This reminds me a lot of what I liked about Moonpod's Starscape. It's a fun little shooter with a clever concept that I was stuck between loving and hating.

I loved the way it worked, how you could snap you ship together on the fly and how symmetry and style affects the whole ship. I was not so fond, however, of how fragile the ships were, and the limited number of parts available -- besides ever more spectacular lasers, there's not really any more interesting equipment in there, as far as I could find, which kind of offset the creativity of ship creation. While the modular building system lets you pick your own strategy, it's limited severely by the modular options available.

Additionally, the scale was bugging me a bit. I felt like I the zooming capability was too limited, and that everything seemed too small; like I need to get this up on a giant screen before I'd be comfortable with looking at it for long.

Still, a very satisfying, fun experience. I'll definitely have to watch this series grow.

Enjoyable game mechanic, but it's very disappointing overall. Very little feeling of accomplishment ever occurs, since there appear to be no goals in the "game." A game requires a goal of some sort to be a game rather than a toy.

There's a goal; you're just not good enough to reach it.

Also, the sequel, "Captain Successor" addresses the problem that Greg had with it. There are a ton of modules to play around with in that game.

Being not good enough and being bored due to a lack of goal are two very different things.

A goal is something one focuses on achieving, not something found by accident. If one cannot determine the goal until later on in the game, it is not a goal but a discovery.

Yeesh, don't like opposing opinions? That's a lot of hostility.

Attention. Stupid nag functions are annoying.

Attention. Stupid nag functions are annoying.

Attention. Stupid nag functions are annoying.

Navi, baby Mario, and health klaxons show up repeatedly in many "awful game features" lists. The "you're not moving" drones were an awful, AWFUL idea. They fly in, ram the ship, stop it from turning, and soak cannon fire. Then, when you click them, they shoot an utterly useless message over what you're trying to do. Maybe, just maybe I'm not moving because I'm making use of the main game mechanic, hmm?

There's no pause-and-build function, and you do tend to wind up with a lot of in-ship garbage that needs adjustment as the game progresses (although the strategy I'm using, building a grid with the crappy components and engines in the middle, and nested-in guns along the outside, expands nicely, moves VERY quickly, and does mostly minimize reconstruction needs). I can deal with hostiles bugging me (the most accurate fire mode is simply moving a good cannon or three to somewhere close to where it's needed and turning the ship a few degrees to adjust) but those stupid message drones are hugely annoying.

I actually enjoy the fast-paced building without being allowed to pause. It's a major part of the challenge to continuously build when another ship could be ready to attack at any time.

Let me opine, then, that in addition to removing the leg-humping message drones, that a sequel (or even an update) should include a difficulty slider to cater to skill level AND preference for obsessive-compulsive building. I'm like this in a LOT of free-form building games -- I'd as soon play tinkertoys with the little pieces as actually run around killing the monsters. Plus, the monsters in here feel unbalanced; falling more than one level behind in ship components means that any piece aboard will die in either one or two shots.

deadacc, you have to know when to run from fights; you can't win them all

also you are bad at video games. have you seriously considered playing with tinker toys? i think that's a game more your speed.

For all you know, I have two fingers, one working eye, and a bad case of the shakes, none of which would make my suggestion any less valid. Save it for your forum buddies, troll. That aside, who says that a difficulty slider wouldn't include several layers of harder modes?

Personally, I was bored with the fighting in short order. The enemies don't have AI to speak of; they either travel a straight line until attacked or they beeline for the player, then just float around at mid-range and point their nose at the player's ship. Skill aside, anyone half-sentient can just flee until something comes along with a really weak side, then ram it and open fire until it dies, or load one side of a fast-ish ship with cannons and flank the enemy -- very few enemies had usable side cannons, even counting angular lasers. The fighting was actually more boring than the building, which does have potential in a sequel/update. Blocks with either local or shipwide modifiers (+firing speed/power/range, +thrust, special weapon effects, +health max/regen) come to mind.

The point is, catering to multiple audiences is good development practice. Yes, in the game as it is, I'd rather build a funky looking ship than fight the enemies. It's just like Maxis including an easy money cheat in the Sims; some people would rather build the house right away than spend hours playing its lame career and relationship simulator to build their imaginary dollhouse.

@Deadacc - I don't know how much of the game you've played, but I've had some very interesting fights. Like most games with lots of procedural content it varies from poor to great.

In one battle I'd knocked all the guns and more than half the engines off an extremely strong enemy when I was attacked by a third ship. Weakened myself, I couldn't get away, so I hid behind the hull of the first enemy, sniping at the new one from cover. After a long attrition battle the hull I was hiding behind exploded into parts, but I was able to grab just enough engines from the debris to escape!

"The point is, catering to multiple audiences is good development practice."

Eh, only if your goal is publicity or sales. Sometimes it's not.

It can also help if your goal is to help people have fun. If it's not done just right though, it tends to create less fun for your target audience. Also, it can take a lot more time to get right. Thus, it generally makes sense for low-budget games to not spend time on being approachable to more than one niche audience.

I'm having fun. Maybe you're not the target audience? Also, it's worth nothing that the next game will be more goal oriented.

"I intend to add more goal structure to the next game, and as soon as Captain Successor is out I'll get to it. There are a lot of things I want to try here, but I prefer not to discuss them publicly since I'm not sure they'll work out and I don't want to build false expectations." - Farbs

Exactly. The correct audience, one would assume, does not need to see a goal in order to enjoy the game. I am not of that audience. I'm of the gamer audience rather than the tinkering/discovery audience.

If the next game took an approach somewhat similar to Elite, for example, I would be very excited for the series again.

There is another rather old game which is very similar to Captain Forever, but I can't remember the name. I think it is a multiplayer game, and you don't build your ship on the fly, but before you play. Construction is a lot more tedious, but rather detailed if I remember correctly. It also has topdown 2d graphics. It must be about 8-12 years old, as it was already very empty when I played it several years ago. And I think it is shareware, with a free version, but more features if you pay.

Soo.. does anyone know the name? :)

Why does this game want access to my microphone and camera?

It puts your face as the captain, in the background of the game.

So if you have a webcam you can see yourself instead of the generic image.

While a lot of fun, it got very frustrating. Usually as I was trying to modify my ship, i'd get ganged-up by several enemies at once, and because i was mid-reconstruction, my weapons/boosters wouldn't be in any useful place.

Would love to see some polish put on this concept; even just some better audio would be nice (the speak-n-spell voices got old in a hurry).

This is one of the greatest games i ever played !
Please don`t dumb it!