I wish there was a new Starflight game.
April 5, 2012 7:41 PM Subscribe
What good video games are reminiscent of Rogue-likes (viz. Incursion), Risk-likes (viz. Lux, Advance Wars), and Starflight, especially in the fact that they can be stopped and started at any time? Bonus points if said video games are either for OS X or can be easily emulated in OS X.
I can't recommend Dungeons of Dredmore highly enough. Great roguelike, charming graphics, loads and loads of content, mac + pc, $5 on steam.
Picked it up for a couple bucks on a steam sale, have played a disturbing amount on my, uh, lunch break.
posted by Oktober at 9:08 PM on April 5, 2012
Picked it up for a couple bucks on a steam sale, have played a disturbing amount on my, uh, lunch break.
posted by Oktober at 9:08 PM on April 5, 2012
Space Pirates and Zombies sounds like it would be right up your alley.
posted by radiosilents at 9:13 PM on April 5, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by radiosilents at 9:13 PM on April 5, 2012 [2 favorites]
ALPHAMAN. I will only add that one of the default characters is G. Gordon Liddy.
posted by The White Hat at 9:22 PM on April 5, 2012
posted by The White Hat at 9:22 PM on April 5, 2012
Good question!
Have you played Star Control II? There's an OSX port and it's great.
posted by yaymukund at 11:54 PM on April 5, 2012
Have you played Star Control II? There's an OSX port and it's great.
posted by yaymukund at 11:54 PM on April 5, 2012
For Android if you have it, Star Traders Elite fills all my 4x requirements on that platform.
For PC, I love Space Rangers 2. It's basically 3 games in one, an Elite clone, an RTS, and a text adventure, but only the first one is mandatory. The first time you run into any of the other types of mission, you can not only decline but choose to never have that mission show up again, allowing you to tailor your experience. (I play with adventure, without RTS, and I've never felt like I was missing anything important.) The space combat is real-time but pauseable by "turn", sort of like how the Baldur's Gate engine works, and you can leave any star system with combat in order to end that phase. It's one of my favorite games of the last few years, and definitely if you like Star Control or Starflight you should check it out.
posted by Errant at 1:42 AM on April 6, 2012
For PC, I love Space Rangers 2. It's basically 3 games in one, an Elite clone, an RTS, and a text adventure, but only the first one is mandatory. The first time you run into any of the other types of mission, you can not only decline but choose to never have that mission show up again, allowing you to tailor your experience. (I play with adventure, without RTS, and I've never felt like I was missing anything important.) The space combat is real-time but pauseable by "turn", sort of like how the Baldur's Gate engine works, and you can leave any star system with combat in order to end that phase. It's one of my favorite games of the last few years, and definitely if you like Star Control or Starflight you should check it out.
posted by Errant at 1:42 AM on April 6, 2012
Not an expert on roguelikes, but if you liked Advance Wars, you might like the Fire Emblem series, which has almost identical gameplay, except it's a little more on the RPG side where Advance Wars is more strategy (you can't produce units, but can level-up your characters etc.)
There are 2 GBA Fire Emblem Games, 1 GameCube one and I believe 2 for the Nintendo DS.
posted by Senza Volto at 2:33 AM on April 6, 2012
There are 2 GBA Fire Emblem Games, 1 GameCube one and I believe 2 for the Nintendo DS.
posted by Senza Volto at 2:33 AM on April 6, 2012
The Civilization games are kinda like Advance Wars on steroids. And technically you can stop and start easily at any point. Mustering up the willpower to do so is another matter.
posted by clorox at 3:35 AM on April 6, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by clorox at 3:35 AM on April 6, 2012 [1 favorite]
Seconding Dungeons of Dredmor.
Desktop Dungeons (featured on the blue), which seems to be in eternal beta, has a free "alpha" which is plenty complete and a lot of fun. It feels almost like a puzzle-roguelike mashup to me. There's only one dungeon level to complete per runthrough, and plenty of unlockables as you complete them. It's a great game for coffee breaks.
posted by Perthuz at 5:28 AM on April 6, 2012
Desktop Dungeons (featured on the blue), which seems to be in eternal beta, has a free "alpha" which is plenty complete and a lot of fun. It feels almost like a puzzle-roguelike mashup to me. There's only one dungeon level to complete per runthrough, and plenty of unlockables as you complete them. It's a great game for coffee breaks.
posted by Perthuz at 5:28 AM on April 6, 2012
Well, there's the fan-made Starflight: The Lost Colony that was released last year.
posted by erstwhile at 6:52 AM on April 6, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by erstwhile at 6:52 AM on April 6, 2012 [3 favorites]
Star Control x Roguelike = Transcendence.
posted by Jonathan Harford at 7:43 AM on April 6, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by Jonathan Harford at 7:43 AM on April 6, 2012 [2 favorites]
Dungeon Crawl!
And with WebTiles, you can play it, and watch other people play, over the web.
posted by zamboni at 8:02 AM on April 6, 2012
And with WebTiles, you can play it, and watch other people play, over the web.
posted by zamboni at 8:02 AM on April 6, 2012
Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space both feature that sort of roguelike randomization, as well as space adventure and first contacts, etc. A game will take between 30 minutes to an hour, and is very easy to stop and pick up where you started.
FTL has been getting a lot of press recently, too.
posted by mikurski at 3:28 AM on April 7, 2012
FTL has been getting a lot of press recently, too.
posted by mikurski at 3:28 AM on April 7, 2012
Seconding FTL- it's not out yet, but I played a demo and it's pretty fun, kind of a mix of space trading/exploring and roguelike (since you've got little dudes on your ship to manage when you're fighting enemies).
posted by Secretariat at 8:58 AM on April 8, 2012
posted by Secretariat at 8:58 AM on April 8, 2012
Oh, and not a newer game, but I've spent many an hour on Escape Velocity (wikipedia). Originally only a Mac game (which I fondly recall rubbing in the faces of my PC friends, with their usually superior gaming computers), the 2002 version, Escape Velocity Nova is for windows and OS9, but there's a free patch that will make it run on OS X.
posted by Secretariat at 9:06 AM on April 8, 2012
posted by Secretariat at 9:06 AM on April 8, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by kprincehouse at 8:44 PM on April 5, 2012 [1 favorite]