When you first open this game, you'll probably light up your main engine and accelerate hard into the rings. You'll smash your ship into a rock at three hundred miles per hour. You'll be frustrated that space physics is hard, and you'll get a refund. Don't do this. Go slowly. Your ship is a hundred year old, sixty ton, nuclear space tractor. Give it the time it needs. Fly like you're driving a fully loaded semi with failed brakes on an ice lake hauling a 4 gigawatt nuclear reactor on the back.

To say Delta V is an "asteroids clone" would be like saying a Saturn V is a V2 clone. There is definitely a kernel of truth in there, but it's so far away from being the whole truth that it seems deeply unfair. More than anything, I think Delta V is a love letter to physics and engineering. Koder (the solo developer) and the active community has collectively spent hundreds, maybe thousands of human-hours hardening the science in this game and at every opportunity it's been kept as realistic as possible. Lots of games try this and become no fun as a result; I love Children Of A Dead Earth for example, but it's more simulator than game. Delta V is one of those rare cases where there is no trade-off between realism and fun. The realism *is* the fun. Everything you change on your ship affects something else, and none of it via arbitrary dice rolls or magic numbers or fudge factors. There's no EVE-Online style "+10% top speed -5% weapon range" part. There is only physics.

The ship upgrade system interlinks with the physics model in a way I don't think I've ever seen in any other game perhaps certain modded versions of KSP. Firing your thrusters washes the reactor with cold propellant, draining it of heat. The reactor responds by throttling up, removing the control rods to meet demand. Graphene radiators dim and a few seconds later burst into life again as the reactor surges back up past 4000K.

Laser beams are invisible until they hit a dust cloud, whereupon they shower the area with scattered photons. Coilguns produce a light show of white hot metallic shrapnel in their residual magnetic field after firing. Thrusters wash the area with concentric cones of plasma exhaust. Don't make me describe that the nuclear salt water rocket does - it's two hundred gigawatts of barely controlled continuously detonating nuclear rage.

The game welcomes both passive and active play - you're welcome to drift idly while your automated microwave emitter turrets slowly melt the ice around you, with automatic disposable haul drones feeding the liberated minerals into your hold where the iron and platinum within is extracted and refined and laser-sintered into new drones. Or you can install high-power fixed forward facing pulse lasers and railguns, shattering asteroids with thermal and kinetic shock before switching the flight computers off and assuming direct control to drive through the resulting fragments manually for a much more hands-on experience.

If you give the game time, if you remember that you're flying a century old nuclear space tractor weighing sixty tons, you'll enjoy a genuinely beautiful experience. Rush, pancake your ship into a rock, and ragequit, and you won't get to enjoy the beautiful atmospheric soundtrack, and you won't survive long enough to hear it seamlessly shift gears into something mysterious or urgent as random encounters unfold around you. You won't get to watch random NPCs get into a fight because one of them stole a valuable chunk of tungsten the other wanted to mine. You won't get to hear the widebeam pings of a lost lifepod's emergency beacon. Take it slow, take it steady, and your big nuclear tractor will slowly take you on a journey that few other game developers are brave enough to try and offer.

Oh and you can put anime girl skins on your spaceship, though they're probably quite hard to see in the darkness of space.

I am a Belter bosmang.

Edit: The developer pointed out to me that a Peaceful difficulty mode is an option. After trying that out, the game is much more peaceful and relaxing now. Thank you Koder! I'll leave my original review below to highlight the importance of checking for difficulty options before whining.

A 'leave me alone' or 'not interested in stories and mysteries of the rings' game mode would be appreciated. I'm tired of being punished for trying to pursue just mining asteroids.
I read about this game being relaxing and chill. I just want to chill out after real life work and mine rocks. That isn't allowed. It started out okay, and I figured once I work my funds up, I wouldn't have to worry about pirates and mystery ships that want to mic me. Instead, the game constantly throws encounters at me. Trying to go deeper into the rings thinking I've found a quiet place, and the game decides I just found a hostile base that proceeds to annihilate my ship. The base was not visible on lidar and appeared when I was a few hundred meters away. Almost got a claim beacon out, but got sodomized instead. Even the option to hire an escort or own several ships and have protection would go a long way if being left alone isn't possible.
I really like the physics, ship customization, and idea of diving into the rings for rocks. If the game is advertised as being open to one's own playstyle, perhaps the most basic playstyle should be playable and enjoyable.

One day this game will win the Labour of Love award.

Was minding my own business and wandered into a rescue operation. The Resuce ship hit an asteroid and exploded, sending a life pod careening through the rings. After a harrowing mad dash after it (aka smacking into every rock in my path), the life pod came to a stop.

Once we were about to grab it, I was snuck-up on from behind. The pirate was ready shoot me like a fish in a barrel. The voice over the radio sounds familiar to one of my crew members (the one with an already established shady past). It's a friend she used to raid with. Knowing now that an old comrade is aboard, the pirate backs off and we successfully rescue the survivors.

It's small moments and stories like these that make me love the game.

ΔV: Rings of Saturn is easily one of my favorite space simulators on Steam, but it might not appeal to everyone. In ΔV you pilot a spacefaring asteroid mining ship, working in Saturn's rings to mine resources to sell back on Encelaadus space station. You'll start with a small ship and a few fresh-faced crew members, but as you start raking in the cash you'll open yourself up to a variety of ships and equipment.

One of the most interesting things about ΔV is that the devs have a side-grading approach to equipment rather than a traditional upgrading approach. A more expensive RCS isn't necessarily better than what you already have, each piece of equipment in every category (from hardpoints to autopilot) has unique attributes that'll make it useful to some playstyles and useless to others. A lot of the fun to be had here is in trying out different equipments and ships and finding what works best for your playstyle, rather than just linear upgrade progression like you might expect. There's even a tuning system so that you can further tweak your equipment to make it suit your loadout better.

Once you've got your ship's loadout sorted, you'll be heading out into the void to mine the asteroids orbiting Saturn to collect the various raw materials held in them. As you go about your mining you'll have to manage your fuel and any other resources that your ship requires to run. While you're out and about blowing up asteroids you'll also run into other miners as well as pirates, derelict ships, small stations and a couple of other things. The deeper you dive into the rings the less you'll see other miners and the higher the risk will be that you run into pirates. For the most part the gameplay is pretty relaxing, just flying around gobbling up asteroid nuggets, but there are definitely moments of excitement. It's not particularly complex but the loop of going out to collect and then coming back to change up your ship and tweak things to your liking is very satisfying.

As you start running low on fuel or one of your other resources you'll want to head back to the station. At Enceleadus station you can sell off what you've collected or store it to wait for prices to change (you can also buy and sell resources on the open market if you want to try and make money that way), then you can hire new crew, repair/replace any damaged equipment, buy new equipment or give your crew members a trip to a hotel to boost morale and pass time. This is where all your prep works take place but the vast majority of the game is spent out mining asteroids.

I should mention the fact that the game is in Early Access, not that you'd really be able to tell. As the dev states in the EA FAQ, the game is already feature complete and they're just working on adding new content. There's already a good chunk of content in the game, I'm 24 hours in and still haven't seen everything I know the game has to offer (and presumably there are some more secrets too), but I'm definitely excited to see what new additions there will be. As for bugs/glitches I haven't encountered any, which is always a pleasant surprise for an early access title.

I've really enjoyed my time with this one so far and I definitely plan to keep it in my regular rotation. If you have an interest in space sims and job-like games (e.g. truck simulators) I think this one is a no-brainer.

Kemo's Corner.

This... this is a weird... "thing".
Game? I guess you could call it that.
It has challenges and gameplay loops, sure.

It's not "fun", or "enjoyable". Those aren't really the terms I would use.
It's interesting, complicated, and mentally engaging.

Everything in the game requires "finesse". Nothing is ever really easy.
Once you get better at doing things, and they start to feel easy, then you start being more confident and aggressive.
And then it's suddenly less easy again.
This, I think, is the fundamental loop that a good game is built on.

Who would I actually recommend this to? I... have no idea.
I don't know why anyone would buy this.
I don't know why *I* would buy it.
There's nothing else like it to even really compare to.
... And maybe that's why it's so fascinating to play.

Not only did this fella include the entire game in the demo that lets you play for a surprisingly long time, he just went and unlocked the demo completely in response to recent events.

Madness, and about as consumer-friendly as it gets.

Earthers and Dusters would unite to destroy the Belt! Now is the time to lock arms Beratnas!

This is your ship. This is your moment. You may think that you are scared. But you are not. That is your sharpness. That’s your power. We are Belters. Nothing in the world is foreign to us. The place we go is the place we belong. This is no different. No one has more right to this. None more prepared. Inyalowda go through the asteroid belt. Call it there own. But a Belter mines it. We are The Belt. We are strong. We are sharp and we don’t feel fear. This moment belongs to us. For Beltalowada!

Rings of Saturn is absolutely my favorite. There’s nothing else like it. It feels like playing The Expanse, in the best way. I almost never buy games on a whim, but 10 minutes after learning about it I had bought it.

The controls and physics model can take some getting used to but I very much recommend sticking with it and learning how to fly. Once in the early game I ran out of mass driver ammo. Ended up using the NTR to melt asteroids to keep mining, just bad ass. Besides… who doesn’t love blasting chunks or Asteroids with a rail-gun or a big honking space laser?!

Strongly recommended for all Beltalowda if you're after a game to chill with - similar to mining in Elite Dangerous or driving in Euro Truck Sim, not too demanding, but not too dull, and with the odd burst of excitement to get the old dopamine flowing. Pairs great with a podcast or video on a second display.

It has a nice mix of what is mostly relaxing, laidback gameplay with some much tenser moments, it's really great to play and I enjoy the progression with upgrading your ship. The overall 'feel' is really great too, and it's not often you find a hard sci-fi game like this. The UI, music, and lighting all provide the perfect atmosphere. Definitely satisfies my "Expanse" cravings.

It's probably not for everyone, but for someone who's into space sims and wants to try something a bit different I'd definitely recommend it, especially at what's a low price for the game you get. Definitely a niche game, though. If you are into hard Sci-fi give it a go.

Remember the Cant!

Oye, beltalowda! Kowmang rock hoppa now!

10/10

They update the game 4-5 times every month with significant game-play changes and mechanics while having superb performance and bug fixes, I don't know how they do it and every day I live in fear of them and thank god that their attention is spent on a space mining sim and not global annihilation.