Hey, I've been playing this game off and on over the last month or so! I really like it. (The Steam upgrades have made it to the iOS version, too, btw.) I really like the little story encounters too. I haven't made it terribly far though. Always end up running out of fuel or else my hull breaks down (oxygen is never a problem). Glad I finally tried it out though. It's definitely a game that's easy to chill out with.
Saturday Mini-Preview: OUT THERE
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 On 09/05/2015 at 11:34 PM by Matt Snee See More From This User » |
"Out There" belongs to that somewhat new genre of starship simulator rogue-likes like FTL, Interstellaria, and Star Command, except Out There is less of a panic-inducing nightmare, and much more of a relaxed, psychedelic resource manager. However, like most of these other games, Out There also has a quirky sense of humor, and is a lot of fun to play.
Originally a mobile game launching on iOS, Out There now has a PC version that can be found on Steam that's a little more robust, and with less testy controls. The story is simple: cryogenically asleep and on your way to Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter), you instead wake up on your ship not knowing where in the universe you are, only knowing you are somewhere... out there.
Management of your ship's needs is sort of simple, but can lead to stressful decisions, and you'll have to calculate your every move accordingly. You mostly have to worry about your fuel, your oxygen, and your hull. Hydrogen powers your ship, and you can mine this from gas giants and stars, and oxygen can be found on Earth-like planets, and finally metals can be drilled from rocky planets to reinforce your hull. Different resources are also used to build modules on your ship and technologies you will need to complete your adventure. The ship though only has so much space though for modules and resources, and you'll have to be crafty sometimes on what to keep and what to lose.
The best parts of games like these are the weird encounters you find in space, so I'm not going to ruin anything by describing them. But I will say a neat part of the game is every time you jump from star to star you get a little diary entry by yourself that explains your feelings or something you've seen or some encounter. It's a neat, friendly way of telling a story in a rogue-like, and I enjoyed this quite a bit.
As the game goes on you will have all sorts of adventures (if you survive) where you can visit alien, rescue other humans, develop new technologies, and discover the universe.
I'm also hoping to examine another game like this that I mentioned before, Instellaria, sometime soon. It's a bit more Star Trek oriented, where in Out There it's just you and your ship and the vast universe.
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