ΔV: Rings of Saturn

The game has a free demo so this is the best way to check if it is for you or not so there is no point in describing the concept of the game. I would rather explain why I like it. It is one of those “hate it or love it with no in between” games. The reason for this is that ship control is quite tricky. I’ve heard people complain that piloting a spaceship in most video games is just like piloting an airplane but in space. I would go even further and say that in games piloting a spaceship is like driving a go-kart - you have instantaneous acceleration, turn like you are on rails and stop on a dime. Inertia is downplayed to a point where its effect is as impactful as when Mario changes directions in Super Marios Bros and he is sliding just for a pixel or two before starts going full speed in the opposite direction. In ∆∨ you really need some time to accelerate to any reasonable speed, turning seems to take the territory of a small country and the only time you will be stationary is when you match your speed to an asteroid using your autopilot. The struggle to control your spacecraft is what makes this game interesting and engaging for me. The game requires you to put in a lot of effort just to fly the ship and if manging to retain control of your vessel despite it being quite difficult feels rewarding for you then you will love ∆∨. If not then you will think it is just a game with bad controls with nothing else going for it. I will compare the controls of ∆∨ to the driving game Juiced where the controls were twitchy, you could spin out even when changing lanes at high speed, if you had a RWD car you had to let off the gas completely when taking a corner or else you would oversteer. It felt so weird and unnecessarily difficult compared to NFS Underground 2. But I remember more fondly Juiced because when I drove well I knew it was because I took my time to practice and develop my skills while in NFS the cars handled so well that skill hardly mattered.

But there are always exceptions. This is one. The physics are indeed fine tuned. You are not forced to do fast pace, you can play chill style. The tutorial is good enough for me. A very nice evening game after a stressful day. And I still have only the first ship, just upgraded a few things. Cons: Up to now none. Hints / spoilers: If you are about to be shot to death, which does not happen often, ALT+F4 before you explode. You can use your thrusters to break up rocks with finer control than shooting. Get the Nakamura MPU microwave thingy for you cargo bay. BIG fuel tank means a lot of weight and a lot of overheating just moving around, so not worth early on as I learned. If you have enough money, get "MPI town class storage", giving you a BIIIG buffer before the reactor overheats. Important when you need to outrun someone shooting you or when you maneuver difficult areas.

I'm the kind of person that in other space games actually enjoys shooting the rocks. This is probably the best rock shooting I have ever experienced. Like a good simulator, ΔV: Rings of Saturn gives you plenty of options for how your experience goes. You can fly with computer assistance or without. You can use drones, or forego them. There are plenty of ship options (although more is always appreciated) as well as gear for all the ships. The setting details seem fine, they are not distracting and help keep things interesting. I want to see more in the game as time goes on but even in development it's looking pretty polished.

This game is very nice and addictive. I playing it few days. All ship configuration changes are experiments for me. If someone likes to discover the meaning of individual elements for himself, it's a lot of fun. Each trip for expensive minerals is an adventure. You get more ships over time, but it takes some time to upgrade and train each one. So far I have not discovered if there is any main goal in this game or just such nice endless digging.