Those who bought should definitely give their impressions *wink wink*
Downloading now, but I've work tomorrow and then I'm away for the weekend, so first impressions might be a little while coming.
I can say that the official forum and the devs look like they're very engaged and open to feedback, though, which is a positive sign for me. And some of the lore and discussions they've started up in the Design forum is very interesting - there's obviously been a lot of thought put into the worldbuilding (/galaxybuilding) side of things. Gameplay feedback some time after this weekend!
Edit: actually, scratch that - it downloaded quicker than I'd expected and I played about thirty minutes or so (which, for my playstyle and my first time playing, was about the first five turns).
Initial impressions are good. 1680x1050 resolution doesn't appear to be working yet, but I'll put that down to an alpha issue, as all other resolutions seem to be fine. The artwork is very good, and the music is pleasant (and 'spacey') enough to listen to without being intrusive.
Controls are smooth, with mousewheel zoom in/out very responsive and finely graduated. Edge-of-screen scrolling didn't seem to work - I was using the keys to scroll around - but that may be a me issue...dual screen setup seems to mess with these things sometimes!
Key scrolling was perfectly fine.
The five races that come with the alpha are fairly standard tropes for this genre, but are very well-done versions of them, with good background blurbs and a decent mix of playstyles. I picked my usual playstyle, which is all-out-research (so I'm a turtle, nyah!)
Galaxy map looks very pretty and, on a large, dense galaxy, plenty sizeable. There's plenty of "play area depth" - galaxy map scales down to system level (where you can colonise planets and give system-wide build orders), and you can then scale down further to planet level (where you can set individual planet focus and build orders). Seems to be a wide variety of star types, planet types and sizes, planet modifiers ("EM Fields", for example, or "Poor Soil"), etc.
Ship design is easy to understand, quite detailed (I suspect that once you start teching up the list of modules will become quite substantial), primarily list-based. I like this style of ship building - it might appeal less to those who like drag-and-dropping-into-specific-positions building (which I think SotS did, if I'm recalling correctly). Each to their own. I think it's nice.
Research is an interesting layout - four matrix-layout type of trees, queueable, with the whole tree visible from start, each tech item unlocking one or more results (e.g. new planet buildings, new weaponry, new resources on planets). Each tech has a decent description and seems worthwhile in and of itself - there are no "research Small Polaron Shield XXIV for a 3.5% improvement on XXIII" that I spotted, for example.
Ship (or rather, fleet, even if it's just a single ship) movement on the galactic map is by means of star-lane-type passages ('cosmic strings') between stars - at least at this stage of my game. My starting ships could each reach a new star on the first turn, which was pleasant (I dislike spending my first turn just twiddling my thumbs waiting for my first ship to be built - I'm not a starfaring civilisation until it's built, dammit, why do games even start before then!?
).
The heroes mechanic looks interesting and detailed - you get a batch of heroes available to hire (for a one-off and ongoing cost) initially, then a new batch becomes available on what looks like a regular basis. Heroes have levels and experience (yes, they can level up), and statistics which will affect which role they're best suited for (e.g. system administrator or fleet commander). Looks like when they level up you get to pick new abilities for them, from a specified list determined by their classes (each hero has what looks like two classes e.g. "Pilot" and "Administrator").
Overall - this looks very promising. The tutorial screens are well written and clearly visualised (they're alongside screenshots with labels for explanations), so it's easy to pick up and be quickly up to speed with how to play - although of course this is helped by the fact that I've played a number of games in the same genre, so none of the mechanics are entirely new to me.
For those of you who are on the fence, take a gander at their website (
http://www.amplitude-studios.com/) and particularly the Endless Space forum there, and have a read of some of the discussions. That should help clarify any questions you've got. As I said above, the devs appear to be fairly active (although of course you'd hope they would be while still developing!
), so any questions should get solid answers.
Hope that's helpful!
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Topic: Endless Space (Read 123812 times)