I love space games. From RPGs and MMOs to sims and real time strategies, I love the concept of going into space, exploring new planets and galaxies and flying my very own spaceship. Few games however few games let you build your ship from scratch and let you loose in the galaxy. At PAX South 2017 last weekend, I think I found a game that let’s me do just that. It’s called Lightspeed Frontier.
In Lightspeed Frontier the ability to travel warp speed was at first only available to rich corporations. But one company had develop affordable warp technology so that even the common person can cruse the stars. A common person just like you. Wanting to try you hand at being a space cowboy, you decide to save up enough money to buy a simple cargo ship. It’s a pretty simple open ended story, but that’s how most sandbox games are, which is a great fit for Lightspeed Frontier because it let’s players blaze their own trail and tell their own stories.
The main aspect of the game, besides exploration, is being able to build you ship from parts that you can buy, collect in space and collect from ships that you have destroyed due to either a miscommunication or just because they looked at you funny. From what I was told there is no size limit to how big the ships can get, so I’m really looking forward to seeing ships inspired from various different movies.
As for gameplay, there will be several types of missions ranging from transport and exploration to hunting down bounties and participating in a bit of piracy. One of the more interesting aspects of gameplay that Lightspeed Frontier has is being able to play the in game stock market against the corporations. Space capitalism at its very finest. As for exploration, everything is procedural, so you won’t being seeing the same areas with each new game. For example, during my demo time, I ended up near a black hole that happened to be electric based and hasn’t been seen yet in the time that the game was at PAX South. So expect to see lots of space and getting trap in the gravitational pull of black holes.
Lightspeed Frontier will scratch an itch for those who have been looking for an open world/sandbox type of game in space. I can’t wait to see what kinds of ships the community will build and see where the next warp jump will take me, The game is in Early Access right now and according to its Steam store page, it should be releasing on March 7.
