually take the form of, "Dock with this base to download this data, then take it to this friendly ship and then come back and dock with use to get more energy/coolant/weapons/etc."

So once again, I do recommend this game if you have at least two friends to play with. You DO NOT need six people to play this game. At the very least, you need helm, tactical, and engineering, but personally, I like playing with five or six people. Also, as I said before, the game has no native voice chat if you are going to playing over the internet. Something else to be aware of is that the game does nothing for you in terms of matchmaking or anything like that. You'll need to have each player connect to the server via IP address and you'll need to set up port forwarding on TCP 2010 to be able to have any of the clients be able to connect. One other gotcha to to be aware that when you play over the internet, you won't be able to use the IP address of the server that is reported in the game. That IP will only work when playing over a LAN. You'll need your internet-facing IP address to hand out to the players for connecting to the server.

I bought the six pack and gave the five other copies to my gaming group. I've had fun playing this game over the internet as well as all in the same room. It's a lot of fun especially if you have a madcap gang to play with like I do.

I just hope the developer continues to work on this game. It's good already but it feels like it could go a lot farther.

Me: "Helmsman, set a course for DS3."
Helm: "Aye, Cap'n."
Me: "...A little more to port, Helmsman...no, MY port!"
Helm: "Warp?"
Me: "No, PORT."
Helm: "Roger."
Warp Drive: BRRRRRRRRRRRRWWWWWWWWWWWOOOO
Me: "FUUUUUU-MR ABRAMS, KILL ALL POWER TO THE LENS FLARES AND THE WARP DRIVES!"
Engineer: "...So am I Mr Abrams?"
Me: "You said your name was JJ, right?"
Engineer: "Yeah."
Me: "THEN YES, YOU'RE MR ABRAMS!"
Engineer: "Killing warp power, sir."
Me: "Jesus, thank you Mr Abrams. HELMSMAN! You're relieved from duty, report to the galley and bring daddy another beer."
Helm: "Sir, I'd like to lodge a formal complaint, I have a problem with the way you're running this crew."
Me: "SAYS THE GUY WHO WARP DRIVED US SO FAR INTO THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SPACE BOONIES THAT WE CAN'T EVEN FIND A SPACE WAL-MART!! You overshot DS3 by five sectors!"

Easily the best 35 bucks I've ever spent on a video game.

If you like star trek, team work, or fun, then buy this game.

Then struggle to get 6 people to sit down and play it.