Battlevoid: Harbinger is a hard sci-fi space exploration game blending roguelike, turn-based, star map strategy, and real-time space battles. You are a young commander given the task to venture out into enemy territories, far away from home to unknown galaxies, never knowing what you will face as yo...
Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10, 1.8 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 128MB 3D OpenGL 2.0 Compatible video card, 250 M...
Description
Battlevoid: Harbinger is a hard sci-fi space exploration game blending roguelike, turn-based, star map strategy, and real-time space battles. You are a young commander given the task to venture out into enemy territories, far away from home to unknown galaxies, never knowing what you will face as you jump out from hyperspace.
Intense and gripping sci-fi space adventure simulation
Explore new procedurally generated galaxies each playthrough
Galaxies full of mysterious places and dangerous encounters
Carry out missions, discover new technology, and help humanity survive
Unique turret upgrade system, never seen in a game before
Superb pixel graphics and effects
System requirements
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Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
Think FTL was great but just a tad too much? Get this. You'll enjoy this. Then you'll think about FTL. Then you'll play FTL again, then you'll feel bad after dying a lot then you play this again. It's a process.
... or think of FTL as your house, then during the summers when it gets ridiculously roguelike permadeath hot you go to Battlestation: Harbinger, your summer house. You take a swim, you walk around the beach, play in the sand etc. You'll be doing this until your shorts chafe and you miss home and you go back to FTL. And repeat.
Bottom line: get this one. It is cheap and almost any machine can run it and it has unlockable ships. It is brilliant.
(And if I hadn't just gotten Star Wolves 3 I would've gotten this one. Goddamn it GOG you are ruining my productivity)
First of all: BUY IT!
This is a great "Starship Command"-themed roguelike title that puts you in the seat of a human commander fighting one of several other races. Movement throughout the current map is handled in a turn based format, with each jump between systems counted as a turn, and the battles (and in-system navigation when no enemies are present) are played out in pausable real time, with one accelerated time setting.
Other reviewers, not just here on GOG, have compared this game to FTL. I don't think that is a valid comparison. This game is in its' own category since it allows the player to take full command of a ship's movements, while focusing less on crew and system management. The game's combat is amazingly fun if not incredibly tactically challenging. Also, unlike FTL, you can actually assemble a fleet of multiple ships, which can be given target priorities.
The tactics come into play in the outfitting of your ship and management of the resources (scrap, and upgrade modules) that you acquire on each system. Using your scrap wisely is the key, since you might find yourself unprepared for a chokepoint with a powerful enemy if you used your scrap for frivolous repairs instead of upgrades. Weapon mods are less important to manage at peak efficiency, but can still make a major difference in the speed and efficiency at which combat is resolved.
So, everything sounds great, why 4 stars instead of 5? Unfortunately, while the basic gameplay mechanics are very polished and incredibly fun, the game lacks a bit in the character department. A very basic outline of each race's history is given, but this amounts to very little. Giving us random text-based encounters a-la FTL would be a great step forward in making the game more immersive. The great thing is that with a game like this, there is always room for improvement without disrupting the user's experiences, since playthroughs are short. Hope to see more updates to this effect from Bugbyte in the future!
At the end of the day Battlestation is an enjoyable top down space shooter with slow moving capital ships under your command rather than fast fighters zipping quickly along. With each completed play through you get XP which unlocks additional ships you can play as (you start with one ship each game and can but up to two more during each play through.) And this mechanic is the cause of the two star reduction.
Problem #1: The new ships aren't different, or better yet, worse/weird alternatives to the starting ship, as often the unlocks are in FTL. They are better than the starting ship.
Problem #2: The fastest way to gain XP is to die as fast as possible, start a new game and repeat. This is because the game has three game modes (easy, medium & hard) each of which gives you an XP bonus of (500-1000 XP.) That's right, a fixed XP bonus not a percent increase. The fastest way to get XP is just to die, take your bonus, start a new game, die, take your bonus... etc. This is particularly frustrating as the later ships are better, so if you have any power gaming tendencies you have to constantly fight them in order to want to live and win rather than die and lose, because dying and losing is better. Cheers.
To end on a positive note: The fundamental gameplay is great. It is fun. I enjoy the game itself. However the XP system rewards the wrong gameplay and it constantly frustrates me that the best way to get the next cool shiny ship is to play in the least fun manner possible.
Unfortunately, this is a hard game to like.
There's a progression system, both in game instances through upgrades and between sessions through ship unlocks, but both reward grinding rather than skill, reflexes, or strategy. The upgrade system is so well balanced that almost any choices are the "right ones" as long as the player spends their loot. Ships unlock sequentially based on time invested, not completing any kind of objectives or meeting benchmarks. There is a power creep from one ship to the next, but no interesting balance between them. The prudent decision is always the last ship unlocked.
By the second mission a player's fleet is nigh-on invulnerable. I warped into each sector, hit the "fast forward" setting, and read a book until it was finished from halfway through the second mission to the end of the game. Completing the whole game takes a few hours.
Battles are slow, enemy ships are faster than yours, there's no collision damage, and all the ship weapons of note are omni-directional. Positioning on the ones that do have a limited arc is irrelevant, because enemy ships "hop" over yours back and forth, exposing themselves to any given firing path fairly evenly.
There is a repair/upgrade tradeoff presented, but space stations repair ships for free, so it's actually an upgrade/boredom tradeoff, with the player deciding whether to waste ten seconds backtracking or to burn scrap needlessly. A boredom economy in a game is a bad sign.
The plot is as standard as they come. It raises 2 interesting questions (Why does the lady-race hate mankind? What is the ancient evil?) but doesn't answer either.
Occasionally a close-combat designed ship will warp on top of yours from a place you cannot observe and destroy you before any options become available. I never lost and saw a way that an alternative playstyle or decision would have saved me. It always seemed arbitrary.
Try FTL instead. There's nothing to this one but going through the motions.
Many compared this game to FTL. Well, there are similarities, but IMHO there's no comparison - B:H is way better and most important: more fun to play!
In FTL almost nothing but pure luck decides whether you'll win gloriously or die pathetically. If you happen to stumble on the right merchants, selling right equipment and have enough scrap to buy it at that moment: great! If not: you're screwed. There's NO going back - because the wall of death ruthlesly pushes you ever forward. Worse yet: there is no indication which was the better direction to go in the first place.
Not so in B:H. You fight at your own leisure, can always go back to any equipment-selling bases - as long as you don't leave the sector or let a base be destroyed. (Bases are only attacked when you're present in the same sector, so this isn't a problem.)
Animations are simple, but nice. Every single bullet is accurately shown, thus you can really see how different weapons work.
Some things still depend on luck (e.g. what equipment defeated enemies leave behind), but much, much less than in FTL, so this leaves much more room for actual tactics - even strategy.
It is true that the key to win is unlocking new ships, which is done easiest by dying quickly on Hard (which I dislike). BUT it simply ISN'T TRUE that every unlocked ship is better! Far from it!
In fact you get some of the best ships very soon. Esp. the small, cheap, fast, well armored carrier Guardian is great - esp. in early/mid-game. (First time I won on Hard, was with Avalon as the main ship, plus Guardian and Achiles as companions - without losing a single ship!)
Heavy destroyers have their use as companions, but as main ship carriers are far supperior. Many ships have too weak hull or are too slow to use anyway.
B:H isn't perfect, but then again, no game is... Yet it's quite addictive. Not boring at all. And I didn't find any important bugs or flaws - other than lack of story and that suicide missions reward too many XP vs. winning.
This game is waiting for a review. Take the first shot!
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