Construct Starships & Deconstruct Enemies In Reassembly
Space shooter
Hey there, space captain! What's your favourite part of being a space captain? If your answer to that question is "spaceships", I have some fine news to share.
I was mighty pleased when Reassembly [official site] launched earlier this week, having been intrigued by its rogue-ish gameplay and snap-together spacecraft construction for some time. I've since spent a little time with the game and it's not disappointed, although my homely designs have.
I've a few initial thoughts on the game, but first check out this sumptuous trailer:
Building improbable spaceships is my favourite part of Reassembly's concept. My first design worked on the "they wouldn't start you with a turkey" principle, taking the basic, starting ship and slapping a few new guns on. Sadly, this didn't quite achieve the desired effect of 'not losing every fight'.
Next up I removed the front of that starting ship and bolted two pyramids of six lasers in place. Why be subtle when you can be ridiculous?
At this point I discovered the testing feature, which automatically pits your disgusting creation against a bunch of stock designs. Alas my pyra-laser didn't fare too well in this context, so it was back to the drawing board once more. My third effort was basically a missile boat which fared slightly better than the previous two designs. Still not terribly well though. Clearly I have much to learn about the design and construction of warships. Who knew?
When you're not designing ships, Reassembly has you exploring a randomised map and helping your faction (other ships and space stations the same colour as you) to capture territory from and fight off the ships of other factions (other ships and space stations a different colour to you - wait, wait, what are we teaching people here?).
It's all rather fun and compelling, even if like me you're absolutely dreadful at the start. I especially like the way that bits of pretty much every ship, station and asteroid in the game can be individually damaged and destroyed. This doesn't exactly open up selective, tactical targeting of ship's modules - everything is much too frantic for that - but it does mean that sometimes a ship will end up cracked in two, and you watch with dawning horror as all of your weapons pirouette off into the inky darkness of the void.
Reassembly is available on Steam for £10.99/$14.99/14.99€ or DRM-free through a Humble widget on its site.