You know the kind of day, you’re sitting at home with a few hours to kill, so you figure it’s a good chance to play a game. You look at your library and nothing really catches your interest until you come across a game you forgot you owned…
Galaxy Squad, a rogue like, turn based tactical game by Kasakov Oleg turned out to be that game.
This indie title can best be described as the land based version of FTL. The player selects a ship and then travels around the galaxy from node to node to face different events and challenges. These events invariably see the (border-line) criminal crew engaging in small unit fire fights.
And basically… that’s about it. Oh your crew of mercenaries can level up (to a point), there are different weapons and equipment to acquire which will aid you, and even special abilities that are powered by resources (nice touch that). But as I played the game, it started to dawn on me that the setting was entirely superfluous. While Galaxy Squad is set in space, all the action is groundside, you have a ship, but basically it’s just a shuttle as there is no ship to ship combat. In other words, being set in space isn’t really necessary for this game to work. Personally, I feel the developer could have gotten a greater bang out of this game if he had included space battles. It would have made the game far more interesting and immersive.
To be fair, there is some exploration in this game, which will give a sense of discovery as you hop around from one node to another. There is also a considerable RPG element to entice you as you can engage in some side quests, hire additional party members, and look for neat gear to outfit your band of rascals. Adding to the RPG feel is your crew. You start with 3 types of classes available but you can open up another 3 as you play. Different classes have different abilities which you can select as you level up your team. The battles themselves are obviously the strongest aspect of the game… if you like small unit (and I do mean small) tactics. Battling it out means you’ll need to consider cover, line of sight, weapons, etc. However, some of the maps are ridiculously small, and that actually negates the effect that the terrain has on tactics and the decisions a player will need to make in order to fight well. The actual mechanics of combat center around turn based action points. You can move and shoot or use special abilities.
Graphically, this game goes from “ooh pretty” all the way to “wtf?” Personally I don’t pay much attention to how a game looks, I prefer substance over looks… but man it can get bad here, you’ve been warned.
Overall I found the experience adequate and can even see limited replay value in the game. After completing a session, depending on how well you did, you get points which you then use to unlock some additional aspects of the game (and you really do want to unlock these as they offer different paths to choose, different play modes, and most importantly, different endings). In essence, I found the game pretty simple and effective, but I just can’t help but feel that it could use a moderate overhaul, such as cleaning up the text, but more importantly, some actual ship to ship combat. (Yes, your ships can add some effects to ground combat, but that just doesn’t cut it for me).
Pros
- Good small unit tactical sim
- Intuitive controls/ UI
- Variety of settings and choices
Cons
- Small battle maps
- Graphics
- Space setting seems superfluous
Final grade C+
This is the first I have heard of this game, but looks interesting when I viewed the trailer. Did you actually complete the game Gaius? In the trailer they show briefly like a starmap, how much access do you have to these areas and did you get to most of them in your play through? I did like FTL and it does sound interesting they included RPG elements so you can customize gear and level your squad. I will keep an eye out on this during the xmas sale and see if I can pick it up cheap.
I paused playing close to the first complete run D1, and yes, you can access the areas on the starmap provided they are in range. Similar to FTL, each node allows travel to other nodes and you can visit them all. If you liked FTL, this is definitely a good game to pick up. It isn’t frenetic and I estimate you can finish an entire session in about 7 hours. It truly is a ground combat version of FTL where the characters take center stage over the ship, (this gives it way much more of an RPG feel). Its normal price is under 10 USD, on sale there is no reason not to grab it. I’m hoping the dev does an expansion and a little support may help that. It’s a cute game, has some flaws, but could be quite a lot more with some added content.