Hyperspace Delivery Service, a retro-styled adventure from Zotnip is getting ready to leave Early Access. On June 5th, it will release in full for everyone and it does include Linux support too.
Choose what kind of captain you will be. Work the trade routes, learn to use your crews’ unique attributes, mine for fuel, search for abandoned supplies, fight robot space pirates on the ground in retro FPS, experience thrilling space battles from the cockpit of your space ship in retro 3D space shooting action.
Latest trailer available below:
Direct Link
From the Steam page it seems it's a mix of a space adventure and a strategy game, wrapped up in some lovely retro pixel art. You will need to manage your resources like food, fuel, oxygen, ship repairs, credits and more while you fly your ship in a first-person view as you fight off pirates. It also includes a very retro FPS shooter too, so it has quite varied gameplay. Looks like the kind of game I would have played on Amiga, absolutely love the artwork in this one.
From the very few user reviews it has, seems people have been enjoying it.
While it doesn't have a SteamOS/Linux icon on Steam, the Linux version is available. It's also up on itch.io.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
While the artstyle surely has its charm, i somehow can't stand if the UI is deliberately made "bad" just to fit the "old times" :/Arguably not the only reason. I've heard that modern snazzy art makes content much slower to design. Thus, for the same investment of developer time, a retro-art game can be much "bigger"--have way more places to go, give you more hours of entertainment.
You can get around that by going procedural, but that has its difficulties too.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 May 2019 at 3:52 am UTC
All no doubt very true. I wasn't making a general argument for pixelated games, just saying old school aesthetics isn't necessarily the only rationale for retro art.Arguably not the only reason. I've heard that modern snazzy art makes content much slower to design. Thus, for the same investment of developer time, a retro-art game can be much "bigger"--have way more places to go, give you more hours of entertainment.And throw immersion out of the window. Our body has millions of years of evolution preparing us to process lighting, context, real shapes and the such, half the brain genes we have have a function on image processing, and somehow skipping good graphics is justified because realist, smooth graphics take time (duh).
I feel annoyed when I see a big percentage of titles released for Linux being pixel graphics. It seems like a regression.
BTW, this is not a complaint about this game particularly. From the description it seems to be quite good. However, I can't see pixel graphics as "charming", instead they simply look outdated to me. I think it would benefit greatly from proper hi-res graphics.
Although personally, I don't think I'm as sensitive to artistic issues as a lot of people. I'm not charmed by the pixelated look, but as long as it's not muddy and low-contrast I'm more interested in gameplay than appearance. When I am charmed by art it's usually not pixelated, but it's usually not photorealistic either, and whichever way it isn't gonna be enough to make me impressed by a boring game.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 May 2019 at 3:17 pm UTC
BTW, this is not a complaint about this game particularly. From the description it seems to be quite good. However, I can't see pixel graphics as "charming", instead they simply look outdated to me. I think it would benefit greatly from proper hi-res graphics.
i think pixel art CAN be charming - if it is enhanced by modern standards. I think the "Kingdom:..." Titels of Noio look quite good, the modern water/mirror-effect really goes well with the pixelart. But just plain old pixelated graphics are not necessarily good and charming, thats true ^^
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