Video games are great at transporting us to different worlds, but none capture that feeling quite so perfectly as intergalactic space games - and 2023 looks set to be one of the biggest years for space games yet, with the launch of Starfield, Homeworld 3 and more all on the horizon. But what games have gone before them and staked their claim already on the dusty planet surface known as 'Best Space Games'? We reveal all below, with our carefully curated list of all the best space games you can play on PC right now. Whether you're a budding space cruiser captain, a wannabe space conqueror or an intrepid space-faring explorer, there's a space game for you.
]]>For a while, I'd forgotten about free-floating FPS Descent: Underground - turns out it had just gone radio-silent for a retooling, announced here. Still being worked on by Descendent Studios and now backed by publisher Little Orbit, the game is now just called 'Descent', and is now a more single-player oriented game, diverging from the originally multiplayer-centric Underground.
It'll be entering beta testing in November and is due for a 2019 release, and will be a free upgrade (along with all pre-order DLC) for Underground's early access owners and Kickstarter backers. Below, two new teaser trailers.
]]>Overload is one of the best retro FPS revivals out there. Simply put, it's Descent 4 in all but name, developed by the original crew, complete with a soundtrack from the combined composers of the original three games. The only real complaint I had about it in my mini-review of it here was that it was a little on the short side, despite an excellent New Game+ mode. That became less of a problem this week, as developers Revival Productions released the level editor for it, along with a basic tutorial video within.
]]>1994's Descent was a game before its time. While other FPS's of the era were only beginning to ask people to aim with the mouse, Descent demanded full 360-degree rotation and strafing on every axis. Perhaps now the time is right, as the original developers have reassembled as Revival Productions to deliver Overload, a true return to form for the free-flying shooter. It's out today, and having played a preview build to death this past week, I can confirm that this one is very good indeed.
]]>Don't call it a comeback. Don't call it, like, three comebacks. Interplay, once renowned as a house of PC ideas, has failed to get back off the ground across various attempts at resurrection, and it seems matters have gone no better for whoever is currently wearing the well-worn skinsuit. 'Interplay' has just announced a firesale of various intellectual properties. Which means that the likes of Descent, Freespace, Kingpin, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, MDK, Sacrifice and Earthworm bally Jim are now looking for new homes.
Oh God, come on, let's do this. Let's get the RPS community to club together to buy the rights to and make a new Kingpin game.
]]>Edit: and it made it, with just under two hours to go. Yer new Descent will be a reality, then. Congrats to Revival.
The bums, they are a-squeakin'. There are just four hours left on the Kickstarter clock for Overload, the game from the core creators of the original Descent, and it appears they need to round up the best part of $20k in that time. A photo finish is not at all impossible, but I imagine it's been a sleepless night for Revival productions.
]]>The folks who co-created Descent in the '90s have released a playable demo of Overload [official site], their spiritual successor to the fine zero-gravity spaceship shooter series. With less than three days left on their Kickstarter campaign, they're just over half-way to their $300,000 goal (£210k-ish).
"Er, Alice," you interrupt, "I'm not being funny, but didn't they Kickstart a new Descent last year? It's already out on Early Access? People say it's pretty fun?" Yyyes. Sort of. While Descent: Underground does have the name, licensed from withered husk of publishers Interplay, the initial team was folks who'd never worked on Descent. So! How would Descent's creators do Descent today? Have a play and see.
]]>Remember that Descent game Kickstarted by people by who didn't make Descent? Here's an unofficial Descent remakequel Kickstarted by people who did make Descent.
If Descent was on your Kickstarted comeback bingo card, then today's the day to wave your pen in the air. Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog, lead creators of the 1990s' beloved six-degrees of freedom spaceshippy FPS, have gotten the band back together for a comeback named Overload. You wanted Descent with sparkly 2016 graphics? You're gonna get it. Well, if you and your fellow retronauts can put $300k together.
]]>Reimagining classic 90s video games is something crowdfunding platforms seem cut out for. Ah, nostalgia, what a wondrous thing. It's been some 15 years since a Descent game reached our telly screens, and 21 years since the first - a pioneering space shooter with six degrees of freedom - did the same.
After barely succeeding on Kickstarter earlier this year, the multiplayer-focused Descent: Underground [official site] has now arrived on Steam Early Access.
]]>While not the only Descent-style revival of recent times, the six-axis floaty base exploration genre is still woefully underfed. Sublevel Zero [official site] arrives to help with that, taking a more rogue-lite, randomised approach to the notion. Am I spinning with glee, or nose-diving with disappointment? Here's wot I think:
]]>You wait fifteen years for a proper Descent game, and then several come along at once. Tsk.
A group of industry vets have licensed the Descent trademark from Interplay and begun development of Descent: Underground [official site]. They launched a Kickstarter campaign a couple of days ago; as I write this they've already passed the 25% mark. Their pitch video follows.
]]>Hello! Welcome to (at last) the first group meeting for The RPS Book Club For Games. Hopefully everyone was able to have a good shooty read of Descent, or at least thumb through its pages. Below is my retrospective of the game, and hopefully yours will be added too. Link your write-up in the comments, or send it to me via my name at the top of this article, and we'll add links to them in the main post. Then when this gets released into the wilds of the outside internet, hopefully it will bring an audience to your writing. (Stick it on your own site, a Tumblr, Pastebin, whatever. If you want your writing protected, please remember to add your own copyright/copyleft notice to it.)
]]>Fan remakes and reimaginings are labours of love living on a knife-edge, potentially blooming into a glorious monument to their adoration but knowing that one single letter from the owner could shut everything down at any moment. Sol Contingency has received that letter. It was to be a shiny "reimagining" of Parallax's splendid six-degrees-of-freedom space shooter Descent in the UDK, but owners Interplay have stopped that. The team say they'll continue, changing enough to make Sol Contingency their own thing.
But this wasn't all unrequited love; at one point, Interplay were interested in making Sol Contingency an official Descent game.
]]>Yesterday, when I glanced at the new releases on Steam and saw "Descent" I thought, "Huh, someone's used that name again - well, it has been nineteen years since it came out." And then I dropped down dead of old age and horror because it's been nineteen years since Descent came out. I've only just recovered from this death, and looked again. No, it's actually Descent. It's somehow appeared on Steam. Descent!
]]>Remakes are strange creatures. They come in all manner of breeds - from timely and lovable to completely mystifying to completely mystifying until you actually see it and go, "OK, sure. That actually doesn't look half-bad" (Rise of the Triad). And then others, well, they're just confusing. Emotionally confusing. I think a brand new Descent Unreal Engine 3 remake from particularly intrepid modder, er, Max fits that bill pretty well. On one hand, Descent seems conspicuously absent from cyberfuture 2012's nostalgia-obsessed landscape, and this attempt at getting it back in its anti-grav groove looks quite nice. On the other, it does look and feel a bit odd seeing these topsy-turvy battles taking place in locations that my brain is now programmed to associate with tree-trunk-armed soldier men.
]]>This "Macintosh Personal Computer" thing is never going to catch on, but folks like Valve and now GOG insist on humoring owners of these unnaturally pristine elf machines, so here we are. During its much-ballyhooed news-a-thon, GOG drew back the curtain on a new version of its service tailored to Macs, which brings with it 50 games (eight of which you receive free just for signing up) and some rather tempting deals. Speaking of, there's this insane 32-game pay-what-you-want Interplay special leading the charge in celebration of GOG's fourth anniversary. The tearful sort-of-family reunion would not, however, be complete without Geralt's permafrost tundra of a glare brightening up the room, so CD Projekt Red took the stage to demonstrate its Witcher 2 mod toolset. I'd say "imagine the possibilities," but imaginations are for people who don't have extremely impressive time-lapse videos. Check it out after the break.
]]>Our Gaming Made Me series has always focused on the writer's personal association with a vital game from their childhood, but this week that emphasis is even stronger. Here, James Murff talks of how Parallax Software's 1995 sci-fi FPS Descent became one of the keystones in mending his troubled relationship with a father - as well as why the flight-based shooter still has much to teach today's game designers.
]]>A quick follow-up to the scurrilous speculation a little while back that Interplay was about to resuscitate most of its major franchises. Actually, they are. "The company will leverage its portfolio of gaming properties by creating sequels to some of its most successful games, including Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Descent, and MDK," says robot-press-releaseman right here. They're also setting up a new in-house development studio to get all this done. Exciting!
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