At first glance, the graphical presentation of gameplay video led me to believe this is another half-hearted indie game that hoped to make it on plastering code together beyond the technological understanding of the developer. Instead of judging it on that, the procedural generation took my curiosity and I headed to the forums. The developer was answering questions left and right and very calmly and non-defensively replying to those who expected graphics to triumph this title.

This game has an essense I haven't felt since my first few nights of Minecraft Survival. There's so much out there, so much that is unknown, so many things to learn that are alien. The developer really has you immersed in the game by allowing you to figure certain tactics out on your own while being slightly guided through quests and game mechanics.

This is quite a find in terms of up-front visuals and actual beneath-the-surface gaming. Don't that this title for the visuals, pick this title up to support a developer who's actually created some so deep and intimate to the gamer that wants to PLAY and not just SEE.

Well, what do we have here, you may ask?

What we have here is probably one of the best indie titles I've played this past year. At the time this review is posted it may say that I have little to no hours in this game, but rest assured that I’ve had 40+ hours in this game before it came out on Steam. I got my 40+ hours using Desura, a game distribution platform not too dissimilar from Steam, where this game was published with constant updates. That being said, my 40+ hours came from playing different builds of this game, from the Alpha to the latest build, v1.0.10. And let me be frank here; every reiteration, as in every update, made this game more and more enjoyable in almost every aspect. The developer, Phroot, took the time to add new features along with many important bug fixes with every update. In other words, he knows what to do and how to take care of his game. Now on to what the game is about:

Gameplay:

The gameplay of 3089 is set in first-person, as seen through the screenshots. Now you may be thinking, "Oh another FPS??!?" Rest assured that even though the game is set in first person, the gameplay is far from your traditional FPS for many reasons:

1. Non-linear procedurally generated environment.

No two playthroughs are the same. Everything about the environment is different from where enemy bases are spawned to randomly placed towers (in a good way). Bridges, roads, buildings, and bases are randomly placed in the huge sprawling world known as Xax. The only thing constant throughout every playthrough is that you, the player, is always spawned in a friendly base (and even then, the base has randomly placed buildings). Every building, bridge, road, etc is sprawling with life as there are always friendly and enemy robots roaming about, sometimes fighting each other to the death. It's a magnificent sight to see groups of robots fighting it out while you just sit watching. The world is alive; never have I felt that I'm completely alone in this single-player game.

2. Variety of playstyles.

3089 has done a fantastic job of allowing multiple types of playstyles, such as a stealth run to a full run-and-gun experience. The game accomplishes this with skill points, and as you complete quests you can apply those skill points into a variety of different attributes, such as Stealth to avoid easier detection by enemies to Vehicles which allow you to pilot better vehicles. There's even a Leadership ability in which I can recruit a large amount of friendly robots to follow me wherever I go. It is so satisfying seeing my cadre of robots go after a group of enemies for a particular quest. In short, there are so many attributes that can be applied to your unit, and combination of each of these attributes can add to an entirely new playstyle.

3. Combat.

The combat of 3089 is familiar to other games, but still satisfying nonetheless. There are a variety of different weapons to choose from, ranging from simple pistols to swords. That's right, swords. Now I haven't used swords a lot since melee combat isn't my thing, but I can testify for the gunplay. The gunplay is solid as there are different weapons to choose from along with the extensive customization (which I'll go into detail soon). There are rifles, launchers, pistols, and energy rifles. Honestly my favorite type is rifles as they just feel so solid and powerful with the right customizations/attachments. The combat of 3089 can be challenging as you have to manage your ammo inventory and your 'Burst', which is how many shots you have before 'reloading.' You have to time your shots and make sure they hit their mark if you want to make it out unscathed. Like I said, the combat is challenging yet super rewarding. Along with the variety of weapons, there are also a large number of enemies, ranging from simple robots to giant spider bots. These spider bots are fudging huge and have powerful weapons!

4. Loot and customization.

This has got to be one of my favorite aspects of this game. Loot is acquired from killing enemies along with 'uncrating' random crates you find along the way. The loot you find is proportional to the level of the environment, so if you kill an enemy in a level 10 environment, you get an item that is level 10 (the level of a certain area is seen when you open up the map. The level is denoted by 'Difficulty', so a difficulty of 10 of an area would house level 10 enemies and level 10 loot. The area you start in is Difficulty 1, so the farther you stray from your starting area, the higher level and more difficult the game is). The loot you find can be anything from parts of weapons to armor pieces. In 3089, you can customize your weapons to a nice degree with these parts. For example, rifle parts include barrels, magazines, bodies, scopes, and silencers. Armor parts include leggings, helmets + visors, and lower torso and chest pieces. All parts of a particular weapon are interchangeable, so you have the ability to make a powerful weapon catered to your liking.

Graphics:

I'll be honest here; when I saw this game for the first time, I was like, "What is this???" But as I went through the screenshots on Desura, it changed my mind. The vast hills in the distance with simple buildings in the foreground from a screenshot got to me. So I gave the game a chance by downloading the demo. In short, I was amazed at the beauty of the world. Vast landscapes on this alien world with large areas full of robotic life. The aesthetics are simple, but does extremely well to show off the world. With every update, the landscape look more 'alive' with more things added to the world, like bridges and ramps and helipads. Before you pass this game off because of the graphics, please reconsider. Download the demo and see how gorgeous this game can be. The screenshots don't do it justice.

Story:

The story is quite simple and self-explanatory, so I won't spend much time explaining what it is. What I will explain is how to get the most out of it. To get the most out of what's going on, it is best to read every data text that you come across. You get snippets of the story through these data texts, which can be acquired from completing quests and following objectives. These data texts, which are just a few sentences, explain what the fudge is going on and what you can do to maximize impact on the world.

Conclusion:

Possibly one of the best indie games I've played in a while. I find it astounding how this game made by one person with the help of others can provide me with more enjoyment than some AAA games out there. It may sound like I'm exaggerating but it's the truth for me personally. If you love exploration games with lots of freedom with a gorgeous living world, then this is the game for you!

Sneak, steal, hide, teleport, sword charge, rip time, kill the target, sneak again.

Form a crew, take on quets, complete them to gain notoriety, recruit a tougher crew, take on tougher quests.

Find a plane, strafe across enemies, dogfight, get shot down, find an enemy plane behind enemy lines, get back to shooting.

Build up your arsenal, grab a board, blast some baddies, get better gear to upgrade your arsenal, blas more baddies.

Find a nice place, fend off nearby threats, build up some walls and a floor, set down some systems and storage, and defend your new home.

Track down bosses, conquer enemy bases, complete content, discover the history of Xax, try to learn more about the goal of the Overlord.

3089 gives players truly open choices for various styles of gameplay. This world is whatevere you make of it, from espionage to military contest to thrillseeking deeper into high-difficulty territory!

3089 is an interesting concept and is fairly well executed with the exception that there could be more content. Basically, you're a robot thrown onto this alien world that is inhabited by only other robots. It's always Red vs Blue with you being on Red's side. You start with nothing and have to go buy your own guns and armor. You can also obtain parts by killing other robots or by stealing off of your teammates. This allows you to come up with different combinations that can increase your stats in different ways. One piece of armor might give you increased health, defense, and flying skills, while another can give you gun, melee, and agility.

Another thing is the quest system. It allows you to pick your own quests from these stations in buildings. There are always 13 quests at one time, and they increase in level as you filter through them. The further out you go from the starting point also increases the level of the quest, but also the reward. You can earn credits and skill points through these. While the quests are pretty basic, e.g. go here and disarm this bomb, spy on this robot without being detected, and go kill these robots. The problem with this as thats about the extent of the quests.

Aside from that there are the occasional bosses that show up on your map. They provide a substantial challenge and unless you have some other robots following you around, it can be almost impossible. There's also a building aspect to the game but it's pretty hard to understand. Sometimes you'll build a teleporter and it won't work. You can also build storage boxes to keep some of your things in.

All in all though, I would say it's a fairly fun game to just play for a bit. It's nothing spectacular graphics wise, but it makes up for it by just being fun and interesting in general. I think the developer is working on a sequel, 4089 is what I believe it's called and I hope he'll expand on the already implemented ideas.

The 4th game in the series, 3089 has the player take control of an experimental combat droid, placed amongst a perpetual war on the planet Xax that serves as a testing ground for your efforts.

Gameplay involves traversing an open world, completing "quests" & challenges, getting into fights with enemy robots, collecting loot, and increasing skills. The world itself is procedurally generated, and the further from the starting point the player travels the higher in level enemies & items are. There are also no boundaries to the world map; as long as you can survive, you can keep travelling further out.

Quests are randomly generated and are effectively infinite in number. Because your role is to test an experimental combat technology, the quests are very straight-forward and - occasionally - don't make sense. This isn't an issue as there aren't any real lives going on here. Completing set challenges will unlock new enemies; these challenges can be thought of as the main quest-line as they (usually) lead to an end-game scenario.

The robots themselves (your character included) are assigned to either the red team or blue team. Your robot is assigned to the red team, and you'll start in a red base along with various other red robots and buildings. Other red robots can be befriended if the player's Prestige is high enough, with no limit on the number of followers you can have.

Items are modular in design; all weapons & armours are built from segments that can be interchanged at a Workstation. This allows - for example - upgrading a "favourite" gun, building a better sword from 2 others that have good parts, or just simply replacing an existing rifle with a better one. There are also utility devices such as grappling hooks, telelocators (weapon-style teleporter), hoverboards, decoy generators, and building tools. Various things can be built, from a simple wall, to a teleporter.

The player's character has various skills (including Agility, Energy, Stealth, Melee) which are increased by assigning points gained by completing quests, challenges, or clearing enemy towers. There is no limit to how high a skill may be, and if you so wish, every point can be added to a single skill. The skill-set is diverse enough to specialise as a sniper, commander, pilot, tank, sword-bot, etc., as well as developing a more balanced robot.

Another ability the player has access to is "time-ripping". When this is turned on, the entire world stops except for you; even new projectiles you generate (from firing your gun) will remain stationary until time-ripping ceases. Grappling hooks will still function as normal though. The player's robot can store up to 15 seconds of time-rip; this can be replenished by collecting donut-shaped pick-ups scattered around the landscape.

Pros:
*Open world; virtually unlimited in size
*No skill limits
*Diverse abilities & items
*AI is challenging
*Game's source code can be altered for advanced modding
*Playable on 8 year old laptops

Cons:
*Multi-play is limited to 2-player co-op
*Main quest-line is very short

Although it pains me to say this, I can't at this time recomend this game. It's over shadowed by many game breaking problems that bring me out of the good points. I'll say it simply:
Cons:
-The combat systems feels like it is over thinking itself. The game's floaty space mechanics allow for a fun fast shooter, but it encourages you to take cover by having overly accurate AI who sometimes have homing projectiles. Even when you do make it to cover you will often find yourself being bombarded by enemies in space ships.
-the stealth system is an interesting attempt in a game like this, but the seemingly random AI of the mobs make it unsatisfying and unintuitive.
-The quests are repetitive and not very rewarding.
-Although it is teaming with robots, the world seems sparse, and it is easy to wander off into the distance to find nothing interesting and get instantly killed by a ton of robots.
Pros:
-combat related: The time manipulation and innacuracy of the guns makes combat very satisfying once mastered.
-Recruiting mobs to fight for you is made taking out bosses incredibly satisfying, and really gave an advantage to every fight.
-The stats system was fairly robust for an action rpg, and the integration of random drop items really gave it a borderlands feel.

Overall I do not recommend this game unless you are simply looking for a fun way to kill time without much in return. I see a lot of possibility in future updates.

Hmmm...how to describe this game? It's like a sort of old school FPS game really where you have weapons and kill things, but you can also build, craft a little, recruit robots, fly ships, etc.

Looking at it you see it is old school animation of course. This doesn't matter much. It fits and it allows for random generation of the worlds when you start a new game. So...if you don't like the look of your first world...just make another one.

Really what makes this game unique is the depth of mechanics that you don't really see just at a glance. The beginning of the game seems a bit daunting at first because you are not really sure where to go, or what to do. You start with nothing basically as you, a robot, drop off a ship into a world filled with blue and red robots. Fortunately, the red robots are on your side! Red=Good, Blue=Bad. So...the first thing they tell you is to go to the Waypoint and start doing quests. Do this. You get to the waypoint and it is a building with several shops in it. You start with $1,500 and that is just enough to pretty much buy a weapon and maybe some armor to get going on with. Then you should immediatley go to the quest machine and start doing quests. This is basically how you learn how to play. Doing the quests and that forces you to venture out a little.

An interesting point about the starting area, if you look on the map it will tell you that it is Level 1, but if you scroll in any direction further away the level of the area increases, and along with it the difficulty. So early on being a gung ho explorer with Level 1 garbage is a bad idea. You need to hang around the starter area a bit and beef up a little.

It has RPG aspects where you do quests, earn skill points, and then assign them to the dozen or so skills that you have every time you complete a quest. No actual "Level Up", you just play for the skill points and money, and then can assign them. These skill points allow you to make better chips that give you bonuses when equipped, better stealth so you can creep up and kill with double damage, the ability to FLY SHIPS, the ability to recruit other Red Robots to fight along side with you, and several others.

Eventually when you ae feeling brave you should go towards the Red "X" that is hovering out in the distance to fight a tough battle to progress the game a bit further. Not only does this allow you to move the "Story" along, but it unlocks the hatches, which also unlock, BUILDING. Yes, you can actually build your own bases, set up turrets, and many other things. IT is not necessary to do so, but adds a bit to the game. There are many building scattered throughout the world with shops and quests that you can see on the map.

Almost all of the weapons can be broken into parts, or you can just buy parts, or find them in the world. Then you take them to a workbench and assemble them. This is nice when you have a couple really great parts and find another gun that has only one better part than you currently have on your weapon. You can disassemble both and put it back together with the best parts. You can actually get lost in this trying to make your weapon slightly better all the time. lol Armor has parts as well that can be mixed and matched. Microchips can be broken up and with a higher programming skill you can increase the value of them yourself.

The weapons, armor, etc. are all random too. They start at LEvel 1 where you are and get better as you venture out. They have rarity percentage on them to give you a quick look at if they are better, but that percentage may not always mean better for you. Sometimes you want something with a higher +Guns boost on it rather than +Agility and the percentage doesn't matter to you. The weapons come in melee, pistols, rifles, etc. with all energy weapons being in the same classes.

Oh yeah...I would be silly not to mention that this game has a shop listed as "Special" that sells hoverboards, grappling hooks, gravity guns, and decoy guns as well. They all do what you think they do!

Basically, you just are in an open world where you can go out and kill stuff if you want, do some quests, collect. weapons and armor, and fulfill your dream of being a robot thief that steals from his other robot friends for no reason, save the Red Robot army with some fantasy of them being held down by the blue robots, or any other asinine fantasy you have...if you were a red robot.

The graphics aren't the best, and if you don't venture out the game, but only keep doing easy Level 1 quests for too long it can become tedious, but overall it is a very interesting FPS game with a lot of mechanics that you discover while you play. The graphics seem to have some issues at times, but this can be overcome. Enemies from quests in rare instances can spawn in unreachable areas due to the randomness of it, BUT the game has a debug for quests that you can click on and it will respawn the destination to a place that is accessible. So no harm, no foul.

The music in this game is quite awesome too I must say. It is very atomospheric and fits perfectly. It has a bit of a techno feel to it and is just a very calming and great soundtrack for the game.

The developer is very active on the forum and takes suggestions and tries to make the game better as much as he can. So this game should have support for a good while.

I would recommend checking out some videos of the gameplay to see if it is something you would like first, however. I think it is a very interesting game and worth a buy, but it is NOT a straight FPS action game of the new era. It is more old school so you should look into it a bit more than just reading a few reviews as they can't accurately show you the "feel" of the game like a video can.

The game also has trading cards for you card addicts out there. 8 Total, with 4 drops. :P

This reminds me of the first time I played minecraft. After you play around for a bit and figure everything out, it becomes apparent how wonderful of a ride you are in for. Worth every cent.

On paper, 3089 is an amazing game: An open world FPS/RPG with procedurally generated weapons, terrain, and quests. The implementation of it leaves much to be desired. It lacks good gunplay (you shoot like you're coming out of a Rainbow Six game, while the enemies shoot like Quake 3 aimbots, meaning you lack the time to get a good shot at them), good leveling mechanics (your skill in guns is completely irrelevant if you don't have a gun on the level of the enemies, your level of agility doesn't mean your grappling hook or teleporter gun can support that much weight), drops are pathetic (every enemy drops something, but it's usually an incomplete item, and items can only be completed at workstations back at base), shops aren't guaranteed to have, say, a level 5 grappling hook, so if your level 1 hook can't support your weight, you're just unable to use that mechanic, flat out, and the quests are completely and totally random. It's not even on the level of "This one guy stole my book. Either talk him into handing over the book or kill him, then return it to me." It's "Get the disc from the person. Then, spy on this person for 1:32 without being seen. Then, kill 3 robots. Then, defuse a bomb without being seen or killing anyone. Then, remove some ghosts. Then, hand over the disc to this other person without being seen." There's no attempt to make your actions seem worthwhile, to give them any context. Your only reward is a handful of skill points. There is no way to visually tell level 1 enemies from level 5 enemies, you simply have to infer it from how they're doing slightly under a third of your health with each of their perfectly accurate shots while you fumble around trying to shoot them at point-blank range with your wildly inaccurate weapon. If it's 3099 improves by the same amount that this did from 3079, then I could recommend that game, but ultimately, I can't 3089.

Played just a little bit but I couldn't get into it.

Game runs on Java, doesn't have Steam's Overlay support, graphics are meh and the soundtrack is too. Alt-tabbing broke the game, which went from fullscreen to windowed mode, spanning on my second monitor; mouse sensitivity cannot be adjusted.