Ghostship Aftermath

Dead Space on an open ship where everything is generated randomly - from tasks to items.
Shrinks clobbered me until I don't know from what meaning - this game is just gigantic.
But well it's time to take the plunge - and the first thing I want to do is thank the creator - Shaun. I've never seen such an involved developer; he personally added me as a friend, explained everything, told me everything, and from time to time threw in some hints - I felt like someone special.
The game begins with the fact that, we find ourselves on a huge ship in which something happened - (of course, the invasion of giant worms turning people into zombies) when we arrive at the scene to investigate what happened - and listen to what our companion sitting comfortably in the cockpit of the ship on which we flew. We get the first task and here will attach a hint of croissant - the tasks as well as monsters, weapons and decor is randomly generated (the general layout of the ship is always the same) to this comes permadeath you die-you die.
But-but; that's not all-we have only one flashlight with us in which the batteries last for only an hour, as well as an air limit which can be recharged. The thing that surprised me the most in all this is the phenomenal atmosphere, deadspace or other strictly horror games can hide, what we get here is beyond average and you have to try it yourself (sounds and noises in this game are a total pulp), each time I was kept in suspense, even though I was already in the cockpit; I never knew if this time some worm would not, and jump out of the pipe in the ceiling; while I'll be browsing the data.
But unfortunately, like every game and this one, it has its flaws -.
The first and most annoying is the intro - which we have to watch every time (it lasts about 3 minutes) the solution to this problem is to choose a quick game - a more casual mode where we have save points, many facilities and scrolled sooner mentioned intro.
The second element is the shooting system, which EVIDENTLY is made for oculus rift - it's damn weird, but you can get used to it.
In summary, the game is a MEGA HARDKOR challenge with a phenomenal atmosphere and even better soundtrack, which can be passed several times and will surprise you every time.

I bought this game back in 2014 (having followed its development for a long time) but it ended up being sat in my library for several years, having only 'checked it out' when it launched, but I never really gave it the time of day (no idea why). Today, I sat down and played it for several hours, and possibly around five restarts (once you die, that's it, game over).
This is the first game by MAG studios, but I believe takes place after the events of their second game, CDF Ghostship, which is an indie FPS involving the soldiers of the starship dreadnought CDF Goliath. However Ghostship Aftermath is survival horror with guns, through and through. Contact has been lost with the Goliath and you've been sent to investigate what went wrong. A cheesy scenario, but a classic sci-fi horror setting which is influenced by Aliens, Dead Space and Event Horizon.
Survival horror has always been at its finest when you're trapped in a labyrinthine environment with dark corridors, jump scares, minimal ammo and the need to think fast and plot your route between 'breaks'. Ghostship Aftermath utilises this to the fullest extent, with enemies taking advantage of the bloodstained, shadowy walkways, ambushing you at the most inopportune moments, keeping you on edge at all times, with your only respite being when you're waiting for airlocks to cycle. The music is used perfectly - its not too ambient so that you don't notice it, but it's not blockbuster either, and the jump scares are aligned perfectly to the score as well.
What makes it truly interesting is the roguelike nature of the game. First up, in the story mode, if you die, you die. There's no handholding, so you're forced to learn the mechanics off the bat, and given that the ship is primarily 'open world' you can get lost easily, stumbling from room to room trying to reach your next objective. This isn't a bad thing as the game invites exploration as there are lots of achievements for doing specific things and lots of weapons to find on the ship. Secondly, it's got a random narrative. The ship's layout remains the same, but the events in different areas are randomised to create a unique story each time you play it. This is most notable in the personality of your partner (who stays comfortably in the ship you arrived on, talking to you remotely) and the ship's AI, ASMI. On top of that, there are multiple endings as well (that I've yet to see, mind you), so all in all, it offers hours of replayability - dying isn't a chore, it's a step towards learning the game and its many, many different encounters.
Possibly my favourite spoiler-free moment so far was trying to reach an objective via the ship's very-long sub-corridor. A bloodstained warning told me that the corridor was ridden with horrors so when I entered the corridor all was quiet. Then as I was halfway down, I was overwhelmed by zombies that came lumbering out of the shadows, forcing me to waste valuable oxygen sprinting as fast as I could to the airlock, then waiting for it to open whilst the zombies got closer and closer... tense moments like that can really make a gaming experience.
It's not without its flaws, of course - it's possible to get stuck on scenery, and walking over debris can cause camera-stutter. Enemy movement is overly-quick and erratic, and the graphics are somewhat old-school. But these just don't detract from what is a wonderfully tense and detailed game which stands out in a world of linear games that spoonfeed you on how to play. If you want to find your way around, you need to look at maps on the ship's walls. Emptying a magazine into an enemy might have little effect unless you work out its weakness (e.g. plasma shotgun vs. zombie heads), so you can learn the mechanics, and I'm still learning the game.
I have to say, I'm seriously impressed and I think that if you're looking for a solid indie survival horror with great atmosphere, solid voice acting, mechanics you need to work out for yourself, a good challenge and bags of replayability, this won't disappoint.
8/10 - Redfield.blog

I think people are attrociously biased and wholly unreasonable with their expectations for this game. Yes, the game has flaws.
The game is clunky in areas, a little loading screen heavy, some of the choices are questionable (totally silent enemies bum rushing you from behind with the only warning being a big chunk of your arse missing), moving around can be a little difficult.
No, this game isn't going to be Deadspace or System Shock 2. It was cobbled together by a single person who had nothing but fumes for funding, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is it impressive for that. Not just impressive, but ambitious.
I feel that most of the negative opinions are falling prey to two things. Firstly the game's rather odd graphics, it's designed for VR, and holy hell does it look good in that
Anyway, in short I feel people are walking into this game with the wrong expectations. The guy who made this game (solo) could have made a godly 2d / side scroller / what have you with how dedicated and driven he is, but he didn't sell himself short and went for the gold instead and made the game he wanted to make. The result is spectacular but not without flaws, though given the origins it's extraordinary.
.. Honestly though, your partner's V.O. is god awful. There's absolutely no justification for how badly delivered the lines are. I feel that improving that would be one of the best things that could be done. But like I said, not perfect!

This game is not an FPS, it is a sci-fi survival horror game. Survival here means you have resources you need to manage other than health and ammo. You start out with only 90 minutes of oxygen so you need to keep track of how much you have and try to find a place to recharge before you run out, and sprinting uses 4x the oxygen so you have to be aware of your situation and decide whether it's more important to move fast or breathe longer.
Light is a limited resource that needs managed for survival, but also plays into the horror side of things. Dark is scary and scary is good, but you can't see items, messages, or enemies in the dark so you need a flashlight to survive. If you're using a flashlight it's not so dark and not so scary which is bad for horror. So for middle ground between a scary dark ship and being able to see things and survive you only get 60 minutes of flashlight battery (non-rechargeable). If you run out completely... good luck with that.
All gamers know with melee enemies and guns that backup+shoot=win. To disrupt this equation there are boxes all over the ship that are collision enabled. Here if you try and run backwards shooting you risk running into a box and getting caught by the bad guy if you don't jump over it fast enough. This is an intentional feature designed to make you watch where you're going and prevent you from playing this like an FPS. Remember where I said "this is not an FPS" earlier?
Additionally, enemies are very difficult to kill, especially in groups. It imbues a sense helplessness in the player, and being helpless is scary. In one variation of the storyline I ended up in a corridor filled with aliens yelling "F*CK YOU DIE DIE DIE! F*CK YOU DIE DIE DIE!" as I poured plasma rifle fire into the oncoming swarm and screamed "NOOOOOOOOO!" as I was overwhelmed and eaten.
Perma-death is listed in the features section and seems self explanatory, but I feel it needs reiterated because some people don't quite get how it works. The game does save at loading screens so that you can quit and pick up the story later if you need to, but there is no manual saving or loading. When you die though your last save point dies with you and you have to start a new game. Having a save point to fall back on makes dying less of an imposition and alleviates the player's fear of dying and doesn't emphasize survival.
The game does lack some polish and is rough in some areas, but if you consider it was made by 1 developer with 0 budget, it is understandable. He has been continually improving the game over time, releasing updates periodically. He has also already released 1 free DLC and will be releasing another for Halloween as a token of appreciation to the customers and as an apology for the buggy release. He's not perfect, but how many developers even bother to try and make things right with their customers?
Even if it is rough in places, the tension in the game is palpable. I usually play games to relax, and I've got to say that I almost don't like playing this one because it keeps me wound up the whole time. The biggest part is you don't know what's going to happen next. The storyline is randomized, enemy spawns are randomized, the only thing you can be sure of from one game to the next is your own name, the location of some weapons/objects, and that you're on a big scary Ghostship.
Even the way you move is tense, difficult, and adds to the atmosphere. You clunk along slowly in your heavy spacesuit with magnetic boots, and although you can "sprint" (I use that word loosely, its more like a fast jog) it is only for a couple seconds before you have to go back to walking speed. After all, you are Dr. Jake Abbots from the Colonial Science Division, not a space Marine.
I recommend this game because it achieves its overriding goal, to scare you the entire time, and the randomized storyline is a novel idea that provides tons of hours of re-playability. I've also posted a few technical considerations in the forums I didn't have room for here.
P.S. I HIGHLY recommend reading the MANUAL and watching the getting started video from the developer before playing the first time as you're thrown into the deep end on this game.

So read the reviews and took a chance....
...and it's actually pretty good so far.
Ok so the graphics are, well, 'dated' to say the least (around about System Shock 2 or Half Life 1 levels of dated) and the voice overs are delightfully cheesy sometimes and the enemy AI can barely be described as an AI as much as it, sees the player - walks towards the player - attacks the player... get's lost or stuck after flailing around blindely or OHKO the player from five feet away (damn lurching zombie)
But the atmosphere is spot on, the distant groans of the ship, the wub wub wub of fans and clonk of your boots as you walk (slowly) all add to the tension created by the poor lighting and actual fear of perma-death (yep, screw up once and wave good bye to your progress and hello to the main menu)
BUT what's best about the perma-death in this game is that the usual irritation at having to start over is actually missing for the most part thanks to the massive randomisation that creates whole new scenarios within the same map layout, in one of my many restarts I was teleported over to the ship only to find the central AI was toast and I needed to locate and secure a reliable supply of 02 (where I died) In the next game I boarded the ship via an airlock and the AI was online where I then discovered (or was lied to - died before finding out :( ) that my partner was actually a pirate and that I had to help said AI prevent said pirates from making off with the ship (along with surving the monsters onboard)
Same goes for the enviroment, sometimes a room might have power, other times it doesn't and everything floats around, sometimes a message might be scrawled on a wall and othertimes it's not. All of it adds to the feel of actually exploring a true ghost ship and helps take the sting of starting again away. In 1.5 hours of playing and multiple deaths I have so far encountered the same opening twice (and even then the boarding sequence changed up a bit)
Overall if you go into this not expevting a great deal then you may (as I was) be pleasently surprised by this buggy but atmospheric horror/scifi game

Updated comments based on latest big patch: Much, Much Improved!
I'm really enjoying the tension and uncertainty the atmosphere of the CDF Goliath gives out. The game reminds me of System Shock which is no bad thing at all. Each run through the Goliath is different due to the randomization of story elements and encounters which takes the sting of perma-death away somewhat. The sounds and lighting are spot on for how i imagine a spooky derelict to be and i really am conflicted between exploring and staying safe.
However there is still work ahead. The game is playable enough but it doesn't feel smooth and polished yet, which is to be expected. I still bob up and down when climbing stairs, you still judder against some smaller objects and i have been trapped between a strut and a shelf in one of the storerooms requiring a restart but the list of bugs and annoyances has shrank something fierce in the latest round of patches. I would like a way to push myself back to the deck in Zero-G areas as i was stuck floating against the ceiling in one room in Engineering and Crouch just seems to wibble the camera a little too rather than actually crouching.
I am confident these issues will be dealt with as the devs appear very commited to making your scary experience on the Goliath as pleasant as possible.
Great idea, great atmosphere but it needs a final fit and finish before she can drift the stars. Seriously though, i think this will be an awesome ghost ship story generator when it's done and It's getting closer and closer all the time.

My experience with the game so far:
The first hour was essentially just walking down a corridor really slowly, checking some rooms turning on a generator and other minor stuff. Even so it was pretty simple from a game mechanics point of view (i.e. no real puzzles to solve). I actually quite enjoyed this section. It feld authentic walking around that ship, following signs on the wall and getting a sense of the layout, there was no overly gamey stuff to distract you and the whole athmospere was really well done. There was some jerkiness in the physics, but nothing to problematic in that first section of the game.
After that inital section I got a gun and then I died literally within 10 seconds of encountering the very first tiny enemy creature. Since the game has perma-death that means I have to restart from scratch now, no respawn, reload or anything is available.
Lets just say I consider it a suboptimal game design decision to have such a slow paced game married with quick permadeath. I am not recommending the game to anybody until that permadeath is removed.
Edit: Played a bit more, the permadeath can be "fixed" by manually copying the savegame, which can be found at:
...\SteamApps\common\GSaftermath\Binaries\Win32\gsstorysave0.sav
Just exiting the game and then resuming it before you get killed can also be used to re-roll what monsters appear.
As for the game itself, ammo is extremely rare and most enemies are far to fast to hit with any precision. Thus it's extremly easy and almost unavoidable to run out of ammo. There is no real means to sneak around enemies and enemies kill you extremy quickly. There are also numerous bugs, reloading your weapon will eat up all the ammo in you gun, even if full, and the weapon will get sometimes unequiped, which is hard to notice as you still see you character holding it, only a HUD tells you that it's not equpped.
Essentially whenever the game just lets you explore the ship and enjoy the athmosphere at a slow pace, it's really good. But whenever the monsters pop up, which sadly happens a lot, it's just a broken unplayable mess.
Edit2: Played now some more hours and actually reached the end after some 15 hours. The permdeath is as already mentioned really just completely unacceptable. The game is so full of glitches, bugs and just a general lack of polish so that you will die a lot. I can't imagine anybody having the patience to finish the game with permadeath. Even when the game would actually work and be polished, it's just far to long and far to slow to make permadeath an acceptable solution. This game needs a proper "Restart at Last Checkpoint", which would be trivial to implement and while it wouldn't turn this into a great game, it would at least turn it into a somewhat enjoyable game. Alt-Tab switching and copying savegames around is really not helping the atmosphere.
As for the ammo problem, that solved itself, as the game does respawn ammo every time you reenter a room, so all you have to do is find one of the tiny few location that has ammo and then enter and exit the section a few times to gear up. This feels a little cheap and goes completely against the games goal of feeling realistic and authentic, but at least it makes the game somewhat playable. Health packs respawn as well and the medical bay in general is full of goodies or at least it was on my playthrough.
The way the game handles enemy spawning is also pretty crappy, instead of having the aliens be permanent citizen of the spaceship, they respawn each time you enter a section. Furthermore they only spawn when you walk past specific trigger points, so even if you checked every corner, the game might still spawn an enemy right behind you without giving you any chance to detect it beforehand. In some spots the game will also spawn enemies out of thin air right in front of you.
Enemies themselves are also still far to hard to kill. The slower ones are ok, but all the fast spider creatures require a ton of luck, as while they aren't to hard to kill from a distance, they are completely impossible to kill with any precision when they went close range. You just end up spinning around and shooting at the ground hoping to hit something and more often then not you will simply die instead. The game doesn't have any kind of melee attack to kick enemies away and they can circle you faster then you can turn.
As for mission/task design, it's a bit lacklustre. There are some moments in the game, such as the very beginning, when the tasks that you are giving have an impact on the environment and feel organic. You switch on a generator and that gives you gravity and light and in turn completely transforms not only the look of the location, but also how you navigate it. However those tasks are very sparse throughout the game and most other tasks just feel like rather mundane fetch quests with no visible changes to the environment at all. There are no doors to unlock, no keycards to find, no puzzles that you have to solve or anything like that. It's just lots of going places, pushing buttons, then coming back and pushing more buttons. There is a lot of back and forth through the same location and some of it just feels like unnecessary filler, especially when you just go to a location for the AI to tell you were you have to go next, even so that AI happens to be in radio contact with you all there time and could have told you directly on where to go next instead of having a meaningless side trip.
As for story, there isn't much. As far as I can tell this game doesn't really have much in terms of audio logs or similar stuff to flesh out the background. I found a single log from a doctor and there is supposed to be another one from the captain that I didn't find, but that's about it. The rest of the crew doesn't seem to have left anything behind to read or look at, outside of the random graffiti on the wall, which however are all rather uninformative. All the little task you do over the course of the game, do however result in something in the end, so it's not like there isn't any payoff at all, but a little bit more backstory would have been nice.
The loading times are another problem, even so the game does have airlocks all over it that should make loading seamless, they game still kicks you to a loading screen when the airlock closes, so instead of being able to check your weapons and objectives, you have to stare at a boring loading screen. This hampers the flow of the game quite a bit, as while the loading times aren't very long, they are extremely frequent.
Overall this game isn't terrible, there are a lots of things to like. The atmosphere is great and being able to free roam a space ship is something you don't find in many (any?) other games. The whole exploration can feel a lot like Resident Evil 1 in parts, as you have a lot of freedom and really are left to your own navigation skills without any big arrows pointing the way, although the AI will give you objectives all the time. But the collision detection/physics are incredible buggy and some of the enemies terribly unbalanced, so you need a lot of tolerance for jank to distil some enjoyment out of this game. On top of that you have to deal with the whole permadeath issue, but at least you can work around that.
It looks like this game will receive some further patches and updates, so this is something to keep an eye on, but for the time being it has still a few to many issue to truly recommend it. If you really like the idea of open world space ship exploration, go for it, there are moments in this game were everything clicks together and it feels great, just don't expect those moments to last, as some bug or glitch will surely get in the way.
PS: It's also worth to mention that I so only did a single playthrough, the games story is however randomized, I don't know yet to what degree that will impact things and if some playthroughs are much better or worse then others.