This game which is space based cowboy game with pair of potato sisters on an intergalactic journey to discover the truth about their lost grandfather and escape cluthes of the evil empire I personally didn't expected much, so maybe that's the reason why I was surprised with those challenging battles.
In this game your freedom is limited, but within its borders these potatoes embark on an interesting space adventure.
Action is very cartoony and goofy with minimal violence beyond exploding spaceships, dialogue was kept light-hearted and fun. Younger kids may miss most of the 80s sci-fi references that the story loves to hurl at you.
While exploring the universe, space sisters have to gather resources to upgrade their spaceship and create new weapons for fight while hiring potato engineers to man their ships.
Personally, I’d not want to rely on potato engineers over humans, but only because humans aren’t in danger of being eaten by aliens. .You can also shift shields to protect a specific portion of the ship (1 of 4 weapon locations], or the ship’s hull), target enemy weapons to neutralize them, or focus fire on a ship’s hull to destroy the ship.
Your pilot also has a variety of special abilities you can trigger, which can inflict damage, buff your ship, debuff the enemy, or provide various other effects.
Both Cassie and Fay have multiple abilities, and you can select which one is the acting captain/pilot before undertaking a mission.

Comparisons to Faster Than Light are inevitable: similar to FTL, you control a ship that must traverse galaxies and the time is running out. Similar to FTL, you encounter various events and enemies. Similar to FTL, you recruit your crew, each one of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. Similar to how you loved FTL, you are going to love Holy Potatoes! We’re in space?!.

Although there’s plenty of randomness, Holy Potatoes! We’re in space?! isn't really a roguelike like FTL: the game is more plot and are objective driven. You explore the space on your starship, taking turns to move from one galaxy to another. Each galaxy has a hub, something like a shop/upgrade center, where you can buy craftable item blueprints, crafting resources, weapons, upgrade your ship modules and hire more crew.

Combat is turn-based and your ship has multiple weapons, each one controlled by a crew member, and you may choose what weapons to use. You can also assign shield to your ship components or use special abilities.

All in all - the game is fun to play. It’s a great mix of genres, offering great depth of micromanagement paired with exciting RPG battles. I highly recommend Holy Potatoes! We’re in space?!

THE GOOD
- Great humor with game and popular culture references
- Plenty of random events
- Lots of variety
- Unique Style

THE BAD
- Can get a bit repetitive
- The humor is not for everyone


DISASTER | BAD | MEDIOCRE | OKAY | GOOD | GREAT | AMAZING | MASTERPIECE

If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so then please click here.

Cute game, has its issues, but it's fun overall.

PROS

- Visuals
- Space exploration, make weapons, hire your team, play turn based ship to ship combat
- It seems rogue like at first, but it is much less random and easier, with some difficulty spikes at bosses

CONS

- The humor is a bit too "young" for me, it's probably aimed at anime fans
- One single run lasts way too long. It took me 50 hours to beat it once because i approached it as a rogue game and over planned things, ended up with 3 millions credit and thousands of ressources. If you play this i'd recommend you don't try as hard to "be ready for all situations", the game is actually much easier than expected, and i realized after beating it that it had a save system, i thought dying would mean the end like any rogue, but it actually auto saves very frequently.
- No documenation, shallow tutorial, forum is a ghost town where nobody answers, and googling for information doesn't return any results... You'll have to figure out some things the hard way. (I might write a short guide and link it here in a couple of days if i find the time.)
- The random encounters become repetivive, it needs more interesting random events, other than winning cash or ressources.
- The combat becomes repetitive, you don't actually change strategy from fight to fight, you just prioritize the enemy's biggest weapon and use the exact same attack sequences. For this reason + the fact that a run lasts way too long, you will probably not want to do more than one run, in fact i almost gave up on the game mid run because of the repetitiveness.

WORTH BUYING?

I'd say yes, especially on sale. I got this from the humble bundle so it was a nice surprise.

- - - - BONUS - - - -

If you pick this game up, here are SOME TIPS i wish i knew at the start :

* You don't need to buy a module 3 (lets say shield) to be able to buy module 4. If you don't need a module immediately (tip: don't upgrade fuel and research modules) just don't buy until much later, this way you save a lot of money early.
* Don't upgrade fuel, as long as you destroy ships completely they will drop fuel and you will stay full. Only get fuel later on when there are a lot of planets and you might do a few in a row without seeing any fights
* When the game says "weapon" it also includes the hull in that description. Example if you have a skill that heals all weapons, know that it will heal the hull too.
* If an enemy has a specific weapon you want, only kill that weapon then go for the hull while ignoring the other weapons. This way you guarantee that you will get it. If you kill all weapons, one of them will be picked at random as a drop, so you lower your chances of getting what you want.
* You still get money by letting enemies "escape", money for defeating the enemy itself, for the weapons you destroyed, AND you get the weapon drop too. If you want to rush through the game, then killing weapons and letting enemies flee will save you a lot of IRL time. The advantage of finishing enemies completely is 1. getting fuel, it only drops if you destroy ships and 2. you get an extra 25% to the gold reward for defeating the ship. This bonus doesn't apply to the weapon module rewards.
* Missiles vs Waves? The main difference is that missiles do full damage to only the main target, and splash for to other surrounding modules for 50% damage. Waves do full damage to everything.
* If you are looking to make SS (perfect) weapons, the only way to do it is have craft masters with the "5% change to craft perfect" skill. The chance to get it without this skill is so slim that you will never get any perfect weapons without this. And even with this skill, you will only see a perfect weapon every 20+ craft or so, rarely on something you really want. So hiring those mastercrafters when you see them is key.
* You get more energy per turn as the combat goes on. Every even number you get +1 energy per turn, starting at round 2. So if you start with 5 energy per turn, you will get 6 energy per turn at round 2, 7 energy at round 4, 8 energy at round 6, and so on.
* You can unlock research to extend your ship move range, for this reason you have to research fuel to unlock it early even though fuel is useless. I ignored fuel research for a long time and struggled with tiny range, learned the hard way. The maximum range is 2-3 times bigger than the default one, so it really makes your life / planning your travels easier.
* If you want to get the achievements for exploring galaxies 100%, you will need to extend the range of the ship. Early on without the upgrade, you might need to use taxi a few times to return to the hub in one jump instead of multiples. Taxi still uses 1 sol, but it saves you time when you are 2 or 3 sol away from the hub.
* Each galaxy has a quest or a boss fight, keep in mind that those encounters use up 1 sol each, so plan your routes accordingly. It is generally best to do the quest first, then plan your exploration route with full knowledge of how much sol you have available with the randomness out of the equation.

This is an excellent take on space RPG genre and reminds me of Halcyon 9 in some sense.

JRPG like turn based battles
Fun cutesey characters and graphics
Humorous storyline
Lots of upgrades and leveling
Fun to pick up and play and can be continued even after a prolonged break

Totally worth the money!

Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?! is a title of a game that's a very good litmus test for whether or not you'll enjoy the writing in this game. If you've already burst out laughing at the sheer concept, then well done. This game will be for you, if not, I've got sad news for you, you'll despair at the reference laden writing.

Pros!
+ It looks nice! - The colourful art style is fairly solid and keeps things entertaining enough. While planets all look the same, the space ships themselves are stuffed with enough colour that it's not exactly boring to look at
+ It's solid - We're in Space is a solid piece of gameplay. What it does works and there are few glaring issues that disrupt the experience. It's simple and for the most part works.

Cons!
- It's so boring! - Just because it's got solid gameplay does not mean it's interesting. Combat is a tedious turn based nightmare (and I love turn based combat) as each encounter goes on for too long of clicking the same thing time and time again. There's little strategy involved in any of the combat and all the percentages and extra abilities are the mahogany vaneer that covers the shallow chipboard below
- It's like listening to teenagers who have just discovered the internet! - This is a dividing issue for many, but the writing is tedious and downright painful. The comical stylings of simply pointing at something and going "Is that Gordon Freeman, but as a potato?!" are about as advanced as you'll get here. If you enjoy being able to recognise things and think that's the heigh of comedy then have I the game for you. If you find poorly thoughtout memes and references that are thrown through your windows like bricks of bad writing to not be up your alley, you wont enjoy reading this game.

It's by no means a bad game. It's just not good or fun. I can't recommend We're in Space purely because there's no enjoyment to be gained from it. A lot of the processes just feel like a chore and it's not even a particularly satisfying mechanism that fits together, like A Weapon Shop?! was. The basic sustenance of video games that's a fate worth than starving. It just lacks any flavour, at least one that isn't memes.

(More Words here![mozillogames.wordpress.com])

I tried to keep this short but it didn't work. Sorry. There's actually a lot to say about this game in which potato sisters travel through space with their fluffy space cat.

I wanted this game because it looked cute, and I'm a sucker for a fat cat. I vaguely assumed, from the cutesy character art, that it was a game aimed at a young audience; but like I said, fat cat. 200 hours later, I would not let a kid anywhere near this, and it's become one of my favorite games of all time. I know potato people (and their vegetable brethren and sistren) in space sounds bizarre to say the least, but don't let that put you off. This game is hilarious, wonderfully crafted, endearing as heck, and even manages to deliver some pretty solid cosmic horror. Think Cthulhu and fellow horrors from beyond. Yes, in a game about anthropomorphic potatoes.

I could write another review, easily as long as this one, just talking about how much I love the characters. Instead I'll only say Cassie and Fay are both best girl and I can't think of a single major character who isn't at least mildly interesting. I wouldn't have expected robust character development in a game about space-faring potato girls, but here we are.

The devs paid ridiculously close attention to every part of this game. The scenery is gorgeous and sometimes pretty trippy. The music is fantastic, too, and there is tons of it. Every chapter has a different theme for its space hub, ship bridge, planet exploration, and boss fights, and some chapters have different music than they normally would if you play the story a particular way.

Which brings me to another neat thing about this game. There's the main story, which branches in small, predetermined ways as you progress (almost every chapter is actually two chapters, with the game picking one each playthrough), and one major branch that's up to player choice. You'll also have a couple chances throughout to make smaller choices, which don't affect gameplay but change how a particular event plays out.

There's no NG+ or anything, but there's loads of replay value. For one thing, you can't see every chapter in a single playthrough. After you've played the tutorial once, you have the option to skip it entirely in every subsequent game, a small touch that blew my mind and I wish other games would include. In addition, after completing the main story once, sometimes you'll get the opportunity to activate a second, similar, but more difficult secret storyline. When I stumbled over it I was thrilled, because I absolutely wanted more. It took me back to playing Pokemon Silver for the first time as a kid and discovering there was a whole other chunk of game to play post-Elite Four.

All that being said, Holy Potatoes is not gonna be for everyone. Some of the systems are a touch clunky, and it can actually spike in difficulty really quickly if you're not diligent about weapon crafting. (My first playthrough, I got stomped repeatedly in the second galaxy until I figured out that I was not going to make a dent in a level 4 planet with level 2 weapons.) If turn-based combat gets on your nerves, you're probably not going to enjoy this, because there's a lot of it and it gets very repetitive. A couple chapters are a little weak in terms of objectives, compared to most of the story, but that's mainly because they really nailed most of it.

Also, it's one of those currently ubiquitous games packed full of pop culture references. This one is also stuffed to the limit with puns. If you're not delighted by the concept of encountering, for example, a stalk of celery named Kale-o Ren and his potato companion Tarth Tater, you might find yourself annoyed rather than charmed.

One last thing: I don't recommend playing this if you're so thin-skinned that things like one throwaway joke about gender being a social construct gets your testes frothing. It's hardly an ess-jay-dubya game, but both protagonists are girls and the game makes no secret of that, which I personally feel is one of the greatest things about it. YMMV.

In summary: I f cking adore this game. I bet you will too.

A fun romp through nerd space. Filled with witty references and a great variety of characters. I had a blast playing this and am going back for more.

This is a good game. Better than Weapon store. You will totally get the FTL vibe.

I got one point that I don't like about that game. Its about the Animation, VFX.

In Strategy game, you don't want to have long animation. The combat get repetive fast and that ok, in FTL, its the same thing also. But in this game, you got lonnnng animation sequence for each round of combat. Its suck. Each combat will break your pace and you cannot finish them under something like 3-4minutes. Well, it could be 1min for real, but It's feel like a long time. It's an eternity between each phase.

So except for that, it's a great casual game.

Edit: They have added casual mode with unlimited Sols, major bugbear fixed.


keeping the review the way it was to avoid confusion.

Old Review below:

Summary: A nice start, but need work (yes, I had higher expectations given how it looks polished, and I stress that I really want to like this game.)

Pros:
-funny and corny (ha) dialog, cutsy written. <-can't stress this enough, it pops my kernel.
-reminds me of FTL.
-much better UI than FTL. these guy got their style and functionality down. very polished.. and crisp.
-something about the way they chose the aesthetics comes off so awsome, appeals to my inner child. makes me really want to like it. buuut....


Cons:
-Felt like they spent more time writing than designing the game mechanics (it feels like early access/cell phone game after a few hours)
-FTL: Captain's edition does everything better, after 3 hours it felt grindy (some events repeats several time for me) and all thats left are the dialog. at which point well, you go write a review.

And this is what breaks the game for me:
-like FTL, you are limited a set of turns in each galaxy, but the problem in this game is: you need those turns to craft parts for your ship/train/HEAL (mentally) your crew. there are not enough time for everything if you lose a weapon or 2.
this last point can be remedied if they decide to:

a) remove cost of therapy for crew (is on your own ship anyways, right now it just stetches your money sink. money you need to grind for the other things), or tone down the weapons that hit ALL your parts at once (a blown part = lost part + crew needing therapy). seriously, you got 1 shield and have to use it to protect 1 object/hull. and maybe I got unlucky that I ran into several exploration runs with enemies that LOVE to spam multi hit attacks.

b) increase the number of turns optionally for people who dont want to be limited by this multiple teir of punishment for losing a part.

c) don't make parts takes so long to replace/up the HP of your parts/make them damage your hull 1st before damaging weapons.

Again, this last point makes the game punishes you on multiple levels, if you lose a weapon that felt like a play to lose game (but with a story where the main character is wreckless? come on, it breaks immersion.)

when you lose a part, you lose starch from:
1) therapy
2) materials to replace the part
3) Time (also money if you have to sit out due to NPC spamming multi target weapons).
4) oppertunity cost to deal with 1 to 3.


hence yeah... really have to play conservative (which is meh) when your main character is... well, yah.... won't spoil. but there is some strong ludonarrative dissonance there between the writing and optimal game play.

Edit: while exploration is a thing, the best thing to do is stick to 1 planet to get repairs using crews with repair x per turn. meh. so, ya. take that for what you will.


Wait till later when they (if they) decide to refine the game mechanics/forced pacing to buy.

if you came from their earlier games, it would be fine, but as someone who came from FTL. well. is a tad disappointing.

Again, I really want to like this game due to its humor,

Follow our curator page: OCG-Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Story:
In Holy Potatoes! We’re in Space?! you take control of the space shuttle of two potatoes - the sisters Cassie and Fay. With them, you get to manage your ship, recruit more vegetables, research technology, manage your expenses, resources and travel from solar system to solar system, to stay ahead of the headhunters searching for you.

Gameplay:
The gameplay happens in two stages - the management and the combat stage.
The management stage is choosing which planets to fly to, what to research, which weapons to use, what your crew should do etc. This part of the game takes a while to be fully understood, since there are so many things one should manage, and thus the HUD is quite extensive.
The most important part of this, is the travelling inbetween solar systems, the game seems to have countless random encounters, achieving the desired feeling of exploration.
The other stage of the game, is the fighting. The player can choose to go on exploration missions on a planet, which happens in the form of a queue of random encounters. Usually, one gets into a few battles on an exploration like this, and that's when the second half of the game begins:
Upon encountering an enemy ship, one gets into turn based combat.
Here, the player has to manage energy, hp, weapons and special moves to destroy the enemy's weapons and finally their ship.
Here, your crew's experience and your ships weapons combined with the players tactical brilliance are the key to victory.
Basically the player chooses how to spend the ship's energy, which weapons to use, what to target etc.
This fighting system, whilst original might feel stale after the first playthough, due to it's repetitive nature.
The game title should give away another big aspect of the game.
It is crammed with jokes, all the way, and whether you'll like this or not is obviously a personal question, and while it may annoy some, it does not get in the way of gameplay and makes the whole experience more Holy Poatoes-ish.
One last thing that I shall touch on:
Replayability.
Replayability is a very big aspect in this game, since most mechanics were specifically designed to make new playthoughs a new experience. Thanks to the variety in encounters, ships, actions etc. this was very well achieved.


Pros:
+Replayable
+Humorous
+Rich in content

Cons:
-Fighting can get stale after long gameplay
-HUD takes time to get used to


Conclusion:
9/10 - Loved it
A very well polished, rich in content and clearly lovingly made game, by developers who like their Potato jokes.