I was one of the Kickstarter backers, I was very excited for another FTL experience. Unfortunately this is far shallower, and far less mentally rewarding.

FTL had encapsulated skill, strategic choices, resource management, risk-assessment, fluid combat, prioritizing, transparency, compelling yet simple narrative, wealth of content, and no small degree of occasional panic. It's a fantastic game, and one that this game obviously aspires to be like. Convoy doesn't live up to the legacy, sadly.

Skill does play a part in this game, but mostly it reflects itself in finding the most efficient way to shove someone in to a cliff. Which is good fun, the first fifty or so times.

Sadly, your choices can feel arbitrary or downright random, the same actions doing different things across the same play-through, interacting with the exact same NPC's in special events. After running into "plague guy" 3 times in the same play-through, it got extremely silly (Hilariously enough, this one has no random variance at all to it, even though it seems very risky. Silly, arbitrary.)

Resources are actually pretty annoying to manage, being unable to repair armor and health independently, I often end up at half armor capacity because I can't afford to drop another 30ish per vehicle to get armor topped off after a few run-ins with some cannons or plasma guns. You have NO indication at all of your fuel economy, and the lack of a world map makes long term planning very, very annoying due to inefficiency of the way point map system.

Risk assessment is impossible: once you're in combat, you're stuck in, you can't leave even if you're stuck in a scenario where you can't hurt each other. For example, had a mine-laying enemy just drive at the front of my MCV which had no weapons, and kept dropping mines that did zero damage to my 100% resistant MCV. It wouldn't close the gap to finish the fight with its laser, so I had to quit out. From a game design standpoint, this is indicative of a huge balance problem.

Combat is...messy, In some ways good, most bad. The explosive chaos is fun to watch, but sometimes the hitboxes escape the cars, or enemy vehicles both occupy the same hex (just decide to phase through solid matter, because that's fair), or the game loses track of who's where and everyone starts flying around like there's a huge tornado whipping through the battlefield. Having no control over your main ship is a huge waste of potential as well, but I'll save that for another day. The weapons fire slowly compared to hp totals, so combat can drag on, especially at low-levels. There's little strategic element to it, most combat being merely a dps race with some positioning shenanigans and ramming cheese. Fights are more often than not just gear checks, so you'll either stomp or get demolished.

Likewise, your priority is always the same: kill the enemy with the least shields and biggest guns first, and road hazards aren't a risk at all: I love those skulls, they win me so many fights I would rather they showed an angelic choir instead. There's no true variance, because armor shredding weapons almost always do a heap of damage, and a machine at %1 hp fights just as well as one at %100 hp. In this regard it's a massive and disappointing departure from FTL.

The game also suffers from a transparency issue: No obvious hotkeys for MCV abilities, instead 1234 selects cars. The MCV abilities are labeled as 1234, so this feels stupid, and the cars aren't marked on the overview, so you're pretty much just reaching into a hat for on-the-fly selection. Some of the weapon descriptions are downright wrong, stating improper values or characteristics (heavy plasma comes to mind). You have no indication of weapon cool-downs on your vehicle, which makes deeper strategy impossible. Line of sight is a bit iffy as well, sometimes with a vehicle being able to squeeze shots around corners, sometimes not. No world map makes planning fuel more of a crap-shoot than it already is (with consumption rates being hidden). With dialogue being almost completely random, I've stopped doing more than skim because my choices feel insignificant. Not being able to view vehicle stats outside of camp is stupid, stupid game design.

This game's narrative is run-of-the-mill, but the some of the writing feels like it was done by a few seventeen year-olds off of 4ch. Crammed with references and little actual content, it feels a bit like playing Fallout 2, only without the base narrative to support it. References should be used like sprinkles: Fallout 2 was over-sprinkled, sure, but the cupcake under it was great. This feels like making a cupcake entirely out of sprinkles. The references are cute the first time through, annoying after that.

Convoy also has an issue with amount of content: you can expect to see every encounter and permutation of that encounter over just a few hours or so. With a lot of it being luck based, you generally just construct yourself an optimal choices flowchart and just don't even both with reading any of the boxes after a point.

FTL invokes an immediate sense of panic: fire in oxygen supply, hull breach in weapons room, boarders trashing our engines, sickbay is offline and our shields are getting hammered with laser blasts and asteroids: what do you do?! Convoy invokes an annoying sense of dread: my vehicles are mostly unharmed, my MCV has 60% health, not much armor and I'm 100km from a camp after a single run in with a boss. My first thought: I'm dead. I can't mitigate all the damage going to my main unit, and two run ins with well-shielded raiders can very easily shred all the hp off it when they completely ignore the vehicles hammering on them to kill my main unit. The AI is spiteful and it's supposed to be difficult, but that makes no sense from a realistic perspective: when attacking a convoy, why attack the unarmed vehicle and ignore the lighter ones bristling with guns? When you attack a convoy are you throwing your life away to make the other guy "lose the game?" You're generally trying to rob it, not suicide bomb like you're trying to make the Emperor proud. It feels inelegant mostly because the MCV has the least ability to defray damage to it.

Also, bugs galore. Plague guy broken, found an infinite encounter loop with a repeating dialogue tree, previously mention vehicle bugs, getting robbed by Andy's goons puts you into negative 90k parts (instant loss with no way back), journal entries broken for duped quests, raider boss starting on a bridge with his reinforcement immediately tossing themselves off the cliff, EMP mines stunning instead of eating shields, ghost enemy vehicles following you around (!), 100% mine resist sometimes not working, stranded convoy asking for 30 fuel but the game wants 50... This was just in a few hours! This game is NOT ready for release from a bugfix standpoint.

And just one word about insta-loss scenarios: It's hot! Your vehicle explodes! They're patching these out, but it begs the question: Who in their right mind thought this would ever be a good idea to put in the game?

So, all in all, this game is below average: buggy, unresponsive, insubstantial, and not very replayable. It's not a Roguelike at all, but a psedoRPG with some random encounter elements to it.

It has one saving grace: the boss is FUN! This is the only part that had me panicked and kept me on my toes. It really reminded me of FTL because he doesn't try to cheese you, and instead tries to pick you apart as you do the same to him. He feels FTL, and it makes the rest of the game feel all the shallower. (It's not fun when he chases you across savegames. Oh look, a bug.)

Some might feel my frequent comparisons are unwarranted, but the makers were trying to make a comparably fun experience, and I feel it is warranted to draw comparisons. Or even required.

This game has a lot of heart, and still has potential to be good, but as it stands right now it gets a red thumb from me.

I was one of the Kickstarter backers, I was very excited for another FTL experience. Unfortunately this is far shallower, and far less mentally rewarding. FTL had encapsulated skill, strategic choices, resource management, risk-assessment, fluid combat, prioritizing, transparency, compelling yet simple narrative, wealth of content, and no small degree of occasional panic. It's a fantastic game, and one that this game obviously aspires to be like. Convoy doesn't live up to the legacy, sadly. Skill does play a part in this game, but mostly it reflects itself in finding the most efficient way to shove someone in to a cliff. Which is good fun, the first fifty or so times. Sadly, your choices can feel arbitrary or downright random, the same actions doing different things across the same play-through, interacting with the exact same NPC's in special events. After running into "plague guy" 3 times in the same play-through, it got extremely silly (Hilariously enough, this one has no random variance at all to it, even though it seems very risky. Silly, arbitrary.) Resources are actually pretty annoying to manage, being unable to repair armor and health independently, I often end up at half armor capacity because I can't afford to drop another 30ish per vehicle to get armor topped off after a few run-ins with some cannons or plasma guns. You have NO indication at all of your fuel economy, and the lack of a world map makes long term planning very, very annoying due to inefficiency of the way point map system. Risk assessment is impossible: once you're in combat, you're stuck in, you can't leave even if you're stuck in a scenario where you can't hurt each other. For example, had a mine-laying enemy just drive at the front of my MCV which had no weapons, and kept dropping mines that did zero damage to my 100% resistant MCV. It wouldn't close the gap to finish the fight with its laser, so I had to quit out. From a game design standpoint, this is indicative of a huge balance problem. Combat is...messy, In some ways good, most bad. The explosive chaos is fun to watch, but sometimes the hitboxes escape the cars, or enemy vehicles both occupy the same hex (just decide to phase through solid matter, because that's fair), or the game loses track of who's where and everyone starts flying around like there's a huge tornado whipping through the battlefield. Having no control over your main ship is a huge waste of potential as well, but I'll save that for another day. The weapons fire slowly compared to hp totals, so combat can drag on, especially at low-levels. There's little strategic element to it, most combat being merely a dps race with some positioning shenanigans and ramming cheese. Fights are more often than not just gear checks, so you'll either stomp or get demolished. Likewise, your priority is always the same: kill the enemy with the least shields and biggest guns first, and road hazards aren't a risk at all: I love those skulls, they win me so many fights I would rather they showed an angelic choir instead. There's no true variance, because armor shredding weapons almost always do a heap of damage, and a machine at %1 hp fights just as well as one at %100 hp. In this regard it's a massive and disappointing departure from FTL. The game also suffers from a transparency issue: No obvious hotkeys for MCV abilities, instead 1234 selects cars. The MCV abilities are labeled as 1234, so this feels stupid, and the cars aren't marked on the overview, so you're pretty much just reaching into a hat for on-the-fly selection. Some of the weapon descriptions are downright wrong, stating improper values or characteristics (heavy plasma comes to mind). You have no indication of weapon cool-downs on your vehicle, which makes deeper strategy impossible. Line of sight is a bit iffy as well, sometimes with a vehicle being able to squeeze shots around corners, sometimes not. No world map makes planning fuel more of a crap-shoot than it already is (with consumption rates being hidden). With dialogue being almost completely random, I've stopped doing more than skim because my choices feel insignificant. Not being able to view vehicle stats outside of camp is stupid, stupid game design. This game's narrative is run-of-the-mill, but the some of the writing feels like it was done by a few seventeen year-olds off of 4ch. Crammed with references and little actual content, it feels a bit like playing Fallout 2, only without the base narrative to support it. References should be used like sprinkles: Fallout 2 was over-sprinkled, sure, but the cupcake under it was great. This feels like making a cupcake entirely out of sprinkles. The references are cute the first time through, annoying after that. Convoy also has an issue with amount of content: you can expect to see every encounter and permutation of that encounter over just a few hours or so. With a lot of it being luck based, you generally just construct yourself an optimal choices flowchart and just don't even both with reading any of the boxes after a point. FTL invokes an immediate sense of panic: fire in oxygen supply, hull breach in weapons room, boarders trashing our engines, sickbay is offline and our shields are getting hammered with laser blasts and asteroids: what do you do?! Convoy invokes an annoying sense of dread: my vehicles are mostly unharmed, my MCV has 60% health, not much armor and I'm 100km from a camp after a single run in with a boss. My first thought: I'm dead. I can't mitigate all the damage going to my main unit, and two run ins with well-shielded raiders can very easily shred all the hp off it when they completely ignore the vehicles hammering on them to kill my main unit. The AI is spiteful and it's supposed to be difficult, but that makes no sense from a realistic perspective: when attacking a convoy, why attack the unarmed vehicle and ignore the lighter ones bristling with guns? When you attack a convoy are you throwing your life away to make the other guy "lose the game?" You're generally trying to rob it, not suicide bomb like you're trying to make the Emperor proud. It feels inelegant mostly because the MCV has the least ability to defray damage to it. Also, bugs galore. Plague guy broken, found an infinite encounter loop with a repeating dialogue tree, previously mention vehicle bugs, getting robbed by Andy's goons puts you into negative 90k parts (instant loss with no way back), journal entries broken for duped quests, raider boss starting on a bridge with his reinforcement immediately tossing themselves off the cliff, EMP mines stunning instead of eating shields, ghost enemy vehicles following you around (!), 100% mine resist sometimes not working, stranded convoy asking for 30 fuel but the game wants 50... This was just in a few hours! This game is NOT ready for release from a bugfix standpoint. And just one word about insta-loss scenarios: It's hot! Your vehicle explodes! They're patching these out, but it begs the question: Who in their right mind thought this would ever be a good idea to put in the game? So, all in all, this game is below average: buggy, unresponsive, insubstantial, and not very replayable. It's not a Roguelike at all, but a psedoRPG with some random encounter elements to it. It has one saving grace: the boss is FUN! This is the only part that had me panicked and kept me on my toes. It really reminded me of FTL because he doesn't try to cheese you, and instead tries to pick you apart as you do the same to him. He feels FTL, and it makes the rest of the game feel all the shallower. (It's not fun when he chases you across savegames. Oh look, a bug.) Some might feel my frequent comparisons are unwarranted, but the makers were trying to make a comparably fun experience, and I feel it is warranted to draw comparisons. Or even required. This game has a lot of heart, and still has potential to be good, but as it stands right now it gets a red thumb from me.