The art of Star Command draws inspiration from games such as Theme Hospital and other early '90's management games, and the cut-scene stylings reminded me of point and click adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, with hand drawn backgrounds and pixel art animated characters. The animations are also neat and add a lot of charm to the characters and the world, with characters running around flailing wildly while on fire, or getting out their blowtorches to repair the inevitable damage your ship will receive. The repair animations are reminiscent of those that the mechanics and handymen of Rollercoaster Tycoon and Theme Hospital used to use.
The retro pixel art may be in vogue for indie developers these days, but here it adds a layer of nostalgia for true management games, and not the pale imitations pumped out these days as freemium time management games. This art style may be a detriment to the game, not only as things can get quite busy on screen and it can be hard to make out things, especially on a small iPhone screen, but it also instills a kind of expectation, an expectation that this game will play like the management games of old. It's true that it does in some respects, but in others it feels like there's a missed opportunity, as there is a basic form of character management and progression, but its not very deep and seems to hint at a system being designed to be in place, but just isn't there at the moment, alongside a "contraband" section that is Coming Soon.
This isn't to say that Star Command isn't a good game, it is, it just isn't what I expected it to be from all the pre-release information. Maybe this is down to misunderstanding what the game was going to be, I thought it was going to be more like a mix of the Sims and FTL, a Theme Starship so to speak, but what it has ended up as is an enjoyable 2 hour(ish) romp through 15 missions across the vast emptiness of space. And it is this vast emptiness that nags the most. I hoped for a more dynamic, randomised adventure, much like the aforementioned FTL, but ended up with a straight campaign that didn't really hold any surprises, especially as i had seen most of the cutscenes and character interactions during the trailers and articles during the game's development.
The campaign has a modicum of player choice in that when there are multiple missions available, you are free to go about them in any order you wish, but make sure your ship is prepared as missions can be gruelling if you lose crew members and forget, or cant, go back to a safe haven and recruit more. Also, if you don't like the mini games that are implemented for your weapons systems, you are out of luck as there is no option for auto fire, although I found that the mini games offer a chance at dealing damage even if your weapons systems aren't that powerful, although clearer instructions and tutorials are needed on them. There's also the fact that battles can go on for quite some time, and unfortunately there is no option to save mid fight, so make sure you save often and hope the game doesn't crash or you could lose your progress. I had a couple of crashes as I played, but i was on an ageing iPad 1, and the game had been going a while and a lot was happening on screen, being in the midst of a battle and all, and had to work my way back to where I was following a restart, but this is a minor annoyance, and one that can be easily patched out hopefully.
The end package is seemingly slim for a game that spent 2 years in development, and went through 2 Kickstarter campaigns. Once you have played the campaign, you get to play through what is pretty much a New Game+ with access to better ships, which have more space for new rooms and crew, but the difficulty of the enemies is increased, so if you struggled the first time around, get ready to struggle again, and face longer more drawn out battles.
Hopefully there is more to come, and if the loading screen is anything to go by, there definitely is, content that will possibly open up the game a bit more and allow a lot more freedom in this otherwise tightly restricted galaxy. Once that happens, this game will be a gem, and a must play for wannabe starship captains, and will then have a continuing mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before (at least on iOS!)"
Star Command is out now on iOS: iTunes
Coming soon for Android