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Author Topic: HighFleet - Hammerfight goes dieselpunk and is now a strategy/simulation??  (Read 11381 times)

Il Palazzo

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1434950/HighFleet/
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The creator of Hammerfight is out with a new release, and it deserves some exposure, methinks.

It's a weird game, doing its own thing. For better and for worse.

At the core there's aerial combat in semi-enclosed arenas, much like in Hammerfight. Only, no longer are you flying a glorified wooden outhouse, trying to swing a fuckhuge sword on a chain. Now it's clunky rocket-powered pieces of metal that can't decide if they want to be pre-dreadnought battleships or cold war-era moon landers, bristling with cannons and rockets. And maybe a nuke.
Fully ranged combat (with occasional ramming) is not as exhilarating as splitting enemies with an oversized axe. But landing high-calibre salvoes and seeing lumbering behemoths plunge to the ground amid spectacular explosions is satisfying nonetheless.

The fights are always 1 vs many, even though your fleet can be large. This kinda deflates the joy of having a fleet, but is understandable from game-design perspective. There is an option to retreat a damaged vessel during a fight, which lets the next one in queue take over, so it's not entirely pointless to haul those combat ships around.

But even though in the end it always goes down to having to fight some dudes, the main game seems to be played on the fleet simulation layer. It's all about getting into the right fights and avoiding the rest. People compare it to Silent Hunter in this respect. But I've never played that, so can't comment.
You have your fleet, flying around, trying to conquer cities. But you're doing more of a guerilla, or special forces thing, rather than seeking pitched battles. There's a lot of plotting courses, managing fuel reserves and repairs, sending detachments, listening to radio communications and decoding enemy movements; there's shooting cruise missiles (even nuclear) at range and attempting to evade or shoot down the same; hiding from pursuit and surprise attacks on shipping; a bit of exploration. Some of those have their own mini-games attached.

There's a few more layers included: a ship designer, where you can remodel any ship pretty freely; a landing mini-game (much like combat arena w/o shooting), a card-based conversation layer, ship crew promotions, and a radar thingy I'm still trying to figure out.

The setting feels unique. It has a Persian/Turkic-infused cultural setting, vaguely similar to Hammerfight's. Now with added flavours of Russian Empire and post-apocalypse (somebody blew up the Moon at some point, apparently).


The release is refreshingly not-EA, which doesn't mean there aren't any bugs. But at least the game is sold in its complete form.

The whole thing has a very old-school feel to it, both in game design and in how it looks. It can be both intriguing and annoying.
Graphics are nice, occasionally bordering on beautiful, if definitely indie-grade. The screenshots make it look better than it is, it should be said. There's granularity to it that doesn't show on smaller screenshots. The displays are cramped. Some of that might be intentional.

There are some odd choices w/r to saves - the game doesn't autosave on exit, but on certain actions, so it's not impossible to lose some hard-won progress. The manual saving doesn't exist (it classifies itself as a roguelike), but the game lets you make those on capturing certain locations. Finally, every combat or landing can be completely redone if you're not satisfied with it, at the cost of crew morale (depleting which can end you the game).

The many mechanics are kinda obscure and not always explained clearly or exhaustively.

Finally, it's somewhat on the pricey side for an indie release.

Still. I'm yet to get a good grip on how it all works, but so far seems to be worth the money. It's possible, though, that it'll turn out to be one of those games, where the bulk of the fun comes from figuring them out. We'll see.
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Nighthawk

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Holy crap, it's out? I'd stopped actively watching it about a year or so back when I felt like it would never actually be released. It's super exciting to see it available, and in a completed state, too.

Current Steam reviews are discussing some annoying bugs, so it might be a while before I bite, but I'm still super excited. Thanks for bringing this to the forefront with a thread!
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Il Palazzo

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Oh, you were following the development? I wasn't even aware this was brewing. Was a nice surprise to find out the developer has been busy all (well, some of) this time.
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Nighthawk

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Well, I wasn't really following development, because I don't know if there was a place to follow development. I just remember the game having its own official website and looking really, really cool even though it wasn't released, or even teased to be released. I was afraid maybe it'd exist in perpetual limbo with the developer never quite satisfied, but here we are!
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Salmeuk

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what a strange koink-i-dink, I reinstalled Hammerfight not a week ago! I didn't event think to check in on the devs other projects.

This is gonna be a sure-buy from me. Hammerfight was all kinds of unique and story driven, but damn it was satisfying too! So whether or not I like this second game, I kinda feel like I want the devs to make even more unique stuff. Maybe a few bucks can help that dream.

Thanks for the shoutout, Il Palazzo. This subforum never fails
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Karlito

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Hell yeah!



I've been enjoying this over the weekend. I love being able to intercept a radio message and then draw out some plots with my in-game pencil. Lots of systems I haven't even dug into yet, though I'll say the game does have some user experience issues- it doesn't tell you when it saves, for example. I kind of thought I'd lost patience with stuff like that, but Highfleet is otherwise so immersive I guess I can forgive some of its foibles.
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Salmeuk

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Yeah, immersive is a great way to put it. Amazement after a few minutes here. This game is like a happy mixture of Luftrausers, Starsector, and Silent Hunter (or your preferred WWII sub game).

A few screenshots to show you what I've seen so far:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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Yeah. Combat is pretty fun so far, and takes ALL your focus, so that's what most reminds me of Starsector. Luftrausers, well, it's 2-d sideview momentum fighting, so duh. And well Silent Hunter as you are sort of leading a wolfpack in the sky, and are given a full suite of radio and radar tools to help you location enemy strike forces. The radio UI elements are really quite amazing, not just radio tuning with knobs and switches, but also a beautiful radar system, though I have yet to see if these tools are truly functional, or just for show / glitz.

This really does feel like a successor to Hammerfight, and that's awesome! Also, Karlito, wtf is that drawing and why is it so funny to me
« Last Edit: August 02, 2021, 12:42:37 am by Salmeuk »
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Mkok

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Wanted to try this one out. For some reason mouse cursor could only move up or left, not down or right  :(
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Aoi

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Does it actually look so... grainy, or is that a side-effect of the screenshot posting process?
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Frumple

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Looks like that in vids, too. It's a deliberate aesthetic choice on the part of the devs.
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Il Palazzo

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Hell yeah!
That's... an almost disturbingly accurate representation of the game. Down to the straightest index finger I've ever seen. Needs more rain, though.

Does it actually look so... grainy, or is that a side-effect of the screenshot posting process?
Yeah, it's grainy alright.
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Karlito

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I'm not the artist, for the record. Just spreading the message.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Does it actually look so... grainy, or is that a side-effect of the screenshot posting process?
One of the few settings you are allowed to change is turning the dithering effect off, for what it's worth.
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Salmeuk

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Does it actually look so... grainy, or is that a side-effect of the screenshot posting process?

I will say, those screenshots are downres, so YMMV. The effect is noticeable during play, but much like a brick veneer, its nice if you don't question it too hard.

Conversely, I question the decision to only let you control one unit at a time. This turns every fight into a sort of 1 vs 3, with your only true advantage being your human capabilities. Seems odd, a concession to the A.I. not knowing how to fight itself, perhaps? I don't see why you can't deploy friendly units ala Mount and Blade.
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ChairmanPoo

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How foes it compare with airships conquer the skies?
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Urist McScoopbeard

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color me hyped. I've been following this for years.

V happy it came out, and v happy people seem to be digging it, I like this dev a lot and hope he (they? idk how many people worked on this) continue making sick ass games.
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