Lightspeed Frontier, the Space-Based Sandbox
Indies are a big part of PAX and this year’s crop is shaping up nicely. While I’ve only waded through a fraction of the games at the Indie Mega Booth there are some hidden gems worth mentioning. One game truly stood out during my first day on the floor and that was Lightspeed Frontier from developer Riveted Games. Having just been Greenlit and close to being backed on Kickstarter (less than 48 hours!), Lightspeed Frontier demonstrated a functioning ship building mechanic comprised of adding modules around one or multiple command modules. Imagine connecting lasers and hull pieces like Legos to build a formidable ship to take you on a galactic journey.
The demo provided me with an unlimited amount of modules to build a ship with so naturally I built a behemoth of a dreadnought class ship that handled like a drunk cow in mud. I quickly learned that I should probably add some intelligence to my ship designs. Fortunately, the demo also provided me with a dozen premade ship designs that I could quickly take out into open space where I was quickly greeted by an enemy ship. I was told that if I took out its command module it was an instant kill. I attempted to target that elusive weak point but ended up knocking out the weapon systems and engines. He was a sitting duck; I unleashed everything I had to completely destroy the ship and claimed my prize: a hand-full of modules that I quickly placed on my ship as trophies.
This type of encounter seems to be the core gameplay in Lightspeed Frontier at the moment and it’s enough to get me excited about the other features coming down the line. I only scratched the surface with the variety of modules available; there are non-combative modules for those who love to mine or a tractor beam for the salvagers out there.
The gameplay loop is akin to the roguelike genre, with procedurally generated star systems and emergent questing. It wasn’t too clear if players will reboot their galaxies often but the procedural generation isn’t really the main focus of Lightspeed Frontier; instead, players will have plenty to try out with ship building and combat. There’s even a companion mobile app where you can create blueprints and upload them to your captain profile for building in the full game. I know I’ll be experimenting with all sorts of crazy and impractical designs.
