Star Command is a game whose story is actually bigger than itself. The product of a Kickstarter campaign, SC is a game that languished in development hell for two years before exploding onto the iOS scene amid fanfare and viral PR. The long and the short of it is that SC puts you in command over your very own Star Trek-style ship, rendered in obviously-lovingly-wrought pixel art. EquipStar Command is a game whose story is actually bigger than itself. The product of a Kickstarter campaign, SC is a game that languished in development hell for two years before exploding onto the iOS scene amid fanfare and viral PR. The long and the short of it is that SC puts you in command over your very own Star Trek-style ship, rendered in obviously-lovingly-wrought pixel art. Equip your ship, hire crew, fly to other planets, shoot at enemies. A great premise. On the plus side, the graphics are second to none, provided you like pixel art. It's clear that the developers spent a lot of time on artwork; it's all high quality and very carefully and lovingly made. Audio is quite good, although the orchestrated arrangements for the background music don't exactly match the graphic motif (Pixel People did better with its chiptune soundtrack), nor the 8/16-bit style sound effects...but those sound effects fit right in and work well. The game also forces the player to split attention between ship-to-ship combat and defending one's own ship from boarding parties. So you're simultaneously handling ship weapons and steering your security crew around to handle unwanted guests. Unfortunately, the game doesn't follow the slick polish of the graphics and front end UI. Problem 1: everything is hostile. There's no exploration, and certainly no diplomacy; you're given a new place to go which, no surprise, contains a new ship that wants you dead. There's no other approach, nothing new to see; it's just a matter of what the new aliens who want to kill us look like. Dead dull. Problem 2: basic game mechanics are a nearly epic-level fail. Not only do your ship's weapons and equipment need to charge, but you need to generate a "token" to use most of them. Consequently, you need two time-consuming charge-ups to use your best gear, which is just bad mechanics. Weapon charges, fire weapon. Don't go requiring a second thing, particularly when it takes two minutes to make a token whether you're in combat or peacetime; you will be waiting. Problem 3: you're cramped. There's no really effective way to improve your ship because there's just no room. There are bigger ships, but they're locked with no clear answers on how to unlock them. And Problem 4: the combat curve is sharp. Your ability to defend yourself is rapidly outstripped by your enemies' ability to beat the snot out of you. You will quickly end up being beaten senseless by antiship weapons while your ship is swarmed by boarding parties. On top of that, a lucky shot by an enemy can kill several crew, meaning that battles can become hopeless quickly. Ultimately, I'm hoping that some additional thinking and reworking to game mechanics will correct the most glaring problems, and that some additional development will give you more alien interaction options than "which first? Lasers or torpedoes?" In the meantime, the end result is good graphics and sound, but points off for bad game mechanics, lack of variety, poor balance and pacing, and a lack of play endurance (with so little to see, the game gets old fast). So 5 out of 10 for an unfinished would-be masterpiece called Star Command.… Expand
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