Cosmoteer is a spaceship construction and combat game currently in early access. It was released on Steam in October 2022 and has received several significant updates since then, with more on the way. I'm especially looking forward to the drone carriers for one but that is me getting ahead of myself. I remember playing the tech demo a long time ago before it even came to Steam as well.
It isn't perfect and can feel a little barebones in places as you'd expect for an early-access title. There's a lot to enjoy about it already even in this relatively early stage of things. So, the general format I'm going to take with these 'Early Looks' is I'll go over what I like about the game at the time of writing, then what I'd like to see added or improved along the way.
The shipbuilding is quite enjoyable and it being top-down and 2D it's not quite as difficult as something like Avorion can be at times. However, it does get trickier to build larger ships once you have to consider weapon placement and crew logistics.
A large number of construction options can be unlocked via the blueprints system. You start with the basics to cobble a ship together and then use the money you earn to unlock new ones to build bigger and hopefully better ships.
The combat is very satisfying so far and will likely only become more so as more weapons and systems are added to the game. Watching a hail of laser shots knocking chunks of armour off or a cannon round simply tearing a smaller ship in two definitely has a cinematic appeal despite it's simple graphics.
There are multiple things to do besides combat even if they mostly serve as a means to aid the combat somehow either via money, construction resources or processed goods. You can salvage the wrecks of your enemies, declare war on space rocks and go mining, trade at stations and even do the trading missions which are repeatable usually (a nice way to make money I found.)
You can also have more than one ship even if it's a little fiddly to figure out how to do that at first. I ended up having a combat ship, a mining ship and a ship which was mostly a flying factory.
Factions do fight with each other, though I couldn't tell if that changed anything in the galaxy or not. It was nice to wait at the edge of a fight and hoover up all the resources when it was over though.
Steam Workshop support is always a plus for this type of game if you'd rather download other people's ship designs. It can be useful if you don't want to design every ship yourself.
All in all, it's easy to see there's a good core concept they are building upon and I imagine a lot of things I currently have issues with will be gone by the time 1.0 rolls around. Though this is also the reason I don't do reviews for early access titles, bugs, glitches and missing content are part and parcel of it.
What I'd like to see added or improved, I know some of these are in the roadmap such as mission variety. This is based on about 14 hours of playtime, I didn't hit anything end game but I got far enough to jump around the galaxy a bit and get my misshapen botched together ship blown up a lot for the trouble!
An expanded or guided tutorial for building a new ship from scratch. Either as a starting option or simply added to give new players a second ship early on. I feel it would help people understand the building mechanics a bit more and ease people into the building portion of the game.
Upgrading rooms and systems to mainly a way of improving an existing ship without having to rebuild it entirely. Like upgrading that laser blaster means it gets more shots per plasma battery or the shield lasts longer etc. Just an idea though.
Having the ability to build your own station would be nice, it would make more sense to have a base you can jump from system to system with all your factories on. Docking arms for your other ships and the like. I imagine stations are on the way though.
Mission variety and/or a more dynamic galaxy, it's fairly static right now despite all the ships flying around though I imagine extra mission types are on their way. A more living galaxy might be too much of an ask but it would be nice all the same.
More weapon variety and even ammo variety perhaps would be nice to see especially for missiles. Having EMP missiles, nuclear warheads or incendiary missiles would certainly be interesting and add an additional factor for ammo management and manufacturing.
The difficulty needs a bit of tweaking especially early on as even with a fairly defensive ship I'd often find my ship simply exploding to a single cannon round. Though I imagine that'll be among pre-release tweaks. Certain weapons also feel very very strong early on such as the disruptors which ensured I lost many an early encounter.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not, it's early access but I found what I played of it to be a lot of fun and once I hit my stride in it I had trouble putting it down or found a couple of hours had gone by tinkering with my ship. The combat is engaging though it can take a while to get used to the positioning and movement system at the start it is well worth sticking with. Seeing the ship you designed tearing enemy ships apart and hoovering up the salvage is viscerally satisfying to me.
Now for the important question, is it worth it? If you like building ships and watching them fight I'd say yes but with a caveat. There is a lot of the roadmap left to go so if you think it might interest you then at the very least wishlist it (it helps devs on Steam as I understand it.) It's rough in places but the core gameplay loop is solid and I think as more things get added and fleshed out it's going to be an amazing game.
My ship quickly became some mish-mash Frankenstein of a hulk packed with mining lasers, disruptors, laser blasters and enough cargo space to gobble up even some larger enemy wrecks. Once I let go of the urge for everything to be symmetrical things became a lot easier to manage. I found myself enjoying the building and combat enough that it didn't become stale in the 14 or so hours I put into it.
All in all, Cosmoteer is a fun ship-building and combat game with a lot of potential. Just looking at the roadmap, it's clear they have a lot planned for the game, and I am looking forward to enjoying it more!
Remember if you like what I do consider donating via Ko-Fi it greatly helps me out and keeps me doing this. Hopefully drawing some eyes to some indie games that people enjoy, thanks!
Comments