Space Games

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Space, the Final Frontier

Ever since man laid his eyes on the cosmos their has been a desire to explore space. Famous spaceships such as the USS Enterprise, Millennium Falcon and the Death-Star have all captured our imagination. Who doesn't want to fly an X-Wing and blow shit up?

Note that a great many of the games on the Shmups page also take place in space.

The List

Picture	Title	Developer	Year Released	Description
	Aces of the Galaxy	Artech Studios	2008	After Burner Climax IN SPACE! The gameplay is very basic: shoot everything that moves. The game is a bit short, but shit blew up real good, so who cares? Give it a try. Available on Xbox Live Arcade. Also: catchy menu music.
	Ad Astra	Steve Chapman	Still not completed. Latest version (1.3c) released in 2010	Ad Astra is an indie space sim developed in Chapman's spare time. The game has many of the staples you would expect from a space sim, such as trading, bounty hunting, mining, and tons of systems to explore. Two of the neat features of Ad Astra are seamless transitions between outer space and planetary space and a fully customizable soundtrack. Ad Astra's website Download link
	Allegiance	Microsoft Game Studios	2000	An abandoned multiplayer game by MGS still supported by the community. Its gameplay is basically Tribes in space: 1 player is the RTS commander, his teammates control the ships and do the fighting. This decade-old game looks dated now, but newer textures are available. Protip: Mouse control is toggled by Num0, many newbies don't catch this. Website
	Armada Online	Mark Jordan	2005-present	The MMO version of Armada developed independently by its original creator. It's still in Alpha stage, but this hidden gem already has some creative ideas rarely seen in mainstream games. The community is still active and helpful.Armada-Online website
	Elite	Firebird	1984	This is the granddaddy of the space exploring and sandbox games. 8-bit computing with (wireframe) 3D rendering, and 3D combat. 170kb but over 2,000 unique worlds with their own commodities and fluff. If you want the Elite experience on modern computers, look for the open-source Oolite.
	EVE Online	CCP	2003-present	Fuckhuge galaxy, fuckhuge ships, and hostile players are way more of a problem than any NPCs. Pirates camping the jumpgates, parking cargo into unremarkable interplanetary space for safe keeping, make money by mining, trading, research, collecting bounties, privateering, smuggling, mercenary...
	Freelancer /v/lancer	Digital Anvil	2003	A /v/'s favorite. Basically it's a free-form space sim that plays much like a MMO when you get online. The story mode is worth a swing through, but online is where you stay (and play with /v/ bros). More on brolancing on the /v/lancer wiki.
	Freespace 2	Volition, Inc.	1999	One of the staple games in the space genre. Many mods for Freespace 2 are still widely used, mostly run on Freespace SCP.
	Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition	Stardock	2006-2008	Turn based 4X in space. The deepest of its kind. Has a very extensible Ship Builder. Shit's addictive.
	Gratuitous Space Battles	Positech Games	2009	An unique fleet management game. You build ships, deploy them on battles, give them directives, then sit back and enjoy the havoc, gain money to buy ship parts, rinse and repeat. Although you play mainly on the Ship Builder and Formation screen, the space battles steal the show.
	Homeworld	Relic Entertainment	1999	RTS with true 3D tactics, fuck yeah. Comes with an awesome story and a beautiful soundtrack. Part 2 of the series is decent as well, especially with Complex Mod applied.
	Nexus: The Jupiter Incident	Mithis Entertainment	2004	A combat-centric space sim. Tough to get a solid control of, but past that, it will treat you with a deep gameplay and an interesting alien war story to go along. The graphic looks impressive even in 2011. You'll have a good time if the stealth missions don't make you ragequit.
	Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity	Ironclad Games	2008-2010	GalCiv's RTS cousin. Not quite like Homeworld since it's more 4X oriented. Plays and looks good.
	Star Trek: Armada II	Mad Doc Software	2002	Trek RTSs are rare, but the the ones we got are good. Traditional RTS gameplay all the way through, with enough twists and Trek themes to make things fresh. Best played with mods for a huge graphic update.
	Star Trek: Invasion	Warthog Games	2000	Little known Trek space combat at the end of the Playstation lifecycle. Unlike many other Trek games, you control a very small craft, so the scale of the battles is relatively bigger. Incredibly satisfying to play once you got used to the controls (especially strafing and lock-on tailing abilities).
	The U-Quan Masters	Open source Original game: Toys for Bob	2002-present Original game: 1992	Port of the old game "Star Control II" for modern pc. It is basically Mass Effect with the shooter part replaced with small scale starship battles and with better story and characters. It is surprising to see how much Bioware stole took inspiration from this game. Full of good humor and nice 2D graphics, features a non-linear storyline. Try to ally with many different alien species to liberate planet Earth from the tyranny of the Ur-Quan, a powerful race that is dominating the galaxy. Also completely free. Link
	X³: Terran Conflict	Egosoft	2008	Often called "EVE Offline". Has a just as steep, if not even steeper learning curve but once you're in you can experience an incredibly open and versatile world with what seems to be endless choices regarding everything from your career path to your ship choice, and it goes as far as being able to purchase space stations to establish your own trading routes. Also there are tons of mods thanks to the active community. The successor X: Rebirth is currently in the making and will be out in quartal four of 2011.
	X-Wing (series)	LucasArts	1993-1999	X-Wing, TIE Figher, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter (as well as the campaign expansion Balance of Power) and X-Wing Alliance make up an absolutely amazing series of Star Wars starfighter games. Pilot a wide variety of craft in heated battle against and alongside other fighters and capital ships, on both sides of the galactic conflict. Every one of these games is worth playing, though X-Wing itself is a bit dated.