StarDrive

 PC
User Score
6.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 385 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 221 out of 385
  2. Mixed: 75 out of 385
  3. Negative: 89 out of 385

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  1. TheRulesLawyer
    Apr 26, 2013
    5
    This game has all the micromanaging of a classic 4x game, but none of the depth. I felt like the authors mainly wanted to make a starship combat simulator and just happened to put it in a 4x wrapper in order to try and sell it. The ship building is pretty fleshed out. It reminds me a lot of galactic civ II in that half the game seems to be about building ships with your new tech, not goingThis game has all the micromanaging of a classic 4x game, but none of the depth. I felt like the authors mainly wanted to make a starship combat simulator and just happened to put it in a 4x wrapper in order to try and sell it. The ship building is pretty fleshed out. It reminds me a lot of galactic civ II in that half the game seems to be about building ships with your new tech, not going out and stomping heads. Everything else is just weak. If it were a $10-15 game it would be forgivable, but they're asking $30 for it.… Expand
  2. NeoOgre
    Apr 27, 2013
    5
    This game is by no means a 10 (yet) or a 0. I have beta tested this game for a few weeks and it is somewhat incomplete for being released. I have not had the crash problems many users have had lucky. As of now, this game almost feels like a kit, mod to your own tastes.
    Time will determine how this game ends up, for good or bad.
  3. Afterforever
    May 3, 2013
    4
    According to Steam the game has been released. According to the official website, it has not. And it really hasn't. It's a beta. The UI is a clusterf***k. It doesn't scale up with resolution well. You can't even pick a planet from a planet list. Everything is tiny. It's very hard to pick ships, because you can barely see them if you zoom out. The tutorial consists of few videos and bunchAccording to Steam the game has been released. According to the official website, it has not. And it really hasn't. It's a beta. The UI is a clusterf***k. It doesn't scale up with resolution well. You can't even pick a planet from a planet list. Everything is tiny. It's very hard to pick ships, because you can barely see them if you zoom out. The tutorial consists of few videos and bunch of text. I have to say music and art design of alien races are the most memorable part of this game. Everything else is unpolished, forgettable or just meh, because it's unfinished game. However, that's a huge achievement for a single guy developing the game. But is it worth $29? No. Maybe 6 months down the road, when it gets patched.… Expand
  4. MFT
    Apr 26, 2013
    6
    There is no way around clichéd "this game has potential but..."

    Because this game clearly has potential: artwork is superb, graphics are decent, music is fine, gameplay can be both challenging and engaging at times but unfortunately there many issues and drawbacks (due to the fact that the game is budgeted on 17000$ and made by two people) that drag this game into mediocrity. There    There is no way around clichéd "this game has potential but..."

    Because this game clearly has potential: artwork is superb, graphics are decent, music is fine, gameplay can be both challenging and engaging at times but unfortunately there many issues and drawbacks (due to the fact that the game is budgeted on 17000$ and made by two people) that drag this game into mediocrity.

    There are no proper sorting options for ships, bases and parts. This results in cluttered, slow, glitchy and unresponsive UI.

    You can't delete or upgrade stock ship designs like construction and colonization. In Distant Worlds, for example, AI automatically upgraded those ships with best available parts and here you can't even do it manually.

    You can't save unfinished designs because you have to fill out every single square on a ship. Designing a ship/station becomes a chore, especially at late stages when ships get huge. In fact you'll spend most of your time just designing and re-designing ships... unless you just fill them out randomly. What's even worse they won't automatically upgrade with latest parts so you will have to revisit your designs over and over again to do it manually. Ships are also asymmetrical and there are no "clone" or "mirror" buttons which makes it even more frustrating.

    There are crashes and notable slowdowns in late game but this is common among all 4X strategy games.

    Its not as deep as Distant Worlds. Its not as polished as Endless Space and you can't compare it to Sins or GalCiv because they are in completely different leagues.

    Overall this game lacks polish, proper UI, better ship designing options and even in-game tutorial but it can be fun, especially when spiced up with mods of which there are plenty.    … Expand
  5. dragon0085
    Apr 27, 2013
    2
    I had to create a profile so I could review this game amidst the obvious rating bombing this game is getting for positive reviews it doesnt deserve.

    The game suffers from FAR too much micromangagement, bad user interface to make it happen, bad pacing, and the problem of attempting a realistic space sim but losing playability in the process. I have played all the classics, I am the    I had to create a profile so I could review this game amidst the obvious rating bombing this game is getting for positive reviews it doesnt deserve.

    The game suffers from FAR too much micromangagement, bad user interface to make it happen, bad pacing, and the problem of attempting a realistic space sim but losing playability in the process.

    I have played all the classics, I am the target audience, and I found this game terrible. For reference I have completed games of Space empires, and that is about as hardcore as it gets for 4x games. One of the biggest problems of this game is the scale, and the scroll speed, the fact you constantly have to bounce between system and 'galaxy' view but at a slow rate. To explain, consider a game like master of orion, it took place in a galaxy view, you saw all your stars, and it was clear, you could click on a star and it went INSTANTLY to system view, you saw planets, and could click on it. This game is nightmarish, it it almost a literal size ration of a system to a small section of a galaxy, meaning you have to zoom out...zoom out...oh theres one planet...zoom out...30 seconds later you FINALLY can see the stars. It is literally this bad.

    I understand the game was going for this cool thing where your ships are flying around the system from different sides, dropping in from warp...but it is just so hard to control meaningfully. Systems are HUGE and ships are nearly life size...meaning invisible. No big icons at all. Multiple times I clicked on the ships icon and could not find my ship despite being in the middle of the screen. The stars that are part of the background are not obviously different from system stars, so it was annoying trying to find actual systems.

    So beyond the massive scaling problem (and terrible scroll speed) the pacing is bad. It is real time, but basically the only way to really play is a 'turn based' style of pausing, issuing orders, playing at 4x speed until new orders...pause...repeat. What I hate is how slow your ships move in a system, again it was as if he was going for a realistic sim, at the heavy cost of gameplay.

    The user interface for ships and colonies is terrible. You can have a list of colonies (good) but not actually click on them to go to them (very bad) I mean how obvious of a feature was this to include? Every space game I've played from the 90s on let you click from a list to actually GO TO the planet.

    Last...ship design. It is not good. You have a whole bunch of squares, and you throw stuff in it (imagine space empires if you played it) but the problem is you have a LOT of stuff to throw in, and very little difference. You have a gun that does 15 damage and cost 500 or a gun that does 14 damage and cost 460 and does the exact same effect, woah such depth. You have the annoyance of placing power plants and then connecting wiring to all your stuff. If I wanted to be WIRING my ships I would have gone into engineering. There is no auto complete, and whats worse is there are certain areas that you cant place stuff in. Ship design in normally fun, or at least not a chore, it is very very annoying in this game. There is not a good info screen or anything either to decide if your ship is even good or has good stats.

    In closing there are some things that need improving like scroll speed, but that is a little thing that could get patched, but real things like the far too complex ship design, VERY bad pacing, very bad scaling of ships to systems to stars, and generally not fun because it isnt clear what is even happening makes this a game not recommendable, and this is from someone thats played a lot of them.    … Expand
  6. prophetic
    Apr 27, 2013
    2
    I have been playing this game since it was in beta and it is STILL in beta. Some aspects are a lot of fun. Designing your ship is cool and the combat can be interesting to watch. Despite that, the game is absolutely not complete. If you venture over to the forums you will see the devs asking people to review this game on Metacritic. That isn't necessarily a bad thing in of itself, butI have been playing this game since it was in beta and it is STILL in beta. Some aspects are a lot of fun. Designing your ship is cool and the combat can be interesting to watch. Despite that, the game is absolutely not complete. If you venture over to the forums you will see the devs asking people to review this game on Metacritic. That isn't necessarily a bad thing in of itself, but there is a reason this has so many reviews and so many of them are positive. There is an active and engaged community on the forums.

    Seriously do not buy this game yet. It has tons of potential, but right now it is an absolute waste of money.    … Expand
  7. SadSatyr
    Apr 28, 2013
    0
    The amazing numbers of positive reviews have forced me to write a review of this game.

    This game is priced like a game coming from a decent studio, and sadly it was released like a game coming from a major studio. What I mean is that the game is still in a beta stage, and it appears to be an early beta at that. I understand the game is being designed by a really small team (maybe 1    The amazing numbers of positive reviews have forced me to write a review of this game.

    This game is priced like a game coming from a decent studio, and sadly it was released like a game coming from a major studio. What I mean is that the game is still in a beta stage, and it appears to be an early beta at that.

    I understand the game is being designed by a really small team (maybe 1 guy) but that doesn't excuse charging $30 for a game that can not be played. I have tried putting in roughly 6 hours since the "launch" about 18 hours ago. The "launch" consisted of an updated from 1.07 to 1.07b I'm honestly not sure what the update did. The game crashes for me on startup, at race selection, when I zoom out to fast, when I try to colonize a planet the list continues.

    I have started about 10 games, the longest game I have been able to play was roughly 2 hours. This game has done what every major studio has done that has caused me to despise them. It made a promise of a great game, and delivered a beta. If I had been offered a demo I would have tried it and known not to buy this game.

    Wait 6 months then go check the forums to figure out if this game has been fixed yet. Or better yet, send the developer an email and let him know you want a demo before you buy it given how this release has been.

    Given this was an indie title I would have been willing to overlook so many things, but if the bug forum is still bursting at the seams with people unable to play then clearly your game is not ready it is likely not even out of alpha tbh...

    Zero (the developer) releasing this game in this state screams of a cash grab to me. I would not be surprised if in 6 months this game is still unfinished and patches have become few and far between ...

    Ok, so all that being said, what's good? The ship building is really cool all the other stuff you expect from a 4x game has been simplified to make the game "real time". Basically each turn takes 5 real time seconds, but you can pause the game at any time to issue orders or do whatever else. This makes the game feel conflicted to me. Sure, it might trim down the amount of time it takes to finish a game compared to GalCiv or Master of Orion, but the experience is equally diminished. I expect that if this game is ever finished serious 4x fans might get maybe 10-20 hours out of the game before getting bored and returning to the classics. RTS fans may do the same thing, but will eventually return to Sins of a Solar Empire.

    If this game had been released complete I would have rated it in the 5-7 range, but if a game is released as a finished product when it is, in fact, still in beta I have to give the game a 0. That is clearly false advertising and a cash grab by the developer & publisher...    … Expand
  8. Jotoco
    Apr 26, 2013
    7
    This game is awesome. This game will also be much more awesome once it is Ironed out and more feature complete.

    The one man dev team in Zero is very good and talented, but couldn't deliver a finished product in time for release. Even then the what has been completed shows how much passion went into this game, and even at this form it is a must buy. Aside from a few crashes and bugs,    This game is awesome. This game will also be much more awesome once it is Ironed out and more feature complete.

    The one man dev team in Zero is very good and talented, but couldn't deliver a finished product in time for release. Even then the what has been completed shows how much passion went into this game, and even at this form it is a must buy.

    Aside from a few crashes and bugs, the worst thing in this game is the late game slowdown, that happens when the galaxy is fully populated with a couple thousand fighters.

    The good things are the Races, which are pretty funny. The Shipyard, that lets you build your own ships, which is awesome. And the freedom to manage your colonies and your fleets.

    It needs a few upgrades but the dedication of the dev is impressive, and gives safety that issues will be ironed out.    … Expand
  9. guinevere2
    Apr 27, 2013
    3
    I have no idea why so many people rate the game so high. It does look shady when an indie title get more reviews than top AAA titles by huge companies that spend millions of dollars for promotion. Just by reading the comments one can easily see that those reviews are written by the long time game followers and beta participants and it is the fanboy's zeal and not the high quality of theI have no idea why so many people rate the game so high. It does look shady when an indie title get more reviews than top AAA titles by huge companies that spend millions of dollars for promotion. Just by reading the comments one can easily see that those reviews are written by the long time game followers and beta participants and it is the fanboy's zeal and not the high quality of the product that causes all those prises. To be honest there is not much to prise. By reading those comments I learned that the game was made by one or two guys and it is really impressive...but they charge for their product like it was made by a professional studio so there is no reason why this game should not be reviewed in line with other 4x games out there. But sadly it does not stand a chance in comparison to contemporary rulers of space 4X genre like Sins of Solar Empire or Endless Space. I do have a problem to understand who is this game actually for? It is not aimed on the hardcore 4x fans, because for those it will be waaaaay oversimplified in every single of its 4X aspects. It does no come close to the "epicness" of SoSE space battles, it does not give you any actual control over the fleet during combat, the resources management is shallow like a puddle after morning drizzle limiting the game to 3 sliders..., the colony building aspect is a lackluster copy-paste of GalCiv approach. Tech tree is short and uninspiring. On top of that the game get some random fps-slowdowns and is prone to crashes. Veterans of 4X space games will be bored after 15 minutes with this game. The only innovative thing here is the approach to the race's diversity which is really solidly done and does not end at the different perks sets for every race but seems to expand to the different AI algorithms. All others 4X concepts are really poorly executed and the game itself is in the best case a younger brother of MoO serie and them alike titles, suitable rather for my kid than for me. Assuming that it will be patched and stops crashing that is.… Expand
  10. williamz614
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    Ever since Master of Orion 2 was released, there hasn't really been a worthy successor. MoO3 was garbage, and several imitators have come along trying to capture the magic of the franchise. StarDrive manages to reinvigorate the 4x genre and is a hell of a lot of fun.

    I would give it a 10, but there are still some bugs that need to be ironed out. This game is definitely an indie gem    Ever since Master of Orion 2 was released, there hasn't really been a worthy successor. MoO3 was garbage, and several imitators have come along trying to capture the magic of the franchise. StarDrive manages to reinvigorate the 4x genre and is a hell of a lot of fun.

    I would give it a 10, but there are still some bugs that need to be ironed out. This game is definitely an indie gem that fans of 4x strategy games need to check out ASAP!    … Expand
  11. Rancidgber
    Apr 26, 2013
    8
    I beta tested this game for almost 2 months, from early march until the official release, I've Played nearly 300 hours so far, and I do not regret it one bit. The game has a very dedicated single developer, he has worked very hard to iron out this game for release, but could have used more time. Most of the bugs, and performance issues have been wiped out, but the game still needs work.I beta tested this game for almost 2 months, from early march until the official release, I've Played nearly 300 hours so far, and I do not regret it one bit. The game has a very dedicated single developer, he has worked very hard to iron out this game for release, but could have used more time. Most of the bugs, and performance issues have been wiped out, but the game still needs work. It's missing some features, and the UI is still a bit clunky. There is no multiplayer yet, but it has been promised for the future.

    All in all this game is very fun, and worth the purchase price. The game-play is fun, especially designing ships, and letting them loose on your enemies. You constantly learn, and upgrade your designs to optimize their effectiveness, and you get rewarded for it. The graphics are pretty, and the artwork has made some fans request merchandise.

    I registered on here just today to rate this game. I rate it 8/10, it would be worthy of a 9 or 10, but truthfully the beta could have lasted a month or two longer, it's just not polished enough to be worthy of a 9 or 10.    … Expand
  12. rkcth
    Apr 28, 2013
    0
    I can't figure out how the heck to play this game, it just drops you in the middle with no tutorial. The game also doesn't work with Windows High DPI settings which I use so I can read text from my couch on my home theater PC. I turned down my DPI to normal and changed the game resolution to 720P, but I couldn't t figure out what on earth I was supposed to do. I understand this is anI can't figure out how the heck to play this game, it just drops you in the middle with no tutorial. The game also doesn't work with Windows High DPI settings which I use so I can read text from my couch on my home theater PC. I turned down my DPI to normal and changed the game resolution to 720P, but I couldn't t figure out what on earth I was supposed to do. I understand this is an indie game but either mamke it intuitive or drop new games into a skippable tutorial. I can't believe I paid good money for such a horribly designed game.… Expand
  13. waterwaterwater
    Apr 26, 2013
    7
    I'm giving this a 9 until some things are fixed. Let me be clear about this, the game has some problems. However, for all the 4x fans out there thinking about SOTS or legends of pegasus, STOP! The 4x curse is not going to get this one. All of the problems are actively being fixed. There is a patch a day most of the time and Zero (the dev) has said on the forums that he just hired anotherI'm giving this a 9 until some things are fixed. Let me be clear about this, the game has some problems. However, for all the 4x fans out there thinking about SOTS or legends of pegasus, STOP! The 4x curse is not going to get this one. All of the problems are actively being fixed. There is a patch a day most of the time and Zero (the dev) has said on the forums that he just hired another programmer to help out. Buy it now or buy it in a few weeks, but ALL 4x fans are going to want to pick this one up. The game is very playable at this point and new features are on the way. Oh and mods are actively supported by Zero (sometimes even helping out directly).… Expand
  14. swanner
    Apr 26, 2013
    8
    So I got this game on a whim because a preview on IGN, and I love it. Now with that said it is not perfect. The game has alot of really interesting ideas behind it, for example the ship creation is just plain fun you no longer have to worry about another race heaving better ships then you. you can load pre-designed ship and customize them how ever you want, or start one from nothing. butSo I got this game on a whim because a preview on IGN, and I love it. Now with that said it is not perfect. The game has alot of really interesting ideas behind it, for example the ship creation is just plain fun you no longer have to worry about another race heaving better ships then you. you can load pre-designed ship and customize them how ever you want, or start one from nothing. but it's not perfect angling firing arc's is a pain, and acccidently removing stuff while trying to move the ship is all kinds of frustrating. and that's how I would explain this game to anyone "Fun but not perfect" The Dev is really active on the forums and responds to bugs and request alike and that was a big plus for me.

    In short, If you love 4X games and you are looking for a new one there is alot of fun to be had with StarDrive. but this is not a game for someone who is looking to try 4X out.    … Expand
  15. Yijuwarp
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    Great game. If you enjoy 4X games then you are bound to love stardrive, the rumored performance issues are more or less fixed in the latest patches but some minor annoyances with UI,etc remain but since the dev is extremely talented and devoted i wouldn't be amazed if core game reaches near perfection in a week or two.. surely worth 25$
  16. Kruos_95
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    Awesome! This game is awesome!

    I played the beta for ~100h and if there is still some minors bugs, in its actual state the game is good, very good! The most annoying problem for now is the frame rate problem in endgame, but the dev are aware and solving the issue (if not already solved).

    Awesome game!
  17. spitfire_ch
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    It is truly unbelievable what one man can achieve. The game is addictive right from start, well presented and is a lot of fun to play. There are still a few glitches and some potential for improvement, but Zero is putting amazing effort into this project releasing improvments almost on a daily basis. If you like 4x games, you have to grab this one!
  18. LoboTommy
    Apr 26, 2013
    10
    I've been keeping my eye on this game for very long time. Reading about it, everything sounded too good to be true, so when I started the game for the 1st time I had very big expectations. Despite my expectations the game managed to surprise me very pleasantly. I've been longing for this type of game for years (endless space and galciv and sins and sots aren't exactly my cup of tea) andI've been keeping my eye on this game for very long time. Reading about it, everything sounded too good to be true, so when I started the game for the 1st time I had very big expectations. Despite my expectations the game managed to surprise me very pleasantly. I've been longing for this type of game for years (endless space and galciv and sins and sots aren't exactly my cup of tea) and I'm very excited it has arrived. Not only that but the game looks graphically stunning.
    All of my friends who saw me playing it, bought it the next day.

    A perfect heir to the crown of Master of Orion.    … Expand
  19. Mermel
    Sep 26, 2013
    0
    It was promising what had been promised, but what promises had been there, have been broken.

    The developer of this game admitted the engine in use is broken and so, it will never get finished. Any word on the forum, being even slightly critical about his decision to move on and start another project, is being deleted. The game is a blast to play, but sadly it is never going to be    It was promising what had been promised, but what promises had been there, have been broken.

    The developer of this game admitted the engine in use is broken and so, it will never get finished.
    Any word on the forum, being even slightly critical about his decision to move on and start another project, is being deleted.

    The game is a blast to play, but sadly it is never going to be anything but an abandoned alpha version sold completly overprized.    … Expand
  20. danshu15
    Oct 9, 2013
    0
    I had to give it a Zero. The game had great potential, but development has stopped completely now that ZeroSum has "made enough money to move onto other projects". The small development team has been the excuse for slow development, and empty promises were repeatedly made, but its officially been canned by the developer and he's even stated that a discount or free copy of the sequel forI had to give it a Zero. The game had great potential, but development has stopped completely now that ZeroSum has "made enough money to move onto other projects". The small development team has been the excuse for slow development, and empty promises were repeatedly made, but its officially been canned by the developer and he's even stated that a discount or free copy of the sequel for people who purchased the broken unfinished original will in no way be an option. Have a problem w/it? don't post on his forums, he'll just delete it and ban you but hey he warns you up front that he will and says you should just log out of his forum and never come back.
    VaporWare that should be avoided, and previous ratings should be revisited and re evaluated. Poor game is dead.    … Expand
  21. Chaosmaker
    Jun 27, 2013
    4
    I really have mixed feelings about this. Ok, here we go.

    The good: 1. Building is made rather fun, with a steady pace of economics and nice system that can dispense wealth and resources to your worlds. 2. The graphics are quite nice. 3. The RTS part is done well enough, the pace is not too fast, not too slow. The bad: 1. Technologies aren't varied or imaginative. They're    I really have mixed feelings about this. Ok, here we go.

    The good:

    1. Building is made rather fun, with a steady pace of economics and nice system that can dispense wealth and resources to your worlds.
    2. The graphics are quite nice.
    3. The RTS part is done well enough, the pace is not too fast, not too slow.

    The bad:

    1. Technologies aren't varied or imaginative. They're simple and there's too little of them for a proper 4x game.
    2. Map controls are bad every time I zoom out or load the game the zoom focuses on some dust speck in space, and I have to click around to actually notice any star systems even when I click in the right place on the minimap. It's mildly annoying.
    3. Ship design system is the worst I have seen in ANY 4x game. It's bad. It's awful. It's atrocious. It's positively tedious, feels like you're sitting in work in your cubicle and have to finish a project. You can't save a design which has even one field not filled. And later designs have HUNDREDS of them. You can't modify or upgrade designs? Actually, ANY 4x game had a better system. Master of Orion 1-2, Sword of the Stars, Endless Space, Gratuitous Space Battles, etc. etc. etc. This... thing... spoils a reasonably nice game immensely. If this was improved, I'd give the game a solid 8.

    I mean, if a serious part of the game has less fun than counting finances in Excel, that's wrong, dude.    … Expand
  22. Furious28289
    Aug 17, 2013
    1
    I simply MUST respond to what is blatant rating bombing.

    Ive been watching this game since pre-release, and must admit there is ALOT of potential here, love the ship design feature and the diplomacy windows are very well done. However the game is still in beta. SO many bugs and issues that are yet to be resolved. I experience frequent crashes, and whenever i feel brave enough to    I simply MUST respond to what is blatant rating bombing.

    Ive been watching this game since pre-release, and must admit there is ALOT of potential here, love the ship design feature and the diplomacy windows are very well done.

    However the game is still in beta.

    SO many bugs and issues that are yet to be resolved. I experience frequent crashes, and whenever i feel brave enough to start a new game, i end up giving up within 1-2 hours due to all the remaining frustrating bugs and issues IF I dont CTD first.

    As I said, lotsa potential, but its an unfinished and I would argue UNPLAYABLE game.    … Expand
  23. Constans
    Sep 23, 2013
    0
    I really wanted to love this game. It had the potential to be a great game. However, my poor rating is based on the fact that it is beta software with significant bugs and missing features and the fact that these are now not likely to ever be fixed. If you read the game's forum, it appears the developer is working on a new version of the game which would have to be purchased again,I really wanted to love this game. It had the potential to be a great game. However, my poor rating is based on the fact that it is beta software with significant bugs and missing features and the fact that these are now not likely to ever be fixed. If you read the game's forum, it appears the developer is working on a new version of the game which would have to be purchased again, and does not appear to believe completing the current version of the game is a priority.

    Meanwhile, the game continues to available for sale, and at a significant price point. To me, the whole development process indicates that, at best, the developer lacks focus. I would avoid this game in its current state (check out the discussions on the forum to see the issues for yourself).    … Expand
  24. abopfred
    Aug 10, 2013
    4
    This game had potential. I really do wish it worked out as it is so beautiful; but alas the game is so unintuitive and riddled with bugs that I regret wasting my money on it. When compared to a similar title, such as distant worlds it just doesn't hold up.
  25. thecolonel
    Oct 11, 2013
    0
    Game is incomplete, and the developer has said he's spending most of his time porting the game over to a new project based on the game that buyers of this one would have to pay again for. DO NOT BUY. It's a sad case of an indie developer taking the money, calling the game "complete" and running.
  26. Crowbot
    Oct 10, 2013
    0
    Honestly this game, is the reason i vowed never to purchase any indie games in alpha/beta mode. Never buy a game on its potential, because what do you get for buying it unfinished? Nothing except the risk of a bad game that never delivers, that's why from now on I'm waiting till release, so i don't buy broken promises.

    If you want tangible reasons not to buy this game then, firstly the    Honestly this game, is the reason i vowed never to purchase any indie games in alpha/beta mode. Never buy a game on its potential, because what do you get for buying it unfinished? Nothing except the risk of a bad game that never delivers, that's why from now on I'm waiting till release, so i don't buy broken promises.

    If you want tangible reasons not to buy this game then, firstly the game was unfinished at release, ships were missing, the game crashes often, freighters don't work properly, multiplayer wasn't implemented as promised and the developer looks like he has pretty much given up on this game and letting community modders fix his unfinished problems. Which are the people who have posted all the great reviews here for the game...

    I've seen this game go on sale multiple times shortly after "release" when it was still marred with bugs and problems, sorry to say it looked like a quick money grab. Which is made worse by the fact that any critical threads warning people about the game get deleted, further proving the point.

    I was banned from the steam community discussion of this game because i expressed my opinion that this game wasn't worth the price...

    Would i recommend this game to anyone? No.
    Simply because i feel conned for buying this game, user comments are deleted which are critical of the game... Sorry that's the last straw for me.    … Expand
  27. bigred411
    Dec 20, 2013
    4
    This is a game that I really wanted to be good. It has a lot of good features but the bugs make it almost impossible to enjoy. The game lag gets so bad towards end game it becomes unplayable. Game ending crashing if battles get to big. This is not a finished product.
  28. Rathroc
    Jul 14, 2013
    3
    Nice graphics and game mechanics, the research fields seem sparse though.

    The UI needs work BADLY, beta release badly. This game should NOT have been in the steam summer sale.
  29. NRising
    Oct 25, 2013
    4
    Yes, StarDrive is beautiful... the graphics aren't academy award winning, yet compelling, and yes, breath taking to some degree. However if you are going to try and be the next guy to try and take a stab at writing the next MoO4 do it with some effort, don't toss in a scant few tech trees and leave the storyline half finished with enough plot holes to sink the Titanic!

    Considering that    Yes, StarDrive is beautiful... the graphics aren't academy award winning, yet compelling, and yes, breath taking to some degree. However if you are going to try and be the next guy to try and take a stab at writing the next MoO4 do it with some effort, don't toss in a scant few tech trees and leave the storyline half finished with enough plot holes to sink the Titanic!

    Considering that it's painfully obvious the developer was trying to be THAT guy who created a true MoO4, yeah, I was less than impressed. The tech trees are NOT finished, that and I'm clueless to the significance of the later story line (I wouldn't even contemplate spoiling it... seriously, a three year old could do that for you.) I mean, some of the tech even pointed to future advances, yet.... I bought a game which sort of c*ck blocked me tech wise. That as far as I can tell all of the races really have the same tech potential.... just stupid looking ships (unless you played as Human, we rock.)

    I can't move on yet, I should gripe and grumble about how annoying planetary assaults are and how useless the transport ships seem to be, however.... the tech! You see... this is 2013, almost 2014... if you are going to have tech you better have a lot of it. I mean, I think of the tech in this game and two thoughts come to mind... number 1, I miss MoO2 all of a sudden, and number 2? Meh, soggy cereal meh. I need Viagra meh. I and probably quite a few die hard MoO fans probably expected a better showing of tech considering that graphically and mechanically StarDrive is as damned close to the play style of MoO, and yet.... someone dropped the ball.

    Me is an alien! You kill me... now you get.... some poop tech and that's it.

    Yeah, so far two or three tech advances from an alien race that is like the Borg on crack, meth and gods know what else... you'd think there would be more, but, nah. 90% of that alien race apparently operated on generic pixie dust or something. And is it me... or is tech thus far really the problem, or lack of tech thereof? The spy tech is really short, like mini-me short. Ugh... tech problems, must keep writing yet getting bored!

    Let's take a breather.... the map crashed way too much, I have yet to find an option to delete save files and for some odd reason all new games carry old ship designs to new games when appropriate ship tech is researched, which ends up being a massive mess... worse? I at least can't find an option to delete ship designs, so yeah, you end up with too many designs. And OH MY GODS! That largest ship.... it takes me at least an HOUR to place weapons and such in those REALLY small boxes on that ENORMOUSLY LARGE ship! I'm not even exaggerating! My eyes were nearly bleeding afterward...

    Okay, yeah.... that ship editor, dem boxes. Dat whole hour... and realizing time passed you by and the game has all of a sudden given you a MAJOR headache. Death by ship design! Now, let's discuss artifacts.... discussion done. You can win without them, in fact... aside from being a bit annoying to acquire, they are nothing more than well... I dunno, honestly I never had any will power to mess with them... pretty much man handled every race in a maxed race game, took a dump on them during diplomacy and shoved my warships down their throats. So... artifacts, yeah.

    As for the planets, well... they also seemed to need more tech, in fact I sort of wish the planet scape wasn't so small... I mean, no matter how large the planet you still always have the same amount of map space, which itself well... somehow represents an entire planet of people. I'm guessing the developer is the dude who thought our planet was square back in the day, cause the planets in this game are very square, sort of. On the space map, we see planets! But on the management screen, squares, MORE friggin squares! Arg...

    Okay, I know... you want some positivity dontcha? The Terran ships looks cool, that and apparently the dev loves Cthu'lhu, and who doesn't? The game mechanics are actually simple after you spend a hour or two playing, you do have to balance research and trade... but...

    The ship design system is... painful. Yes, it is comprehensive, but the largest ship can mess up your eyes (eye strain). The tech is limp, sorry, but it is. The aliens are sociopaths... their hot and their cold, yes and then no.... you get the idea.

    "Oh mergerd you landered on the planet I wanted firsted!"

    Seriously, as if I knew... and then I made them my.... expletive. Final words, no, I'm not going to rate this anything more than a 4, and that's me being a nice guy. I'm not saying the game is dog turd, but it ain't entirely MoO either. Game like this will never improve until consumers as a whole bring out their beat sticks and spank some dev butt.... as for StarDrive? Meh.    … Expand
  30. Pombe
    Dec 9, 2013
    4
    This game had potential but the end game gets boring and there must be some memory problems because my new laptop can hardly run it near the end of the game. This game should be listed as an early release. However, it appears the developer abandoned it after promising for months to keep working on the game.
  31. Jareb
    Jul 14, 2013
    1
    this game uses QWERTY keyboard and it doesn't allow you to change key binding. I can't believe a game can go out without this option in 2013, it's a hell to play for azerty keyboard users
  32. orwellianbob
    Jul 26, 2013
    4
    At first I thought it was a Remake of Star Con 3, but after playing it and paying for it id rather play the original star con series any day. Its sad when a remake of a 15 year old game is crappy in story, game play is a dull mash of weapon spray... Dialogue and creative design for the characters and types of aliens is poor, starship customization is probably the best feature of this gameAt first I thought it was a Remake of Star Con 3, but after playing it and paying for it id rather play the original star con series any day. Its sad when a remake of a 15 year old game is crappy in story, game play is a dull mash of weapon spray... Dialogue and creative design for the characters and types of aliens is poor, starship customization is probably the best feature of this game but all in all I would rather have my money back than own this game.… Expand
  33. ephewe
    Dec 23, 2013
    0
    Do yourself a favor and stay far far away from this pile of garbage. Please understand me when I say I am absolutely not the type to give games a zero score out of spite. In this case, however, StarDrive deserves nothing more. The developer is known to have blatantly abandoned development before actually completing the game (but not before making obscene amounts of money from earlyDo yourself a favor and stay far far away from this pile of garbage. Please understand me when I say I am absolutely not the type to give games a zero score out of spite. In this case, however, StarDrive deserves nothing more. The developer is known to have blatantly abandoned development before actually completing the game (but not before making obscene amounts of money from early adopters who made the mistake of expecting to one day have a completed game). What little the developer has said on the matter seems to suggest that the issue is general incompetence in terms of game-design resources. In other words, he's hit some brick walls in the development process and doesn't know how to progress beyond them. Many customers who paid full price were lured in with various promises from the developer of multiplayer and a bunch of other features which were dropped. Even that wouldn't necessarily be a show-stopper if the game could actually be played from start to finish under most circumstances. As things stand now, if the "out of memory" errors don't get you, the glaring holes in crucial game-play elements will. What the developer has done in this case is nothing short of completely unscrupulous.

    Being as he abandoned StarDrive, you may be glad to know that he's now decided to call StarDrive "StarDrive Vanilla" whilst he develops a remake on an alternate engine. He has stated that the snubbed adopters of so-called "StarDrive Vanilla" are welcome to purchase the remake (at full price of course barf).

    Actually, instead of simply avoiding StarDrive, you might want to also avoid any titles produced by ZeroSum Games and Iceberg Interactive. The fiasco that is StarDrive has revealed that both the developer and publisher are not at all concerned with the sentiment inferred by this review, which is ***EXTREMELY*** wide-spread, I assure you (check the Steam forums for this game if Zero hasn't deleted the relevant posts, that is).

    Only consider purchasing this most-of-a-game if you have no intention of ever seeing it in a completed state. Also, be prepared to encounter game-killing bugs, a complete and utter lack of any gameplay elements which go even slightly beyond the absolute bare-minimum, and a developer who not only openly declares himself "unconcerned" with customers' (quite valid) problems, but actually goes out of his way to publicly censor or scorn anyone who dares bring any such things up.

    ***IMPORTANT***
    Do not believe the people making recent posts about how the game is being "updated on a daily basis" or anyone who says it's being worked on at all. This has been discussed to death on the Steam & official forums... The game has been abandoned by the developer. Anyone saying otherwise is LYING. Case in point, "ProfessionalGuy". He posted this very day, talking about how the game is constantly being improved & updated "almost on a daily basis". This is simply not true. There has not been any meaningful update in... I can't even remember when the last *REAL* update was made/distributed.

    I didn't believe it until now, but there were rumors about how supposedly fake posters were going around submitting favorable reviews for this game on various rating sites... Well now I believe this to be 100% true, because I can think of no reason which adequately explains ProfessionalGuy's review (specifically the score of 10 and the statement that the game's development is active and not in fact abandoned). It's not just him either. There are many such review all over the internet which are flat-out lies. Don't believe it. Do not give ZeroSum Games or Iceberg Interactive any more money.    … Expand
  34. Thebesteversyea
    Jun 29, 2014
    0
    DO NOT GET THIS GAME. I paid full retail and the Dev just gave up and wont even give the second one for those who supported the first. The forums are HEAVILY moderated by The Doctor and the Dev lied SO much during this interview its amazing. Nothing he said was true. He promised multiplayer but deleted all references to that promise to save his own skin. I had bought the game during theDO NOT GET THIS GAME. I paid full retail and the Dev just gave up and wont even give the second one for those who supported the first. The forums are HEAVILY moderated by The Doctor and the Dev lied SO much during this interview its amazing. Nothing he said was true. He promised multiplayer but deleted all references to that promise to save his own skin. I had bought the game during the alpha and its amazing how the Dev twisted his own words and promises to walk away with the money of so many people. If multiple people are saying this (Which they are) its not just someone being angry or trolling, its the truth. Stay away from this game and this developer. Support other trustworthy third parties who are making similar games or simply buy a finished product of this genre from a company with ethics and whom supports their customers unlike this unethical developer and his team of tyrannical forum moderators. The only reason someone would give a good score was because it was done before the recent drop of the first game by the Dev.… Expand
  35. WerewolfAlpha
    Jun 9, 2014
    0
    PAID REVIEWERS> Go check all the high scores. See that 95% of them are done on Apr 26th. The release date. Do you often play a game and go review it the very same day? Do you think every single person who liked the game said "Hey, I'm going to go review this game RIGHT NOW because I JUST bought it and owned it for all of an hour or two but I have to rush off and review it. Literally, whenPAID REVIEWERS> Go check all the high scores. See that 95% of them are done on Apr 26th. The release date. Do you often play a game and go review it the very same day? Do you think every single person who liked the game said "Hey, I'm going to go review this game RIGHT NOW because I JUST bought it and owned it for all of an hour or two but I have to rush off and review it. Literally, when it's THIS OBVIOUS you have paid reviewers to review your game right on release date. Go look it up. Pick one at random, it will be release date Apr 26th. If you complain or ask questions on Steam forums, you will get banned and attacked by the forum moderator. AND NOW he is releasing star drive 2, which is another game he will sell on Steam and NOT FINISH.… Expand
  36. JERupp
    Aug 29, 2014
    4
    This game could have been awesome. Instead, the developer half-baked this game, took the money and ran off to build a sequel with even less content. The game remains unoptimized for even the best computers, has numerous computer-crashing bugs/glitches, and an unfinished quest line.

    Like many early access games, this one failed to deliver what it promised.
  37. tejanse
    Jun 27, 2014
    0
    Represents the bad side of indie development/early access etc. Dev takes everyone's money, and then decides to make a new game before the original is feature-complete or even remotely fixed. He then plays the victim when the community calls him out on his BS as he silences everyone who disagrees and even deletes his own promise-filled posts from the past.

    I don't think any of these    Represents the bad side of indie development/early access etc. Dev takes everyone's money, and then decides to make a new game before the original is feature-complete or even remotely fixed. He then plays the victim when the community calls him out on his BS as he silences everyone who disagrees and even deletes his own promise-filled posts from the past.

    I don't think any of these people go into a project intending to rip everyone off, they are just in over their heads and a large-scale scam is the result. Please avoid Stardrive 2, these type of unscrupulous people are just as cancerous to gaming as are companies like EA - just on a smaller scale.    … Expand
  38. Vas
    Jun 29, 2014
    2
    Really, I just couldn't stand the game. It was almost an exact copy of Star Ruler, but it was worse. The UI was a bit dull and boring, and at times caused me to accidently click or unclick things and have to redo stuff. 5 hours in a normal game and I still couldn't really do anything at all. Meh, I just can't find a single good thing to say about the game, other than a slightly uniqueReally, I just couldn't stand the game. It was almost an exact copy of Star Ruler, but it was worse. The UI was a bit dull and boring, and at times caused me to accidently click or unclick things and have to redo stuff. 5 hours in a normal game and I still couldn't really do anything at all. Meh, I just can't find a single good thing to say about the game, other than a slightly unique diplomacy system.… Expand
  39. Len1010
    May 19, 2015
    1
    SD 1 is a glitch ridden, unstable and resource hungry program that crashes all the time, it is totally unreliable. Many crashes are because of it's error ridden program writing.
    I laugh every time I see it using less than 10% of available memory and crashing saying out of memory or when it said it cant find one of it's program files that strangely it found OK yesterday, these are just a    SD 1 is a glitch ridden, unstable and resource hungry program that crashes all the time, it is totally unreliable. Many crashes are because of it's error ridden program writing.
    I laugh every time I see it using less than 10% of available memory and crashing saying out of memory or when it said it cant find one of it's program files that strangely it found OK yesterday, these are just a couple of examples. There are all too many issues with SD1 to go into here but there is one thing I will say and that is that SD1 is a great idea for a program! If someone could get it FIXED to run correctly and stable. If you can coax, caress add rewrite a lot of code SD1 is a fun game to play but needs refinement.
    With the above in mind it is no wonder I was looking forward to SD2, I had high hopes that SD2 would be better written and have some important missing featured to SD1.
    Alas I was disappointed. Who ever wrote SD2 did a terrible job. SD2 does not usually crash and while this is a plus the overall reason for the not crashing is that all the fun has been removed and replaced with tedium. SD2 is full of endless input requests, a lot of them have only one available answer. Endless space bar pushes are required to go to the next turn of mind numbing dumb questions. Every turn of SD2 requires several presses and mindless dumb questions, you are forced to answer and the constant interruptions to what you were doing is annoying to say the least. The screen is always pooping away from where you are working and you have to constantly manually navigate back to where you were if you can remember, it is as if the game is trying to piss you off!
    The constant need to research is crap if you are happy with your current level you are still forced to research stuff you don't want, why?
    Battle mode is useless as it does not allow you control of your ships if the enemy has a bigger number they get priority and you are a siting duck with no input accepted this is the same resource congestion that was in SD1. If you chose to auto fight the outcome is totally random and not at all consistent with the facts and experience of the ships or troops involved.
    You can not change your station defenses and they are ALWAYS destroyed and need constant rebuilding even though they are USELESS.
    There is no peaceful resolution to the game it is all about only conquest and destruction. The enemy always has too many ships for the resources they control and the endless mind numbing
    battles are just dribble. The weapons fired in battles do not represent the weapons fitted, tracer fire and projectiles are represented randomly and the available screen in battle mode is too small and congested to outmaneuver also in SD2 there is no auto repair drones so once damaged your ships are doomed all the maneuvering under the sun will not save you.
    In battle mode even if you had a ship close by you can't use them for assistance because they are excluded when in reality they are right there and would normally navigate/come to the rescue. Bottom line SD2 is far worse than SD1 it is poorly and lazily written, bug ridden and has no vision or imagination.
    I still hope someone picks up the ball and makes a real fun, stable, adventurous realistic program like what SD1 was supposed to be, I now wait to see if SD3 will come but I worry this will be
    like Microsoft OS, NEVER FINISHED and NEVER WORKING for the customer.    … Expand
  40. Clams_n_Roses
    May 6, 2013
    5
    I absolutely loved this game. It's great fun, and is a real breath of fresh air. At the start.
    As many other people have said here, it just doesn't feel like a finished game. I noticed today my playtime has hit almost 40 hours on this, and yet not once have I ever played past midgame. Everything all happens at the start, all the fun of customising your species, choosing a direction,    I absolutely loved this game. It's great fun, and is a real breath of fresh air. At the start.
    As many other people have said here, it just doesn't feel like a finished game. I noticed today my playtime has hit almost 40 hours on this, and yet not once have I ever played past midgame. Everything all happens at the start, all the fun of customising your species, choosing a direction, getting the tech and building your own ships, it's really enjoyable at the start of a match, but by midway there's just nothing to do. The few tech options there are past midgame are really just rehashes of the starting stuff, the quest lines are broken and don't go anywhere, and even the AI just seems to give up; while at the start it fights tooth and nail for star systems, alliances are forged, distrust is sewn, but by midway it sort of just doesn't seem to care, and never grows or changes past it's initial few moves. So you're just left to grind away down all these star systems till you've won, with the excitement you felt at the start a thing of the past.
    I'd really love to see this as a full game, but I'm getting sick and tired of all these full price releases marketed as a full game when they're clearly just not finished.    … Expand
  41. helsdot
    Jun 3, 2013
    2
    Trite, shallow and derivative. On anything but the easiest settings the AI simply swarms you the moment you try to expand or colonize at all with massive rushes of ships boasting heavily researched weapons, while also managing lots of successful colonies. Any two of those may be somewhat possible, definitely not all three at once. I had expected quite a bit more perhaps something otherTrite, shallow and derivative. On anything but the easiest settings the AI simply swarms you the moment you try to expand or colonize at all with massive rushes of ships boasting heavily researched weapons, while also managing lots of successful colonies. Any two of those may be somewhat possible, definitely not all three at once. I had expected quite a bit more perhaps something other than mindless pop-rushing of batches of ships. A bit of strategy and management would be nice. As far as I can tell, it's a 1x strategy game, not a 4x, unless you manage to trick the computer into letting you survive until late game, when management becomes something of an issue.… Expand
  42. TGAMCallahan
    Jun 15, 2013
    2
    This game, with out question, is some of the most unmitigated garbage I have ever had the displeasure of purchasing. The game itself is brutally buggy, with above average BSOD rates, and numerous crashes. A considerable amount of players are simply unable to even start the game without confusing fixes, or mods. The game itself is flat and uninteresting, with little difference between theThis game, with out question, is some of the most unmitigated garbage I have ever had the displeasure of purchasing. The game itself is brutally buggy, with above average BSOD rates, and numerous crashes. A considerable amount of players are simply unable to even start the game without confusing fixes, or mods. The game itself is flat and uninteresting, with little difference between the races, and NO difference between how they react to you. The AI itself can only be described as "Game Ruining." It is intensely brutal, and utterly unforgiving in the most unpleasant way. (It also doesn't have to use the game's horrific GUI and exceedingly tedious ship design mechanics).

    The ONLY saving grace of this game is the modding community, and a plethora of rabid, active fans who are eager to apologize for their dev putting out trash, and selling it for 30$.

    DO. NOT. BUY. THIS. GAME.    … Expand
  43. stefrank
    Jan 19, 2014
    5
    I left a review when this game was in beta talking about what great promise it had and how, with polish, it could be fantastic. Around that time, for whatever reason, the developers decided it was a finished product and priced it accordingly. It's unfortunate that this game will never see it's full potential. Regardless, It's still pretty fun.

    Some of the high points of this game    I left a review when this game was in beta talking about what great promise it had and how, with polish, it could be fantastic. Around that time, for whatever reason, the developers decided it was a finished product and priced it accordingly. It's unfortunate that this game will never see it's full potential. Regardless, It's still pretty fun.

    Some of the high points of this game include:
    -The inclusion of real time pausing management, allowing it to be played as an RTS or turn-based game
    -Ship design
    -The race design, allowing you to pick custom perks and detriments to your civilization
    -Large scale space battles
    The last of these being the game's real strong suit.

    If you are a fan of 4x strategy games, you will likely be disappointment by the lack of depth. The UI is poor, resource management the same, and ground combat is pathetic (and required). All these issues serve to detract from the overall game experience, which begins to feel like an RTS with some 4X elements tacked on.

    The full price is steep considering the lack of depth compared to other, similar strategy games, but the assertion that there's nothing good to be found here is simply not true.    … Expand
  44. ravinblade
    Nov 1, 2013
    0
    [quote="Zero"][quote="Murundi"]Hmmmm, strange.... I seem to remember someone, somewhere saying that it was IMPOSSIBLE to fix the OOM errors. How odd, the great and mighty can make mistakes? I must have imagined it.[/quote]

    So what's the point of this comment? It's just trolling. I put in some serious homework time to try and fix this OOM error and I get for it? What do you want    [quote="Zero"][quote="Murundi"]Hmmmm, strange.... I seem to remember someone, somewhere saying that it was IMPOSSIBLE to fix the OOM errors. How odd, the great and mighty can make mistakes? I must have imagined it.[/quote]

    So what's the point of this comment? It's just trolling. I put in some serious homework time to try and fix this OOM error and I get for it? What do you want from me?[/quote]

    This sums up what you will get into if you purchase this game. The Developer gets enraged when called on either lies, or if not lies, then conclusions that he has come too that may or may not be fact. He says something, dismisses it, goes onto something new, then is shown that it maybe is possible if you just look at it in a different more experienced way.... since you are brand new to this Job and doing it all by yourself you should know that you may just not know everything.

    Saying things are impossible, then retracting because everyone is having OOM issues with a game that has been deemed "finished product" because you are "Happy" with it. I don't think you are "Happy" with it, I think you realize that you have been caught 2x saying something now and then flip flopping on it because you know it is a concern of more than just a "Vocal Minority".

    Fix your first game so it is playable before you start construction on your second game, period.    … Expand
  45. MrBims
    May 16, 2013
    0
    The game as it exists currently, and for the forseeable future, is a scam on the level of Legends of Pegasus and Sword of the Stars 2.

    There is a framework for a great game in StarDrive, but that framework has lingered for over a year of development and testing that has gone nowhere. Content is barebones three weeks after release there is ONE boring victory condition, an AI that    The game as it exists currently, and for the forseeable future, is a scam on the level of Legends of Pegasus and Sword of the Stars 2.

    There is a framework for a great game in StarDrive, but that framework has lingered for over a year of development and testing that has gone nowhere. Content is barebones three weeks after release there is ONE boring victory condition, an AI that struggles to provide any meaningful challenge, and multiplayer is nowhere on the horizon. The project lead and primary programmer spends his time on the internet emulating Derek Smart, attacking reviewers who mention the horrendous stability and low content of the game, rather than fixing it. It has been over a year since he has talked publically about his intentions for the game questions about the multiplayer go unanswered, and old brain-storming ideas are ambiguously repeated as potentials.

    I am not scoring this game 0 in some effort to lower the grossly inflated user score I am scoring it 0 because the game is simply not worth the price of admission. I have never seen a game with worse stability than this one. Three weeks after release, the game has memory leaks and unoptimized code that make 'normal' matches almost impossible to finish on my eight-core processor. The developer hassled with Steam for months about putting the 'finished' game up for a release date, and he has missed that date by years. Please do not reward this developer for trying to pull a wool over your eyes.    … Expand
  46. Nemesis_900
    May 2, 2013
    2
    "this game has potential but..."
    It's still in beta form, terrible user interface, very poor tutorial, micromanagment, no explanation of Hotkeys, etc. I have no idea why so many give it such a high score. Maybe it will be patched into a good game, but it still needs work.
  47. MrBiffles23
    May 1, 2013
    2
    Pros:
    • Combat is good.
    • Designing a ship is fun initially. • AI uses your own designs against you. • Actively involved developer. • Lots of potential down the road. • Graphics and sound are good. Cons: • Exploration is uninspired. • Buggy/late game frame rate issues. • Not polished. • Major notifications are lacking. (ie: when planets are idle, ships reaching destination,    Pros:
    • Combat is good.
    • Designing a ship is fun initially.
    • AI uses your own designs against you.
    • Actively involved developer.
    • Lots of potential down the road.
    • Graphics and sound are good.
    Cons:
    • Exploration is uninspired.
    • Buggy/late game frame rate issues.
    • Not polished.
    • Major notifications are lacking. (ie: when planets are idle, ships reaching destination, etc)
    • No rally point for ship building.
    • Needs more research.
    • Ship design becomes tedious.
    • Low replayability.
    Overall:
    Rather bland 4X game but has lots of potential especially from modders. Although the developer is active it’s still a small team. There is some concern that significant needed improvements might take a while to be released. Hold off for now but keep an eye on this one. Time will tell.    … Expand
  48. Lyoha
    Jun 2, 2013
    3
    Real time for "Master of Orion2" games bad idea. Tried to like it, but failed. User interface is not very convenient, science tree is small. "Endless space" liked more.
  49. Furrygopher
    Apr 28, 2013
    5
    What is this games unique selling point?

    It's ship and fleet editor, far more powerful than any other similar game on the genre at the cost of high complexity, forgivable considering the niche that likes this is the games target audience. But where the let down comes is in the question- How is this unique selling point implemented? how does it reward me for skilled use of it? how    What is this games unique selling point?

    It's ship and fleet editor, far more powerful than any other similar game on the genre at the cost of high complexity, forgivable considering the niche that likes this is the games target audience.

    But where the let down comes is in the question-

    How is this unique selling point implemented? how does it reward me for skilled use of it? how does it punish me for poor use of it?

    Respectively the answers are badly, no reward and no or next to no punishment.

    Only total failure at ship design is punished by the game, insufficient powerlack of an engineNo shield etc these tend to leave your ship crippled or easily crippled, partial failure is easily overcome, build a second ship of the same class and outnumber your foes in battle.

    Success in designing a ship that can go toe to toe with three ships gives you the reward of not clicking 2 more times on the build order. Your empires economy rides roughshod over any reward or punishment the design system when it ought to be the other way round, empire management is not this games key feature.

    The ship and fleet design system rates an 8 on its own and I would have no qualms giving that if the system had a payback. The game is desperate for a mode featuring a simulated battle on a tactical level rather than strategic level akin to a Tabletop Warhammer match you and a friend or you against the AI with 1000 point fleets a pre-fight design period then the combat where design skill then ship deployment is rewarded with success.    … Expand
  50. Arcturus519
    Apr 28, 2013
    5
    This game for the first hour of play, looks smooth and nice, you design ships, they fight, colonize worlds, everything you want. Then once you actually start playing the game you realize how important UI is. There are no good shortcuts to get to different areas. The ship building (and saving design) screen is insane. It makes you want to rip your face off. I want to update my ship with theThis game for the first hour of play, looks smooth and nice, you design ships, they fight, colonize worlds, everything you want. Then once you actually start playing the game you realize how important UI is. There are no good shortcuts to get to different areas. The ship building (and saving design) screen is insane. It makes you want to rip your face off. I want to update my ship with the latest tech and ...argh nevermind I don't want to play the game anymore.... I want to all all my planets and make sure they are about to be attacks, oh that's really hard too.. just so much going on... oh wait look all my production has been being dumped into space and wasted.
    The ship combat is great to watch and fun, but the game won't let you watch it because if you stick around to watch a fleet combat, your entire empire will crumble around you. (one turn should be a lot longer than 5 seconds, as fleet combats don't matter when you can build 6 fleets of the same size over again by the time your first fleet combat has finished. (and that's just from your homeworld, wait til you try and manage an empire?    … Expand
  51. TommyVercetti
    May 2, 2013
    0
    Before you buy this ignore all the positive spam reviews made by fanboys and relatives of the developer, this is a beta, overpriced game full of bugs that wants to fool you that it was made by a professional studio.
    Just for the record, at it's launch the game sells with 30 euro You can buy a 10x better game with half of that money (endless space or sins of a solar empire) It's like a    Before you buy this ignore all the positive spam reviews made by fanboys and relatives of the developer, this is a beta, overpriced game full of bugs that wants to fool you that it was made by a professional studio.
    Just for the record, at it's launch the game sells with 30 euro You can buy a 10x better game with half of that money (endless space or sins of a solar empire) It's like a lite, copied version of those games, but with less than half of the options and content.    … Expand
  52. BastardySkull
    May 5, 2013
    3
    The game has potential, and is quite enjoyable, but I'm giving this a bad rating because the game has been 'released' in an unfinished state. A lot of the issues I thought would be ironed out by 'release' are still in the game, including quests that don't actually work, strange AI that gives up after a while, the game juddering in lategame, and a clunky UI.

    I know it's coded by one guy    The game has potential, and is quite enjoyable, but I'm giving this a bad rating because the game has been 'released' in an unfinished state. A lot of the issues I thought would be ironed out by 'release' are still in the game, including quests that don't actually work, strange AI that gives up after a while, the game juddering in lategame, and a clunky UI.

    I know it's coded by one guy and I'm impressed but you can't just release an unfinished game.    … Expand
  53. pazmacats
    Apr 27, 2013
    5
    This game gets a 10/10 for letting me design a fleet of ships that will shred the enemy fleets to space debris... The problem is: THere is no documentation (everything is guessing and trial&error, AI uses your ship designs but has no clue what it is doing), and the game is terrible when you try to wipe out another civilization or conquer their planets becuase of the way ground combat isThis game gets a 10/10 for letting me design a fleet of ships that will shred the enemy fleets to space debris... The problem is: THere is no documentation (everything is guessing and trial&error, AI uses your ship designs but has no clue what it is doing), and the game is terrible when you try to wipe out another civilization or conquer their planets becuase of the way ground combat is organized.
    The idea of the game is absolutely great. But everything besides the ship design, ship combat part pretty much sucks.    … Expand
  54. nighter-3d
    Apr 29, 2013
    5
    This game isn't really perfect. at least not in its current "beta" form.

    Economy is badly explained and for the new player it becomes near impossible to balance industry vs research as industry often gives more tax income then research(especially on richer planets) causing it to be very difficult to squeeze the best bit of research unless you have poor planets where research is    This game isn't really perfect. at least not in its current "beta" form.

    Economy is badly explained and for the new player it becomes near impossible to balance industry vs research as industry often gives more tax income then research(especially on richer planets) causing it to be very difficult to squeeze the best bit of research unless you have poor planets where research is profitable. it becomes a juggling mess

    The worst part however is the dreadful A.I.
    Initial behaviour is ok. it expands, it keeps to its nature (they get random "goals" like military,expansion and such), however once you get to the inevitable part of War the A.I's behave erratic and infuriating and im not talking about the one you are engaging with (their troop movement tends to get delayed reactions as the ai is apparently unable to cancel a earlier order, result is they failing at defence, but that's it), No its the factions surrounding the ones you are invading that gets annoying. The moment you clear a planet and it starts changing to your control EVERY single empire nearby IMMEDIATELY sends a Colony ship to that planet and if the planet's production isn't fast enough to build a colony before a colony ship arrives it gets stolen, worst is that when it does get "kill-stolen" and your forces are occupying that planet they declare war claiming "you are attacking our system". i didn't pay attention and i got declared war by half the galaxy cause they all are unnaturally greedy.... WTF?!? apparently i have to have a colony ship at my intended target and one at every planet in that system cause if i don't 5 colony ships appear and hang around like vultures.

    The last problem is the huge list of Incomplete features, For example "Open borders" doesn't mean Squat. they are still gonna parade around your system anyway and happily steal one of your systems (while if you do the same they go "HOW DARE YOU" and continuously call dibs on everything). another broken feature is the interaction with the "pre-space civilization" which is apparently incomplete.

    The game has potential. the graphics are awesome, the ship designing is a nice and challenging feature (fleet has little importance tough), but underneath the hood where it matters it comes over as buggy and mediocre. and although they may claim its still "BETA" it is NOT defined as such on steam so i feel lied too having played this game.

    i hope they refine the AI greatly cause atm its only making me go "WTF" over and over and over...    … Expand
  55. gametester
    May 6, 2013
    0
    (Sorry for my English. I am not a native speaker).
    !Metacritics deleting negative user reviews! Save your review!
    An unfinished and extremely bugged game like Stardrive deserves so bad raiting! We can't play this game!!! Don't buy Star Drive! This 1.07B release version is an early alpha version! After mid game: extreme fps drop and you can't finish a game, Game crashes and freezes. AI    (Sorry for my English. I am not a native speaker).
    !Metacritics deleting negative user reviews! Save your review!
    An unfinished and extremely bugged game like Stardrive deserves so bad raiting! We can't play this game!!!

    Don't buy Star Drive! This 1.07B release version is an early alpha version! After mid game: extreme fps drop and you can't finish a game, Game crashes and freezes. AI is dumb and cheating (on hard/brutal). UI is absolutely awful and confusing. You can't even change graphic settings (only resolution). At this stage this game is absolutely unfinished.
    There are two games that are 100 times better than Star Drive and have the same prize!!!!
    1) Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (Release 2012) this is a real-time strategy (like Homeworld). This game has very nice 3D graphic (10x time better than Star Drive will ever have). It has no bugs and runs smooth.
    2) Endless Space (Release 2012) buy this game if you like turned based strategy. It has no bugs and runs smooth.
    These two games are 100 times better than Star Drive. Compare these games with Star Drive and wait for PC Game Reviews (PC Magazines)! Wait for AMAZON Reviews!    … Expand
  56. saz
    Apr 28, 2013
    5
    I'm a big fan of 4x games. It's impressive there's only one person on the project. Sadly, you can tell. It needs more cooks in the kitchen. In it's current state, it's more of a fringe game. Most players will find the UI frustrating and incomplete. Many features like a scroll out button or hotkeys to take you to your home planet are just missing. I wasn't interested in building customI'm a big fan of 4x games. It's impressive there's only one person on the project. Sadly, you can tell. It needs more cooks in the kitchen. In it's current state, it's more of a fringe game. Most players will find the UI frustrating and incomplete. Many features like a scroll out button or hotkeys to take you to your home planet are just missing. I wasn't interested in building custom ships and there is a bad gap for included ship designs. If you research a new tech, you'll have to create a design to use it.He's doing an in service to his game and to those purchasing it, by keeping it all the work and inspiration in house. These games really need big teams. Hopefully not that it's gone retail, he can add some staff.… Expand
  57. Gnawer
    May 5, 2013
    5
    I bought this game right after release. It has some very nice moments, but everything feels unbalanced and unfinished. I can't help feeling I was tricked into pre-ordering and getting a beta version, instead of buying a completed product. Don't get me wrong, as a beta it would be amazing, but that's not what I expected.
  58. nitehawk
    May 2, 2013
    0
    I can not understand the 9's and 10's being thrown out here. This game is unfinished and being sold as if ti is a AA title for USD$30. Unacceptable. Developer asks fans to come to metacritic and game the system.

    Professional reviewers are afraid to touch it in fear of angering the fans. This game as the concept and potential to be the best 4x space game ever. Poorly implemented UI,    I can not understand the 9's and 10's being thrown out here. This game is unfinished and being sold as if ti is a AA title for USD$30. Unacceptable. Developer asks fans to come to metacritic and game the system.

    Professional reviewers are afraid to touch it in fear of angering the fans.

    This game as the concept and potential to be the best 4x space game ever. Poorly implemented UI, idiotic AI and rampant bugs make the game very difficult to play. Even the planetary elements stolen from Galactic Civilizations (which were likely stolen from other games) were not implemented well.

    Perhaps in 6 months this game will achieve greatness. I expect that bugfixes and updates will cease as the general public realizes the game will never be finished and people stop buying the game.

    I liken this game to a pyramid scheme. The early adopters are pumping it with their 9 and 10 ratings in the hopes more people will purchase it, keeping the development going as long a they can. I admit I was a sucker and fell for it.    … Expand
  59. Golgothar
    May 8, 2013
    4
    Looking at all the previews, this was a highly anticipated game for me. The images looked awesome, the characters and ships had an awesome design and in general the customization options looked amazing.
    It's amazing how every single point above could still be true on release and still the game is simply unplayable.
    > You start the game and get immediately lost, there is no story and the    Looking at all the previews, this was a highly anticipated game for me. The images looked awesome, the characters and ships had an awesome design and in general the customization options looked amazing.
    It's amazing how every single point above could still be true on release and still the game is simply unplayable.
    > You start the game and get immediately lost, there is no story and the tutorials suck. A couple of them have videos but the rest is running text.
    > You eventually get past that and start you colony, the UI sucks. You can't control your ships effectively, it's hard to click them and you'll be lucky to even find your ships in the universe. Adding to that, there is no highlighting of your units or plants so good luck trying to understand what's going on.
    > I'm one of the guys that likes to micromanage but it's practically impossible to do so in this game since you get overwhelmed I then found i had a couple of options to let the AI automatically build roads and send goods and population to my new colonies but that just simply turns off that part of the game, everything is created for you and you never need to look at it again. Your planets will build ships apparently randomly to fill some AI purpose which is an odd solution.
    > Customizing your ship is nice but it has pointless components. Sometimes you build a great ship and then find you forgot to but enough power in it... or there is no ammo so it doesn't really fire...
    > I also found some game mechanics were crap and should be removed, like you can control a single ship with WASD in a battle but it's so strange that you never will.
    > Also in the middle of the game all my ships stopped moving suddenly, i thought there was a problem with the game, restarted and they were still all stopped... after a while i noticed a text on the screen saying Hyperspace Flux and came to the conclusion the developers added a random universe event that blocks the game for 5 minutes, how nice.
    > You then start exploring and start your to want to fight. I had a perk with a better than average mega space ship, i gathered 5 more fighters and the first random neutral ship i find kills all my ships, because it has like a million shield points when i don't even know what shields are yet. These neutral guys exist randomly in a lot of systems and for some unknown reason are ultra hard to kill, they are not even players mind you, they are neutral ships roaming the universe randomly just to kill your game experience.
    I got frustrated, created a fleet of 20 fighters and tried again, only to be decimated in under a minute by the same neutral ship.

    At this point i decided the game wasn't polished and balanced enough to be playable and never picked it up again. What's sad is that with probably little effort and a couple of changed game mechanics this could be one of the years greatest hits in 4X strategy games.

    Golgothar    … Expand
  60. Gintea
    Sep 27, 2013
    5
    Most likely abandonware. The developer announced that he is done with this game in its (unfinished) state.
    To quote him (Zero) I think StarDrive vanilla is a fine game. I'm happy with it. I'll be patching it here and there as my whims take me. If you feel cheated by StarDrive, kindly scroll up to the upper right portion of your browser screen and click the "Logout" button. I don't want    Most likely abandonware. The developer announced that he is done with this game in its (unfinished) state.
    To quote him (Zero) I think StarDrive vanilla is a fine game. I'm happy with it. I'll be patching it here and there as my whims take me. If you feel cheated by StarDrive, kindly scroll up to the upper right portion of your browser screen and click the "Logout" button. I don't want to hear it."
    So promised features are missing and most likely wont be delivered.
    However even without being completely finished, the game is not BAD.
    If you just need your small 4x fix you get nicely done graphics, good music and some quite enjoyable game mechanics.
    If you can bear with the existing memory leak and lag in late game and dont care about it not being feature complete you might even have a great time.
    ...and then you might consider to re buy the game in its new incarnation, it has been announced it will be basically redone on a new engine (full price for everyone). Yay?    … Expand
  61. LazyChestnut
    Apr 27, 2013
    6
    The Good

    This game is a ship designer's paradise! If you've ever dreamed of designing armadas of spaceships and carriers and disposable destroyers to protect them, and then command them in battle; or, if you've always wanted to build a flying fortress armed to the teeth just to see how long it will last, then this game is for you! Some of the other reviewers have criticized the ship    The Good

    This game is a ship designer's paradise! If you've ever dreamed of designing armadas of spaceships and carriers and disposable destroyers to protect them, and then command them in battle; or, if you've always wanted to build a flying fortress armed to the teeth just to see how long it will last, then this game is for you!

    Some of the other reviewers have criticized the ship designing as a tedious task. And it's true that you can spend an hour or more in the middle of the game designing ships, but I love every minute of it! The big payoff of seeing your ship designs in action is by far the most fun aspect of this game, and this aspect leaves all previous ship-designing games in the dust.

    The meh

    The 4x gameplay isn't as involved or as interesting as, say, a civ game. But it hits on the basic blocking and tackling, and is fun enough to propel the game along between technology upgrades, and more importantly, new ship-designing opportunities.

    The bad

    The game lacks feature polish. While all of the core elements are in place, some features are head-scratchingly absent. For example, the autosave occurs every 30 minutes, and there is no mechanism to adjust this interval. There is no ctrl-s or quicksave option. There are some keyboard shortcuts, but nobody knows what they are because they aren't published.

    On play control, there is no way to deselect a unit from your group. Ctrl-dragging to add a group of units to your group accidentally picks up freighters and shipyards. And my favorite is when I force-move my in-combat group a planet, sometimes they don't go, sometimes they go, and sometimes they go and then come right back into battle.

    Additionally, the game is riddled with crashes and freezes. I can expect my game to crash or freeze at least twice during a play session, which means I have to save often, and the aforementioned lack of features to help save quickly or effortlessly, makes this a tedious chore. To their credit, the developers appear to be addressing the crashes as fast as possible, but that just means they have little time left over to add the much-needed polish to the game.

    Bottom Line

    Very fun game, but comes with a bit of suffering.    … Expand
  62. batmanmuki
    Jul 20, 2013
    0
    Ui needs lots of work, Game is buggy, research tec is boring as hell. The world seems bit dead to me, start was okay, but after that it dropped ball. Its shame that i wasted money on this game, even it was on the sale it was not worth the price.
  63. fenrishero
    May 9, 2013
    3
    This game just doesn't work. It tries to marry RTS with 4X aspects, and comes off as too complicated in RTS micromanaging aspects, and yet too simple to enjoy the 4X aspects due to the need for a short tech tree and reliance on AI control in order to maintain output. Reminds me of MOO3, in how it tries to do something new, but that something just doesn't work.
  64. NichG
    Apr 29, 2013
    6
    StarDrive strikes me as a game with a lot of potential that at the same time doesn't quite get there. The artwork is superb and I love the fact that each race is given both a unique character as well as specific dialogue options to that race. The quirk of being able to use the diplomacy interface to actually just chat with the ambassador is nice and makes it feel a little like Star ControlStarDrive strikes me as a game with a lot of potential that at the same time doesn't quite get there. The artwork is superb and I love the fact that each race is given both a unique character as well as specific dialogue options to that race. The quirk of being able to use the diplomacy interface to actually just chat with the ambassador is nice and makes it feel a little like Star Control 2 and the like that its more than just business, but also exploration of the variety of a universe. The addition of the occasional dialogue event on discovery of a new planet adds to this as well, as does the Remnant subplot.

    The ship designer is this game's most complex feature. When working with big hulls you have an incredible amount of customization that can be done. Furthermore, the AI learns from your designs, which is a very nice touch. Since damage happens per-module and is spatially accurate, there are subtleties of the system in placement of everything up to the ship's wiring. This is StarDrive's true contribution to the genre a feature that I don't think I've seen in any other such game.

    My complaints with the game are more to do with the actual mechanics of play. Managing the economy and planets feels punishingly micro in a realtime game where you already have many things vying for limited attention. The fact that fleets have a tendency to not arrive at the same time also contributes to this problem, as well as the lack of ship pathing that is aware of system gravity wells (so ships sometimes just get slowed down on the way to a fight because they didn't take a slight detour). I don't really think the realtime adds anything to the game, but it costs it a lot.

    The other problem is that the content that is there is like a preview of some bigger game that has yet to manifest itself. The dialogue option to find out about the various races is a neat touch, but there's really only one such option per race. The planetary discovery event is neat, but there's only the one (and its not completely implemented). The tech tree is very short and is kind of front-loaded (it takes a long time to the get the first few techs, then suddenly you're getting new techs every few minutes).    … Expand
  65. Spacebears6766
    Apr 28, 2013
    6
    To put it simply, the game is not done. I bought the beta version on steam and have enjoyed the product. I cannot tolerate that the game is being marketed as a "finished" product now that the release date has passed. Some races have yet to receive their full ship line ups and it is obvious that the game is just not done. While I have no problem pre-purchasing a game to get access to aTo put it simply, the game is not done. I bought the beta version on steam and have enjoyed the product. I cannot tolerate that the game is being marketed as a "finished" product now that the release date has passed. Some races have yet to receive their full ship line ups and it is obvious that the game is just not done. While I have no problem pre-purchasing a game to get access to a beta I expect a released product to be finished. The release date should have been pushed back or some outside help brought in to finish the game up if the April 26th release date was really that important.
    Overall the game has a nice concept but the execution seems a bit lacking. I would still recommend this game to any space or 4x fan but be warned, it is definitely not a finished product.    … Expand
  66. K1ller
    Apr 29, 2013
    6
    I preordered the game two month ago and I was really surprised by it. However the longer I played the more flaws I have discovered.
    Some people praise the ability to design own ships. Yes, it sounds cool. But how come noone mentiones that you have to fill in EVERY SINGLE space on your ship. I mean wtf? What if I do not want to? Why do I have to have more expensive and heavier ship? How    I preordered the game two month ago and I was really surprised by it. However the longer I played the more flaws I have discovered.
    Some people praise the ability to design own ships. Yes, it sounds cool. But how come noone mentiones that you have to fill in EVERY SINGLE space on your ship. I mean wtf? What if I do not want to? Why do I have to have more expensive and heavier ship? How come noone mentiones the total luck of an upgrade possibility? You have a new weapon researched? Cool. Now go to the ship design and replace EVERY SINGLE one manually. You must be kidding. I would accept this in beta, but not in a full version. But wait, full version is just a renamed beta. Oh, nevermind then.
    Now we go to AI. First let me tell you that AI can not design its own ships. Yes, you hear right. It can use preset designs and designs you created, but it can not make it own ones. Quite a flaw in a space strategy, do not you agree? Diplomatic AI also needs to be tweaked more. It has the same flaw as most cheap AIs. Are you weak? To the hell with you, we declare war. And what if someone wants to play peacefully? I am rich, I am technologicaly advanced, but just because I do not build thousands of ships like a moron I am bad? And even if I manage not to angry anyone by my small military, I will definitely make them angry by travelling through their space. And I do nto mean their systems, but the game has a thing called subspace projector which allows your ships to travel faster. But by some strange logic a space around it is considered a race territory. And as the AI spams these projectors like crazy, later int the game you simply have to cross their space. The most funny thing is that I consider this a total useless technology and I have never build a single one projector.
    Speaking of technologies, the technology tree is really and I mean really short. It does not take long and you have researched everything. I was hoping that in a full version it would be enlarged. But as I mentioned, full version is just the beta with a changed name.
    As some others mentioned here, the game is on a good way, but richt now it simply lacks the depth. And it became really boring for me after a short time. There are no events in the galaxy (only really stupid subspace flux preventing all war travel and happening way too often). In the end it ends up with you spamming ships like crazy because it is what everyone else is doing. No way to win otherwise. Which is quite sad. Even in Master of Orion 2 you could win by wiping out Antarean homeworld and to do that you did not need the strongest military. So my recommendation is wait. Wait a few months to see if the game is improved. Right now you would be buying a beta version for a price of a full version.    … Expand
  67. pwnDonkey
    Jan 10, 2014
    0
    This is an updated review of stardrive. I originally did a review in april 2013 and said, like many others, that this game had alot of potential. What happened is, the developer took the money and ran and never completed the game.

    This means the promises made to people who paid $25 like me were never fulfilled. Worse, the end game is unplayable because of crippling memory problems.    This is an updated review of stardrive. I originally did a review in april 2013 and said, like many others, that this game had alot of potential. What happened is, the developer took the money and ran and never completed the game.

    This means the promises made to people who paid $25 like me were never fulfilled. Worse, the end game is unplayable because of crippling memory problems.

    Never ever buy a zerosum game or anything related to this developer again. He should be shunned and banished from game making forever.    … Expand
  68. owen445x
    Apr 29, 2014
    3
    Incomplete game and Dev has already moved on.. took our money from early access so he could fund his new game without finishing the multiplayer after it was already promised.

    Wish this game had a map generater so I didnt have to play the same galaxy every time. Pritty much all you do is set the computer to auto govern all your planets and just mass a large fleet and all the AI wants    Incomplete game and Dev has already moved on.. took our money from early access so he could fund his new game without finishing the multiplayer after it was already promised.

    Wish this game had a map generater so I didnt have to play the same galaxy every time.

    Pritty much all you do is set the computer to auto govern all your planets and just mass a large fleet and all the AI wants to be your friend. Can't be friends unless you already number 1 or 2 top player already so what's the point in alliances when I can already destroy the other AI players?

    Game is pretty annoying at times also.. I spent a lot of time and resources to gain the friendship of another race just to lose it in a split second. I was invading a world with foot soldiers while bombing it from space and the AI just decided to colonize it while I was already attacking the planet and it declared hostility on me on the first auto attack that wasn't even in my control to stop.

    Another annoying part of the game is the AI declares a planet theirs and for you to leave it alone even when its on the other side of the galaxy. Try building alliances when you need to expand and every ally you have is getting upset that your colonizing their intended planets!

    After a few wins.. never went back since this is a dead game and wont ever receive multiplayer. I think this could have been a fun game if I had actual people to play with or against.    … Expand
  69. m0skit0
    Sep 16, 2013
    7
    This game is a blatant MOO (Master of Orion) clone and it doesn't hide it (why would it, the first 2 MOOs are the best space 4X games ever). It took everything MOO did right (oh moving those little men from one assignement to another) while introducing interesting ideas (for example Store/Import/Export options), operational area for ships... But it lacks in improving some things: shipThis game is a blatant MOO (Master of Orion) clone and it doesn't hide it (why would it, the first 2 MOOs are the best space 4X games ever). It took everything MOO did right (oh moving those little men from one assignement to another) while introducing interesting ideas (for example Store/Import/Export options), operational area for ships... But it lacks in improving some things: ship design is horrible (even MOO2 had a better interface for ship design), fleet creation/management is buggy, space map interface is buggy and lacking features (limited zoom, very hard to tell what's going on when full zoomed out...). This is a good game but somewhat still looks unfinished. I bought it when it was on Alpha, then passed to Beta, then to Release without very much changes and still some known bugs unfixed.

    I understand a very small company made this, but this doesn't excuse charging 30$ for a clearly unfinished game. I would have loved to wait more in Beta and see these issues fixed.

    Still looking for a game that can rival with MOO2.    … Expand
  70. grazr
    Jun 6, 2013
    5
    You go into this game with a lot of hopes for indie innovation, but eventually discover that the game is incomplete, which is massively disappointing for the price tag. The side missions are broken and the games don't seem to end for hours after you've solidified your lead and win.

    Most of the fun comes from building your ships and seeing them in action, but you can't make the most of    You go into this game with a lot of hopes for indie innovation, but eventually discover that the game is incomplete, which is massively disappointing for the price tag. The side missions are broken and the games don't seem to end for hours after you've solidified your lead and win.

    Most of the fun comes from building your ships and seeing them in action, but you can't make the most of that fact until you unlock the technologies and chassis's, which is tediously slow to do because the economy consolidates research in with production and food. You need food to increase and maintain population and production to build things like your fleets or planet improvements, so research is always an after thought after keeping your empire stable. This makes playing small and medium maps very tedious as you wont get economies strong enough to take advantage of most of what the game really has to offer.

    Recommend your first game for each empire be set to easy and drag it out so that you can create your ship designs with an easily acquired and maintained economy, ready for more competitive games later. Replay value is limited to a couple games per empire until you're doing the same thing over and over with no real buzz that you might otherwise find in other games regardless of repetitiveness. This could be largely improved by allowing a customisation of chassis's with perhaps a limiting frame to maintain some empire specificness.

    Overall the game was fun, but each time i found myself eventually enjoying myself i would be stumped by a tedious mechanic. First it was an economy i couldn't stabilise until i had 7 moderately sourced and fully upgraded planets that could export. Scarey threats from AI that had no business making threats. Spies which remain a relatively hidden aspect of the game as well, a complicating mechanic i'd like to have an option to disable, not least because it's a needless nuisance to the economy for a game you'll buy largely for the combat.

    I feel like i've jumped from topic to topic haphazardly, but that's how the game feels, so many aspects affect other aspects of the game in a compromising way. Things that get in the way of what attracts you to it in the first place. Building your ships and sending them into battle. It's like they made the game and thought of 20 mechanics to prevent you from getting to what makes it so interesting.

    It still needs work or at the very least to be fixed and have some UI improvements and then individualising the AI would also make games more dynamic. Otherwise you might as well just play geometry wars.    … Expand
  71. Ndi
    Jun 23, 2013
    6
    Like many other reviewers, I agree that the game has potential, but it is poorly implemented and executed. No tutorial to shake a stick at, no gradual introduction, nothing. Opens a screen with 4 million controls and only a hint and away we go.

    As a result, I wander around, looking for friends. You find powerful friends, you're set. You don't, it's hard and sweaty. Ship design is a    Like many other reviewers, I agree that the game has potential, but it is poorly implemented and executed. No tutorial to shake a stick at, no gradual introduction, nothing. Opens a screen with 4 million controls and only a hint and away we go.

    As a result, I wander around, looking for friends. You find powerful friends, you're set. You don't, it's hard and sweaty.

    Ship design is a chore. No templates. Lets you design a ship then refuses to accept it. Components are red but doesn't tell you why.

    Game is slow enough to be boring, but no slow enough to give you excellent tactics (a la TBS). Base design took 30 minutes to understand. Resources are limited, meaning you can just let loose and have fun.

    Basically, this game expects me to already know exactly what to do, but offers no insight to get me started.

    It could be a great game, but it's not. I see absolutely no reason to take this game up when SoaSE is out.    … Expand
  72. bottlecap3158
    Jul 31, 2014
    2
    After finding the amount of high ratings on this site I had to write a review on this game. Simply put, it could have been great. The developer promised so many great things for the game as an early access supporter. When the game launched, it was really just a flop. It was really just the beta but with a higher price tag, and the developer decided that he would use your wasted $30.00 toAfter finding the amount of high ratings on this site I had to write a review on this game. Simply put, it could have been great. The developer promised so many great things for the game as an early access supporter. When the game launched, it was really just a flop. It was really just the beta but with a higher price tag, and the developer decided that he would use your wasted $30.00 to fund a sequel that had all of his features that he promised originally. Don't buy this game, don't support this developer, and go buy Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. At least I can actually enjoy that game... One more note, I know that it was a single person developer, but that doesn't mean he can just stop supporting his games and make empty promises. Intrusion 2 was created by a single developer, and that game is extremely better than the mere 2 hours I put into the release of Stardrive. It took the single developer 3 years to create Intrusion 2. Why can't this developer have the same perseverance and drive that the Intrusion 2 developer has? Just because you don't like a product that you have created doesn't mean you have to abandon it and make a new game. Think about that the next time you want to disappoint people.… Expand
  73. ln42
    Apr 29, 2013
    7
    Star Drive is a real time 4x game with many similarities to the turn based Galactic Civilizations. It is still in its Beta phase so expect balancing issues, bugs and some unfinished features. It is hard to predict how good the game will be once it's released as there are still many issues that need to be adressed, mostly concerning the ground combat, performance and AI.

    The economic    Star Drive is a real time 4x game with many similarities to the turn based Galactic Civilizations. It is still in its Beta phase so expect balancing issues, bugs and some unfinished features. It is hard to predict how good the game will be once it's released as there are still many issues that need to be adressed, mostly concerning the ground combat, performance and AI.

    The economic side of the game is pretty simple, each planet has a population cap and base food and production multipliers and can be enhanced by building improvements. Unlike in GC there is no happiness and it does not cost money to produce ressources and food, instead the taxrate takes a share of all the production and research credits, making the economic system much simpler. The core focus of the game lies in rapid expansion, logistics and combat.

    The Shipyard, the tool to design your own ships, is the most unique feature of the game. The shiphulls have slots for different components laid out on a 2D plane, more then 1000 for some of the largest ships and only 10 for the smallest. The components placed on the ship don't simply add up to a total HP, defense and firepower rating like in Galactic Civilizations, their position plays a great role in combat. Shots hitting the components damage until destruction and are then taken out of combat until they are repaired, generators cause secondary explosions that damage surrounding components and when the last bridge component is destroyed the whole ship fails clever ship design makes a huge difference, good designs can be vastly superior to the designs the AI uses, at least once frigates and cruisers become available.

    This also makes the different races with their individual ship designs fundamentally different, the Vulfen Imperium for example has pretty small ships that can be turned into cheap heavy hitting, but weak destroyers whereas the Opteris have huge ships with many slots for armor plates that can't be used for guns, making them last for a long time under heavy fire, but slow, hard to miss and less firepower for the money.

    The downside to the shipyard is that it is possible to build vastly superior ships compared to the AI. Larger groups of cheap Vulfen frigates equipped with low tech weapons can have enough firepower to destroy everything the AI may have to offer during late game, and thanks to the possibility to adapt to the designs the AI usually uses even before a war starts gives human players a huge advantage, regardless of how good their designs are. Currently there is a serious lack of challenge in the game once you survive the early stage.

    Another thing that reduces the difficulty is the lack of declining productivity increases with larger empires like in civilization where happiness is a serious issue. There is absolutely no reason not to colonize a planet; the worst that can happen is that you simply won't get anything out of it.

    Conclusion: This games core mechanics have a huge potential, but are also part of its biggest weakness players can systematically outsmart the AI. Other then that it's a lot of fun developing strategies and ship designs. Assuming most of the current issues get solved and a multiplayer mode implemented this could become a great multiplayers game, and I'm really looking forward to its final release. If you like the Genre, but don't want to be part of a closed beta (and don't trust the developer to properly finish the game) you should keep an eye on this game and wait for its release.    … Expand
  74. ducksaws
    Apr 26, 2013
    8
    This game is a lot of fun, regardless of any problems it may have. A few weeks ago, the rumors about performance issues were actually true, but i still managed to sink 30 hours into the game and had fun every minute of it despite them. But that was a few weeks ago, the developer has since put a lot of time into ironing out those issues (where performance would dip drastically once you gotThis game is a lot of fun, regardless of any problems it may have. A few weeks ago, the rumors about performance issues were actually true, but i still managed to sink 30 hours into the game and had fun every minute of it despite them. But that was a few weeks ago, the developer has since put a lot of time into ironing out those issues (where performance would dip drastically once you got 4-5 hours into a game with lots of ships on the screen) and it shows.

    Now that we have that behind us, let's talk about the actual game. It's your basic 4x game setup. You start in your home planet, research technology to improve your agricultural and industrial capabilities, and eventually reach out to colonize a new world. Worlds are rated on three aspects, how many people they can support, how much food per person they can produce, and how much production per person they can produce. You need food to feed people and you need people to produce starships, buildings, research for new technology, and more food.

    At the start of the game your options are limited. You might be fielding some junky, tiny armored fighters and not even be able to kill off some pirates that will threaten your empire unless you pay them off. But soon enough, you will find yourself terraforming barren worlds and building starships with a dozen laser beam batteries or maybe missiles or railguns or energy cannons depending on what route of research you have taken), hangars to launch fighters, high tech armor, and shields.

    Ship building and combat is where the game truly shines. It's similar to Gratuitous Space battles in some ways. Incoming projectiles from enemies will hit precise spots of your ship. You need to have shields and armor protecting your power reactors because they may explode catastrophically if destroyed. You also need power from those reactors for all the weapons on your ship so you will have to run power cables to more remote parts of your ship. You can choose between different types of weapons, armor, engines, power sources, etc. You choose to have a fleet of ships that are very quick but lightly armored, behemoths that take forever to get anywhere but can take a beating, glass cannon ships armed with a million guns but barely any protection, or a mix between anything you want because you get to design these ships literally piece by piece.

    The only weaknesses to the actual game mechanics are that diplomacy options are functional but a little limited. You also start to fly through tech trees rapidly once you reach the late game because you may have a dozen or more worlds all researching. If this was a stagnant, done game, I would score it a bit lower. However, the game is very much a "living" product in that the developer is not going to just drop it and start working on a sequel like it's an installment of Call of Duty, the same way Minecraft is a completely different game than it was when it was first "released". There are also modding tools that the developer has encouraged people to use and quite a few mods already to add more research, guns, and ships.

    Overall, this game is really a bundle of fun. It has some problems in that there could be more weapon or research options, however the developer has not put the game away and there are ample modding tools to add on to it. The game is great as it is and only stands to be improved later on.    … Expand
  75. Ristar87
    Apr 29, 2013
    8
    So far, so good.

    No, it doesn't quite have the depth of Galactic Civilizations 2 (with the Twilight of the Arnor expansion). But it is an addictive, fast-paced 4X space strategy game. It feels like a real-time Master of Orion 2 in many ways, but has some tweaks and changes, not least of which is the ship design and combat. It's still getting fleshed out in places, but I've really    So far, so good.

    No, it doesn't quite have the depth of Galactic Civilizations 2 (with the Twilight of the Arnor expansion). But it is an addictive, fast-paced 4X space strategy game. It feels like a real-time Master of Orion 2 in many ways, but has some tweaks and changes, not least of which is the ship design and combat.

    It's still getting fleshed out in places, but I've really enjoyed what I see (enough to buy the game on Steam). Looking forward to seeing where it goes next!    … Expand
  76. bcastl
    Apr 30, 2013
    7
    StarDrive is an ambitious project from an independent developer that's in fact just 1 guy! In light of that, it's quite an accomplishment.

    Pros: Great artwork, especially in the diplomacy interface You can design your own starships from the ground up Robust planet management interface Solid 4X game, and there aren't many of these Comprehensive faction creation process that allows    StarDrive is an ambitious project from an independent developer that's in fact just 1 guy! In light of that, it's quite an accomplishment.

    Pros:
    Great artwork, especially in the diplomacy interface
    You can design your own starships from the ground up
    Robust planet management interface
    Solid 4X game, and there aren't many of these
    Comprehensive faction creation process that allows you to choose the bonuses and issues your civilization will have.

    Cons
    Some UI (such as game speed, pausing) is missing
    Diplomacy is oddly limited, economic prosperity alone doesn't mean anything. You have to have things like artifacts, technology or colonies to trade to make other civs like you more.
    late game slow downs which really impact performance/enjoyment of the game

    As others have mentioned, it's stellar for an indie game and it has a lot of playability. Once the lategame stability issues are fixed and if people start modding it, it'll have a really long lifespan and a bright future. I'm also hoping for some sort of multiplayer mode (the kickstarter mentioned some sort of DOTA/MOBA/tabletop inspired game where you compete in quick matches with prebulit fleets)

    Overall, it's well worth the price, and I do not regret the $26 I put down to play it.    … Expand
  77. Stilljester
    Apr 29, 2013
    7
    This is the best 4x game since Master of Orion II. That being said, Moo2 still sits upon the throne.

    StarDrive is a worthy heir. Obviously a labor of love, this indie gem was developed by a small crew with very little money behind them, and the result is a perfectly gorgeous 4x game. It feels like this is what master of Orion 3 was trying to be. The RTS aspect is engaging, but you    This is the best 4x game since Master of Orion II. That being said, Moo2 still sits upon the throne.

    StarDrive is a worthy heir. Obviously a labor of love, this indie gem was developed by a small crew with very little money behind them, and the result is a perfectly gorgeous 4x game. It feels like this is what master of Orion 3 was trying to be.

    The RTS aspect is engaging, but you can also pause to fine-tune your build queues. The universe is an exciting place to explore you can find artifacts that permanently improve your racial abilities, and even make first-contact with an industrial-level civilization. Like any good 4x game, a variety of strategies will lead you to victory. The artwork is gorgeous.

    One thing I appreciate about the design is that the game remains challenging throughout. As your empire grows and absorbs other empires, alien races do the same, usually remaining at roughly the same size as yours. Also, in MOO2, at a certain level of technology, a single player designed ship could easily massacre 10 computer-designed ships of the same tech level. Not so in StarDrive.

    The game is deeply engaging, and once you've mastered the controls (which, by the way, the game doesn't help you with. They are not intuitive.) it's immensely fun to play.

    In some ways, it might be easiest to describe where the game falls short:

    -The User Interface, as other reviewers have noted, can feel desperately clunky at times. It seems the designers could've taken a few cues from RTS games that get it right. The most obvious example would be using Starcraft's "ctrl-click" to select all ships of one type in the vicinity.

    Another example, you can tell a freighter to "Trade Production" meaning it will collect production from planets you told to export, and deliver it to planets you've told to import. But there doesn't seem to be a way to tell the the ship to "go to earth, pick up 15 production, and deliver it to Venus." If the AI decides it would rather take the production to another "importing" planet 15 light years away, there doesn't seem to be a way to tell it otherwise.

    -Diplomacy is simultaneously better and worse than other 4x's. Better because you have the option of folding a friendly empire into a federation with your own. This makes it feel like your relationship may be going somewhere, as opposed to forestalling the inevitable war. Worse, because it seems that a lot of fairly basic diplomacy options have been overlooked. (Really? I can't trade energy credits with another empire?)

    -Lovers of Master of Orion will have to adjust to allowing large amounts of automation to keep their empire going. The universe is expansive, and you simply can't keep track of thousands of ships and hundreds of colonies in the end game.

    -The graphics are missing some BASIC, KEY options. How about some lower-polygon models? reduced effects? Thank goodness my video card allows me to deactivate anti-aliasing for the application, because you sure can't do it in-game. I bought this laptop 2 months ago, and its fairly high-powered. I run Starcraft with max video options, Planetside 2 with medium. Until I figured out how to adjust the display through my video card, this game was starting to look like a slideshow.

    -The tech tree is not very deep. For instance, no matter how much you research, once you've put lasers and shields on your fighter craft, they will never improve for the rest of the game, because there are no other energy weapons, engines, or shields small enough to fit on them. In fact, often times it seems like you've got all this room to load cool devices on your brand new ship hull, but not a lot of cool devices to fill up all that space with...

    All in all, a very worthy effort. I'm glad I purchased it, and I will spend many, many hours on this one. I'm also glad I got it at a discount, because I feel like it comes up a little bit short of true greatness. Unless they spend a little more time fixing these issues, in 10 years, people will still be comparing 4x games to MOO2, not this one.    … Expand
  78. blight
    May 10, 2013
    9
    From a very small developer this title is great, I hope that this title grows in depth.

    I have spent much more on Legends of Pegasus and Endless Space and neither of those were are as fun as StarDrive in my opinion. Here are my thoughts from playing 16 hours of the released version. Including a completed large game. (+) Overall, this game does seem take MOO 2 as it's ancestry, and    From a very small developer this title is great, I hope that this title grows in depth.

    I have spent much more on Legends of Pegasus and Endless Space and neither of those were are as fun as StarDrive in my opinion.

    Here are my thoughts from playing 16 hours of the released version. Including a completed large game.

    (+) Overall, this game does seem take MOO 2 as it's ancestry, and I like that. I don't thinks its a rip off as much as a homage to a great game that I love as one of my top games of all time.

    (+) Race customization is like MOO 2.

    (+++)The ship design is the best that I have ever seen in a 4X game, the larger ships will just blow you mind with the possibilities you get to manage everything right down to localized shields/armor to protect internal components.

    (+) giving orders and layout of ground combat is possible.

    (+) Tutorial was enough to get going.

    (+) Real Management of colony, including building projects and defense.

    (-) The tech trees are short but intact.

    (--) No Campaign

    (null) The game speed is tricky if you are used to turn based 4X games but the space bar pauses, use it when you need to:)    … Expand
  79. stitch626
    Apr 28, 2013
    8
    Yes this game is what it says it is, 4x! I specifically checked for multilayer before buying and noted from their home site that it would be added after launch. I then checked that regular updates were being made. There are bugs, but compared to EA's track record, this game is perfect at launch!

    I thought Sins would be better than what it was, and was looking for a GalCIV multiplayer    Yes this game is what it says it is, 4x! I specifically checked for multilayer before buying and noted from their home site that it would be added after launch. I then checked that regular updates were being made. There are bugs, but compared to EA's track record, this game is perfect at launch!

    I thought Sins would be better than what it was, and was looking for a GalCIV multiplayer for the wife and myself (since Stardock punked out and wouldn't release one!). This game is not quite there yet but well on it's way. Thanks Zero, look forward to a long and happy relationship with this game.    … Expand
  80. Atomic-Moose
    Apr 27, 2013
    8
    Been playing the beta of this game for the last month, and in that time i've seen the dev Zero push out test branch beta patches almost daily at times. This game is certainly not finished, however the gameplay feels very good, and has that promise of more waiting. Zero seems to have a good grasp of how it should feel to set up distant colonies, and once the basics of the systems he hasBeen playing the beta of this game for the last month, and in that time i've seen the dev Zero push out test branch beta patches almost daily at times. This game is certainly not finished, however the gameplay feels very good, and has that promise of more waiting. Zero seems to have a good grasp of how it should feel to set up distant colonies, and once the basics of the systems he has in place work better (freighter scheduling/zoning) nothing will feel more satisfying then having a well regulated intergalactic trade/economy set up. Ship combat feels very nice so far, the fleet system is quite innovative and lets you stop micromanaging every colony to assemble a fleet, go in and drop in your designed ships onto a grid, you can save the fleet design for the future, and then just click the "order fleet" button, and it gets split among your best colonies to build it all at once. making a true "fleet" also feels very satisfying (big battlship with many forward facing beams, being screened by anti-fighter support frigates, possibly some missile cruisers, dont forget point defences!

    It is one of those games like kerbal space center it promises endless fun, and the promise of so much more.    … Expand
  81. manshoon11
    Apr 29, 2013
    8
    This game kicks ass. I played GalCiv2 a lot, so i was obviously hesitant when buying this game. They totally pulled it off. While it lacks sheer number of researchable techs, it still does fine. They did really well with the multiple ways to defend and capture planets. The manage planet feature is great. It is not as complex as gal civ, but still pretty close. Making ships is aThis game kicks ass. I played GalCiv2 a lot, so i was obviously hesitant when buying this game. They totally pulled it off. While it lacks sheer number of researchable techs, it still does fine. They did really well with the multiple ways to defend and capture planets. The manage planet feature is great. It is not as complex as gal civ, but still pretty close. Making ships is a little tough at first, but you can load existing templates to work off of. This is a tough game, but experience in gal civ etc will help out.… Expand
  82. Elethio
    Apr 26, 2013
    10
    I would recommend Stardrive to people who are new to the genre because the empire management is not too complicated and many areas can be automated.

    And for 4X veterans there is plenty of depth still, and turning off the automation will allow you to optimize your worlds and your trade routes even more. The empire management system will be very familiar to people who have played GCII    I would recommend Stardrive to people who are new to the genre because the empire management is not too complicated and many areas can be automated.

    And for 4X veterans there is plenty of depth still, and turning off the automation will allow you to optimize your worlds and your trade routes even more.

    The empire management system will be very familiar to people who have played GCII and its not hard to grasp.

    The research tree is not as big as those in other 4X games, BUT every tech is meaningful and important and effects the game strongly, it is well thought out and exciting.

    Artifacts are fun, similar in many ways to anomalies etc in other 4X games, but they are more engaging because you will have to explore worlds to find them and sometimes fight monster, but once you have them they give you a variety of unique bonuses and treasures, even if your lucky alien ships and technology.

    The Spy system is good, it is both simple and powerful.

    Now onto the really GREAT parts of the game...

    1. Alien races and diplomacy
    Absolutely amazing, as good as MoOII, the races are interesting have their own character, and way of speaking, you will get to know them and get to like them or hate them, and even go on crusades to destroy them and vaporize their worlds and grind them to dus.. Ahem and want to make friends with them.

    2. Trading
    This might seem an odd one to include as a great feature, but I love the fact you can customise and build every freighter individually, you can automate this but its fun to design your own "Q" ship, or or a faster armoured freighter that needs to take food urgently to a blockaded world.
    And every freight ship will remove goods from one planet and will place them at another planet when it arrives, and freighters are responsible for transporting colonists too.

    3. Ship design
    This is simply the best ship design system I've ever seen, some people have said they don't want to spend hours here designing ships, thats fine the default designs are reasonable, and if you want better its very quick simple to adjust current designs to your preference.
    However I have easily spent the majority of my game time designing the ships because its just fun.
    There are many different things you have to balance to get a great design, from mas to thrust and power generation and armour and shielding and ammo storage and weapons and warp speed etc etc, but best of all WHERE you place you components has a massive impact on how the ship performs.
    Also the AI will use YOUR designs against you, if you win your first game, play as a different race next time and you will be facing some of your own ships.

    4. Combat
    Combat is brilliant! if you want an idea download "Battleships Forever" a free 2D space combat game that has a lot of similarities to Stardrive combat, one difference though is that the ships here are vastly more detailed and complex, but the combat is just as fun, more so when its your designs and you see them failing or succeeding. overall strategy is vital too, outmaneuvering the enemy makes a big difference and if your left with just one ship against hopeless odds, you can always take control of your last ship directly and give it a last stand to be proud of, even when your ship dies it can do some damage!

    5. Mods and the future
    This game was designed to be modded, and even now that are many great mods for it, with even more on the way, you name it is coming.. even Blake Seven !
    And if you fancy having a go yourself its very straight forward to do and there are many tutorials and tools already available.    … Expand
  83. allquixotic
    Apr 27, 2013
    9
    This game is going to be a cult hit. Zero has said that he will keep updating the game to smooth out the technical issues and add depth. Serious modding is a given. The game is instantly familiar and enjoyable, right out of the box, to a 4X strategy veteran. The highlights of the game for me are the intricate shipyard (ship designer screen) with a ridiculous amount of replayability, andThis game is going to be a cult hit. Zero has said that he will keep updating the game to smooth out the technical issues and add depth. Serious modding is a given. The game is instantly familiar and enjoyable, right out of the box, to a 4X strategy veteran. The highlights of the game for me are the intricate shipyard (ship designer screen) with a ridiculous amount of replayability, and the diverse ways that the different AI opponents act towards you. Combat itself is interesting and varied due to the uniqueness of every ship design.… Expand
  84. oldG4mer
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    Very cool indie 4X game. It's still got rough edges, but the core components, economic development, ship design, fleet deployment and combat are great and the AI is not too shabby.

    Warmly recommended!
  85. thedailylunatic
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    This is the most wonderful and fun game I've ever not been able to play due to bugs. I've been playing the beta for a few weeks now.

    Long story short: the developer is extremely hands-on and responsive to the community and has made an extremely ridiculously awesome game. It's basically like if Master of Orion II had made a love child with Jesus Christ. Assuming you don't have    This is the most wonderful and fun game I've ever not been able to play due to bugs. I've been playing the beta for a few weeks now.

    Long story short: the developer is extremely hands-on and responsive to the community and has made an extremely ridiculously awesome game. It's basically like if Master of Orion II had made a love child with Jesus Christ.

    Assuming you don't have launch/crash issues like me, then you'll have the time of your life.

    The reason why I'm still giving it a 9 rating is that I expect the release version to be debugged shortly. Like I said, the developer is extremely hands-on and has been making serious progress throughout the beta.    … Expand
  86. MasterOO
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    I've enjoyed the game a lot during the beta phase with all the bugs and everything. The final release version is up in about 2 hours according to Steam, so I'm still playing with beta 1.70A. If you loved Master of Orion or any game like that, this one is for you. I don't know if I believe one guy made this game, it has way too much detail for me to buy this is a one man operation.

    As    I've enjoyed the game a lot during the beta phase with all the bugs and everything. The final release version is up in about 2 hours according to Steam, so I'm still playing with beta 1.70A. If you loved Master of Orion or any game like that, this one is for you. I don't know if I believe one guy made this game, it has way too much detail for me to buy this is a one man operation.

    As for Youngblood-52, here we have yet another person, blowing off a game because of beta issues. It's called beta for a reason, so people in beta can try to get rid of the bugs. And I don't know what beta version he was playing with but nearly everything he mentions I personally did not experience with the last beta version.

    Is the game perfect? Show me a perfect game and I'll show you a game that's in someones fantasy world and not this world. And I forgot, you can mod the hell out of this game, it's part of the design. I don't know anything about modding, but I can't wait for someone to do a Babylon 5 mod or Star Trek mod. If this is the work of one man, I bow before his dedication because this would have to be a crazy project for just one man to pull off.    … Expand
  87. CharlieChap
    Apr 27, 2013
    9
    Quick to get into, Graphically good for the genre. Good atmosphere, Great soundtrack, Fast to play for a 4x and lots of potential...( its a sandbox game and you get from sandbox titles what you choose as a rule).

    This is an Indie title so it does have a way to go but the developers are very dedicated. Expect it to get a lot better. 'Stardrive' may ruffle some feathers because its    Quick to get into, Graphically good for the genre. Good atmosphere, Great soundtrack, Fast to play for a 4x and lots of potential...( its a sandbox game and you get from sandbox titles what you choose as a rule).

    This is an Indie title so it does have a way to go but the developers are very dedicated. Expect it to get a lot better.

    'Stardrive' may ruffle some feathers because its a breath of fresh air in the 4x genre.

    Customer support is excellent contrary to some previous reviews.
    Go to the Stardrive website and drop the developer a PM or post a problem or bug report and you are likely to get a personal reply....extremely rare these days    … Expand
  88. FGamer
    Apr 28, 2013
    8
    truly sad, i had high hopes for that game but during the end of aplha and the transition to beta and finally to the actua release version there isn't as much progress as someone might hoped.

    the game has the following problems: - lackluster AI and overall stability performance - the game has broken or unfinished content as the state being - very light dimplomacy mechanics - a    truly sad, i had high hopes for that game but during the end of aplha and the transition to beta and finally to the actua release version there isn't as much progress as someone might hoped.

    the game has the following problems:

    - lackluster AI and overall stability performance
    - the game has broken or unfinished content as the state being
    - very light dimplomacy mechanics
    - a tiny tech tree and therefor very little to actually design ships for or to build on the planets
    -jraces have besides their different ship layouts and some minor trait tweaks little differentiation besides the nonetheless good looking arts.
    - galaxy feels very empty ...there is very little to do besides waiting for the next possible planet for colonization
    - poor and unintuitive user interface    … Expand
  89. ImpetuousHam
    May 3, 2013
    9
    This is not your typical 4x strategy game, but that is what makes it so unique and thrilling to play. A lot (and I do mean a lot) of emphasis was put on ship design and combat and it is in these categories that Stardrive achieves greatness:

    Fighters will circle one another, trying to find the best firing arc, and engage in fast paced combat; Capital ships exchange powerful volleys of    This is not your typical 4x strategy game, but that is what makes it so unique and thrilling to play. A lot (and I do mean a lot) of emphasis was put on ship design and combat and it is in these categories that Stardrive achieves greatness:

    Fighters will circle one another, trying to find the best firing arc, and engage in fast paced combat; Capital ships exchange powerful volleys of missiles, torpedoes, or lasers while trying to fend off smaller craft with point defense weaponry; Support ships send out repair drones or resupply your fleet with ammunition during longer, extended battles; The whole thing turns into a symphony of destruction the likes of which is usually reserved for big budget scifi movies.

    Other than the combat, the ability to create ships of your own design (By design, I'm talking about the internal components and not the external "look" of the ship) is easily the most appealing aspect of the game. Design choices make a huge impact in battle too: Place a reactor core in your ship with no armor or shields around it for protection and your just asking for an enemy to land a lucky blow and send your brand new frigate to oblivion.

    There is something just so satisfying about coming up with a well thought out layout for your ship and watching it excel in combat against your enemies.

    It is certainly not perfect and like all 4x games there is a learning curve, but if you are fan of large scale space battles and deceptively deep starship design then there is nothing out there quite like StarDrive.    … Expand
  90. FireStorm1010
    May 1, 2013
    9
    I decided to write a review since this game seems to have polarized effect on people:love it or hate it.And justifiy why I gave it a 9 tough it is incomplete which might sound crazy.

    The reason for this is i havent played that fun and addictive game for a long time.The ship designing with arcs of fire commanding then your engeenering efforts in battle and seeing how they do, all    I decided to write a review since this game seems to have polarized effect on people:love it or hate it.And justifiy why I gave it a 9 tough it is incomplete which might sound crazy.

    The reason for this is i havent played that fun and addictive game for a long time.The ship designing with arcs of fire commanding then your engeenering efforts in battle and seeing how they do, all in pausable real time, the trading economy which leads to specialized planets (you see and must protect all your trading ships), researching techs for those ships, the cool little story arcs like remnants or revorans (tough they are unfinished but what is, is cool)., the really fun space opera style races, it all meshes up into a great experience.The AI isnt exceptional but with bonuses it gets on harder difficulties the game is a big challenge, which is imho what matters ultimately.

    Now the bad the core gameplay is here and its great, but all in all the game is unfinished, Like mentioned before the story arcs are unfiinished and admitted by the dev it will be expanded later.The UI is sometimes very awkward and requires you to click a lot to get things done, so it might be tiresome. Also it might be hard to learn the game for a person new to the genre, there are some tutorials and info but generally i would say the game is low on teaching a new person. The tech tree will propably be expanded., i expect some stuff rebalanced.Me personally i had a very stable experience, with one freeze and a few vanishing sound bugs in over 50 hours of gameplay, but poeple have been reporting on forums some have big problems. Also i had no such problems even on large galaxy with 7 oponents, but some reports big slowdowns then.

    So is it in part unfishined Yeah. Is it great fun as it is?Hell yeah:).

    Admiteddly i am a big fan of the 4x genre, loved Galciv 2, Endless Space, inital Master of Orion games.    … Expand
  91. Grazgul
    Apr 28, 2013
    8
    A fantastic game that has a new take on 4X. The shipyard is interesting and meaningful and the real time elements give the 4X genre a bit of pace.

    The low price and the developer's commitment elevate this to an 8.

    If your looking for something new in the strategy area, look no further!!
  92. Bmane
    Jan 16, 2015
    0
    I once gave this game an '8'...

    But then, I never foresaw that the developer would just abandon it and leave it rotting while he uses the money he earned to create a 'sequel'...

    Simply put, avoid due to the developer.
  93. FeedTheMonkey
    Jun 4, 2013
    7
    I think basically there is said the most to the game in all the reviews. But I would like to point the focus more to the circumstances of the development that has been done. So in general this game was developed by one person. If course sounds and graphics are a product of more than one developer but the code behind starring is basically a one man show.

    And for this I cannot say this    I think basically there is said the most to the game in all the reviews. But I would like to point the focus more to the circumstances of the development that has been done. So in general this game was developed by one person. If course sounds and graphics are a product of more than one developer but the code behind starring is basically a one man show.

    And for this I cannot say this game isn't a success.
    For me it had from the start more funny elements than all other x4 games I have ever played until know. Beginning at the kind of how you navigate through the spaces and ending by the way you can design your fleets. All real innovative and great but yet no bug free features.
    Of course the balance is not perfect so the AI in my opinion starts much to aggressive. If you don't have suitable planets near your home planet it will be very hard to expand due to the aggressive au will fight for every useful planet.
    So for the rest it might be that after midgame you will end farming the planets. But until you get to the point this game really is much fun to play.

    So for further development I hope the game gets more balancing and more end game experience.    … Expand
  94. trevinc
    Jul 12, 2013
    7
    This is just a fun game! This is a game where you can have little experience with RTS games and still have fun. Though the tutorials could use some work. But it can play very deep for those veteran RTS gamers. Ship customizing can be a little meh at first, but later on, you can have some fun building some devastating ships!
  95. Zakuman
    Apr 26, 2013
    9
    I have been playing the beta for a few weeks now, first thing I have to say is that I got my money's worth. I had a lot of fun (still do as a matter of fact). The art is very good and immersive, very nice diplomacy screens The gameplay elements are pretty solid, ship design is highly innovative, combat is fun (though not as tactical as say SotS2), I even tend to use spies which isI have been playing the beta for a few weeks now, first thing I have to say is that I got my money's worth. I had a lot of fun (still do as a matter of fact). The art is very good and immersive, very nice diplomacy screens The gameplay elements are pretty solid, ship design is highly innovative, combat is fun (though not as tactical as say SotS2), I even tend to use spies which is something I rarely do in other 4x.

    The game suffers from some problems, like troop rush, faulty freighter ai and performance issues (thought I have not experienced those myself).

    I justify giving it such a high score, because the game is very fun for me and none of the issues was a deal breaker.. it is also worth mentioning that Stardrive is quite moddable (allows adding new tech, weapons etc). Zero is also actively supporting the modding section, which is quite awesome IMO.

    This game has a nice MoO2 feel, can only recommend it     … Expand
  96. j30g20
    Apr 28, 2013
    10
    The game is not incomplete, it is not garbage, you do not need to sue the developer. Calm down, take a deep breath, it's just a game. Wow, folks get mighty testy over toys. Anyway, I am enjoying this new game very much. Some things I'd like to add, some I'd like to delete and a few bugs. That said, hard to remember a game that didn't have all that at release. Only near perfect games I everThe game is not incomplete, it is not garbage, you do not need to sue the developer. Calm down, take a deep breath, it's just a game. Wow, folks get mighty testy over toys. Anyway, I am enjoying this new game very much. Some things I'd like to add, some I'd like to delete and a few bugs. That said, hard to remember a game that didn't have all that at release. Only near perfect games I ever purchased were from HPS, Matrix, and John Tiller. The rest took a bit of time with lots of CONSTRUCTIVE input being given and listened to by the developers. I gave it a ten 'cause it is to me and will become even better. Words like boring, not fun, DOA, etc are not helpful to folks looking to buy. Maybe plus and minus on what you EXPECTED. This is a significant effort, fun, RTS (I like turn based, actually) that THQ or EA would have charged $50 for (six months ago). Anybody, and there won't be many, who wants a recommendation; consider it done. AND yes, this is my first review mostly because I get sick of really nasty, child like comments in lieu of really well thought out critiques..… Expand
  97. krunkert
    Apr 29, 2013
    8
    Very deep game with descent difficulty though I imagine as I improve the game will fall onto the easy side of things. I'm really looking forward to MP as the possibilities there are amazing.

    Its got a somewhat steep learning curve and it does require a bit of micromanagement so be prepared for that. But managing everything is part of the fun. If you just want a game you can jump into    Very deep game with descent difficulty though I imagine as I improve the game will fall onto the easy side of things. I'm really looking forward to MP as the possibilities there are amazing.

    Its got a somewhat steep learning curve and it does require a bit of micromanagement so be prepared for that. But managing everything is part of the fun. If you just want a game you can jump into and start blowing things up its probably not for you.

    If you have a mind for strategy and want to wrap your brain around matches that take days to finish then its more up your alley.    … Expand
  98. TotalBiscuitXXX
    Apr 26, 2013
    8
    Fantastic vision of a new developing 4x! Done practically by one man lets hope he has some cash for a small team now.
    Having played around 28 hours during various beta builds, what gripped me was the potential, after various jaded experiences with other recent 4x/turn based games of its kind.
    Not a perfect game has quite a few things to expand upon namely its progression, random    Fantastic vision of a new developing 4x! Done practically by one man lets hope he has some cash for a small team now.
    Having played around 28 hours during various beta builds, what gripped me was the potential, after various jaded experiences with other recent 4x/turn based games of its kind.

    Not a perfect game has quite a few things to expand upon namely its progression, random encounters, planetary troops, ship templates, and A.i. All show signs of improving.

    This is not your Sins of the Solar Empire (as much as I loved Sins Fleets system) Stardrives should be even better with time.    … Expand
  99. Jahx
    Apr 28, 2013
    9
    I played the Beta for the last month before release, and enjoyed it far more than many released big-studio games of the same Genre. Now that it is released I see the author managed to pack in several more features and upgrades in the final month, and continues to do so in direct relation to user feedback. That is just simply an awesome experience to be a part of, and it is great to see theI played the Beta for the last month before release, and enjoyed it far more than many released big-studio games of the same Genre. Now that it is released I see the author managed to pack in several more features and upgrades in the final month, and continues to do so in direct relation to user feedback. That is just simply an awesome experience to be a part of, and it is great to see the recommendations that I have been making take shape before my very eyes.

    NOW FOR THE GAME: It's another 4x space strategy game... with a huge difference. You can design every square inch of every ship you make, and customize every fleet you field which opens up a world of unlimited possibilities. 1 well-designed ship can take on fleets of lesser technology or poorly designed ships, and a well thought out fleet of ships filling special roles can be unstoppable. This is what breaks it out of the mold of 4x games and makes it something more.

    If you like fine-tuning your research for maximum effectiveness and glorying in the mayhem as your elite fleet tears through hordes of cheap imitations, you will love this game and should buy it immediately.

    If you normally put research and diplomacy on auto, rush with a constant stream of cheap units and spam chat with how you are "Pwning everyone" then you probably won't get much out of this game.

    The only reason I didn't give it a 10 is it still has room for improvement in terms of varied and longer tech trees and overall polish. However because of the low price and truly original approach, it's really more like an 11.    … Expand
  100. VekTor
    Apr 29, 2013
    8
    If you've ever played AND LIKED a 4X Space Strategy Game, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of StarDrive. This is a worthy successor to Master of Orion II, and shows significant promise going forward.

    I've currently rated this game as an 8, but I expect this to move to 9 and higher as some of the persistent problems are fully cleaned up. There are still some issues, but none of    If you've ever played AND LIKED a 4X Space Strategy Game, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of StarDrive. This is a worthy successor to Master of Orion II, and shows significant promise going forward.

    I've currently rated this game as an 8, but I expect this to move to 9 and higher as some of the persistent problems are fully cleaned up. There are still some issues, but none of them are show-stoppers for me, and the developer is HIGHLY active and engaged on resolving these issues. The game has made truly remarkable progress in even the last two weeks, which is a testament to his dedication.

    Yes, I said "his". This title is almost entirely and exclusively developed by a single individual (apparently, some of the sound and artwork may have been outsourced, but the rest is all Zero's baby.) The fact that a title of this depth could come from a single individual makes the accomplishment just that much more impressive.

    I've now logged many, many hours with the game via the open beta and into release, and here's my personal list of Pros and Cons for the game:

    Pro:
    1. Extremely powerful and versatile ship and space station design system
    2. Combat and damage are all tracked on a per-shot and per-component basis
    3. Significant performance improvements make the above workable even at large scales
    4. An AI system that learns (and uses against you in the future) your ship designs
    5. Built-in support for mods right out of the gate, helping ensure future playability and variation
    6. Fleet provisioning design a fleet, press a button, and any needed ships are automatically queued
    7. Easy "refit" for ships, to allow you to easily upgrade your designs as you progress
    8. A wide variety of technologies to research
    9. A good Diplomacy and Espionage system
    10. Excellent selection of different AI opponents that truly do feel different from each other
    11. A sense of humor in the game that aligns with my own, and hat-tips to lots of the genre
    12. Veterancy system makes keeping your ships alive worthwhile

    Cons:
    1. Some non-standard or un-intuitive UI and controls, which can take a bit of getting used-to.
    2. Better documentation needed (this could help overcome the first point greatly)
    3. Still some performance issues in the VERY late game in some instances (not game-breaker for me)
    4. Troop invasions seriously unbalanced currently, but this is being addressed
    5. Could use better notifications at startup that the game has actually launched
    6. Certain game calculations still too opaque (e.g. how your military rank vs other races is computed)
    7. A few more diplomacy options would go a long way (i.e. allow you to "claim a planet" as the AI does)

    All told, despite some problems, this is currently my favorite game by far. When I'm not playing it, I'm thinking about it in the back of my head, wondering what I'm going to do when I get back to playing it... and if that's not a testament to being a successful game title, I don't know what is.    … Expand
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Awards & Rankings

45
#45 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
61

Mixed or average reviews - based on 26 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 26
  3. Negative: 2 out of 26
  1. CD-Action
    Feb 10, 2014
    60
    If you like games in the vein of Stars! or Master of Orion, you can sink into Stardrive for long hours. [02/2014, p.73]
  2. GRYOnline.pl
    Dec 9, 2013
    70
    Zero Sum Games has created a worthy addition to the 4X genre. What is more - modders are already creating more and more cool modifications for StarDrive. Ergonomics and gameplay rules should be more user-friendly, but the game itself is far from boring or tiresome. 4X fans will be pleased.
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  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Sep 19, 2013
    60
    For your first and second time, StarDrive brings a refreshing experience resembling Master of Orion. However, as soon as you understand its basic rules, the game is gone like through a Black Hole. [Issue#232]
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