This is turn-based game clearly inspired by XCOM:EU, featuring a retro feel and a touch of the “Aliens” movies atmosphere. The game starts well, story wise: you wake up in huge ship without remembering what happened, it seems like most of the crew have turned to monsters and from time to time the ship does a hyperspace jump seemingly at random. It's up to you to figure out what is going on and hopefully find some survivors along the way, which you do in a linear mission path (with some optional missions) that progresses the story, alongside some dialogues in-between.

The problem here is that the gameplay mechanics are very simple and not very engaging. There are no character “classes”, each character is a unique individual (you meet more along the way), featuring an active ability and a passive ability. Active abilities like if a shot hits it does more damage, a guaranteed hit, teleportation, self-heal, stuff like this. Passive like extra inventory space, bonus healing with medkits, reloads don’t use an action, etc. You can choose between different armor suits with different stats (aim, agility, health, shield strength, armor), and weapons, but I’ve only seen 3 weapon types: assault rifle, “short range” (shotgun-like) and sniper. Along the way you’ll find better versions of them, but that’s it. Also, you have to bring ammo packs and medkits in enough quantities, which adds an element of resource management that seemed more like a chore and a nuisance, rather than providing interesting strategic choices. You can find various stim packs along the way which give permanent boosts to the stats of one character, but I only felt like aiming was truly relevant, because of what I'll mention next.

The enemies I encountered were only the zombie-like husks of the crew, and turrets. The zombies pretty much just run around randomly, the AI is very strange. Your units have low movement and weapon range, the weapons are weak and inaccurate, you fight mostly in cramped corridors and rooms, so the fights turn into looooong crapshoots where most shots miss and so most of the time it's just simpler to run into the enemies to use melee attacks, which always hit. It doesn’t seem like there is any strategy involved, like flanking bonuses, there is no destructible environments, and the abilities you have for your units don’t enable any synergies between them.

You can’t tell between the different enemy “types”, and you can’t tell their HP, weapons and damage. And it’s frustrating to realize that it’s better to do 2 guaranteed melee hits (1 AP each) than to fire with full AP (2 AP) for more accuracy, which is very unreliable. Even trying to get close for a shot at close range, supposedly with better accuracy, is bad, which is not helped by the fact that the movement range is so low.

XCOM's "overwatch" is replaced by "retaliate", which makes a unit shoot back at an opponent that shot at it, and only in that case. But since the A.I. pretty much shoots you from random places, namely long distances, and since your weapons' range is mostly bad, you usually don't hit anyway. Also, without a "proper" overwatch, there is no element of zone-control, which is accentuated by the fact that the enemies walk around seemingly at random, as I mentioned, so, again, the enemies pretty much roam around randomly and confusingly.

All this adds up to gameplay not being very engaging and after fighting through 11h of it, trying to hold on, not even the story kept my interest going, so I sadly decided to stop playing the game.

PS: Also, this game supports but doesn't recommend 1920x1080, only inferior resolutions, and you can tell, since at 1920x1080 the graphics look a little warped sometimes, and the text is small and hard to read.

This is turn-based game clearly inspired by XCOM:EU, featuring a retro feel and a touch of the “Aliens” movies atmosphere. The game starts well, story wise: you wake up in huge ship without remembering what happened, it seems like most of the crew have turned to monsters and from time to time the ship does a hyperspace jump seemingly at random. It's up to you to figure out what is going on and hopefully find some survivors along the way, which you do in a linear mission path (with some optional missions) that progresses the story, alongside some dialogues in-between. The problem here is that the gameplay mechanics are very simple and not very engaging. There are no character “classes”, each character is a unique individual (you meet more along the way), featuring an active ability and a passive ability. Active abilities like if a shot hits it does more damage, a guaranteed hit, teleportation, self-heal, stuff like this. Passive like extra inventory space, bonus healing with medkits, reloads don’t use an action, etc. You can choose between different armor suits with different stats (aim, agility, health, shield strength, armor), and weapons, but I’ve only seen 3 weapon types: assault rifle, “short range” (shotgun-like) and sniper. Along the way you’ll find better versions of them, but that’s it. Also, you have to bring ammo packs and medkits in enough quantities, which adds an element of resource management that seemed more like a chore and a nuisance, rather than providing interesting strategic choices. You can find various stim packs along the way which give permanent boosts to the stats of one character, but I only felt like aiming was truly relevant, because of what I'll mention next. The enemies I encountered were only the zombie-like husks of the crew, and turrets. The zombies pretty much just run around randomly, the AI is very strange. Your units have low movement and weapon range, the weapons are weak and inaccurate, you fight mostly in cramped corridors and rooms, so the fights turn into looooong crapshoots where most shots miss and so most of the time it's just simpler to run into the enemies to use melee attacks, which always hit. It doesn’t seem like there is any strategy involved, like flanking bonuses, there is no destructible environments, and the abilities you have for your units don’t enable any synergies between them. You can’t tell between the different enemy “types”, and you can’t tell their HP, weapons and damage. And it’s frustrating to realize that it’s better to do 2 guaranteed melee hits (1 AP each) than to fire with full AP (2 AP) for more accuracy, which is very unreliable. Even trying to get close for a shot at close range, supposedly with better accuracy, is bad, which is not helped by the fact that the movement range is so low. XCOM's "overwatch" is replaced by "retaliate", which makes a unit shoot back at an opponent that shot at it, and only in that case. But since the A.I. pretty much shoots you from random places, namely long distances, and since your weapons' range is mostly bad, you usually don't hit anyway. Also, without a "proper" overwatch, there is no element of zone-control, which is accentuated by the fact that the enemies walk around seemingly at random, as I mentioned, so, again, the enemies pretty much roam around randomly and confusingly. All this adds up to gameplay not being very engaging and after fighting through 11h of it, trying to hold on, not even the story kept my interest going, so I sadly decided to stop playing the game. PS: Also, this game supports but doesn't recommend 1920x1080, only inferior resolutions, and you can tell, since at 1920x1080 the graphics look a little warped sometimes, and the text is small and hard to read.