Spacelines from the Far Out

Review

Spacelines from the Far Out is a procedurally-generated adventure where you and other players are part of a space travel company that transports passengers to the wonderful planet of Gambulon V, the tourists’ most wanted destination. The game mixes roguelike elements with business management mechanics, similarly to what we have seen in FTL and Overcooked but in simpler ways.

After successfully completing the flight school tutorial, you will start by purchasing and naming your first ship, choosing from a small selection with different layouts. Then you must select your desired route from the galaxy map; each route will show its distance, difficulty, the number of passengers and how much the ticket will cost for them, plus any additional service you will be able to find through the flight, such as gas stations, repairing workshops, space toilettes and others. When you reach an outpost, you will get paid by the passengers and upgrade your ship, before picking a new route towards your final destination.

As one of the crew members, you will help by navigating and maintaining the ship while also assisting passengers’ needs. They can get hungry, sick, or just bored, so you will have to repeat a set of basic tasks to keep them satisfied for the whole trip. At first you can only cook and serve food or entertain the passengers by dancing, but after upgrading the ship you will also be able to cure them when they get sick or place chairs and TVs to keep them in one place. Each task is a mini-game on its own and failing or ignoring the passengers’ needs will give you negative feedback. Satisfying their requests, on the contrary, will increase your reputation (up to five stars) and give you bonus money at the end of each flight.

Flight through space is dangerous though, and while keeping an eye on the passengers you must also navigate the ship, looking on the radar for any obstacle (such as asteroids) and changing its direction to avoid the collision. If your ship is damaged you must try to repair it yourself or bring it to the closest workshop, if there one available on your route. You will also need to constantly check your fuel, which is limited and can only be purchased at the gas stations (running out of fuel will cause an immediate game over).

Since all of these tasks are pretty basic, the difficulty is low even when playing solo. Unless you take more passengers than you can carry, it’s really easy to take care of their needs and the only thing that deserves more attention is managing the power, avoiding asteroids and keeping your ship fueled. While I can’t recommend this game for a solo player (the experience would be quite boring after the first hour or so), it’s much funnier with other players, preferably friends. The problem is that there is no online matchmaking at the moment. It’s planned, but not yet available, thus it becomes really hard to understand if the community is alive. You can still play it with local co-op and Steam Remote Play thankfully, but if you want to play it online with others right now the only option is to join the game’s discord server and look for available players in your timezone.

Overall, Spacelines from the Far Out is a funny little game that can potentially represent a good alternative to Overcooked and the likes, but it’s not something you would enjoy playing alone and right now the online matchmaking is not available, so I recommend waiting for an update (and maybe a discount too), before jumping into space.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

Spacelines from the Far Out Steam Store Page