Monthly Archives: January 2020

Thoughts: Observation

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Observation is a game that sets itself up like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but which instead turns out to be more like The Cloverfield Paradox.

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Thoughts: Starcom Nexus

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The elevator pitch for Starcom Nexus is that it’s a modern, somewhat lighter version of Star Control. You’re an officer in an incredibly thinly-veiled analogue for the Federation from Star Trek, and you have control of a single ship that is, to begin with, just an engine, a bridge section and a plasma turret bolted together. This is not much with which to face the scenario the game tosses you into roughly thirty seconds after you boot it up: a magical rift in space appears (some might even call it… a Nexus) and tosses both your ship and a nearby friendly space station into a totally uncharted region of the universe, full of weird new phenomena and unknown alien races to make friends with/blow up for resources. You use those resources at the friendly space station to bolt new modules onto your ship, growing it from a rinky-dink shuttle into a titanic space behemoth that lays waste to everything around it, while solving the central mystery of where you are, how you got there, and how you can possibly get back.

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