Farlight Explorers
Farlight Explores is a 3D space-sandbox game, made for space exploration, science fiction and resource management fans. In this game you can build your base or spaceship, explore the galaxy, extract unique ores in each planet or asteroids, craft new products, transport goods from one planet to another and more…
Farlight Explorers is focused and supported on various pillars:
Auxiliary systems: Design and maintenance of all the elements that your base or spaceship need to be operative (water, food, oxygen, energy).
Automatization: Manage and automate the extraction of ores and production of elements that are essential to grow your base.
Transport of goods: Build spaceships in order to transport the goods is vital in order to produce all the possible elements of the game because each planet will have unique characteristics.
Managing a colony: Once you build the Singularity Gate, you will be able to manage a little colony with differents buildings, where your colonists will have a variety of needs to fulfill.
When you start the game you choose a planet to start from the hundreds out there in the galaxy map. Once on the planet you have to extract resources to begin building a base that provides you with the items to survive like food and oxygen. If the base is secure, you can start building your spaceship to go to other planets to extract unique resources that you need to develop new technologies, or you can also use your spaceship to explore.
Steam User 39
EARLY ACCESS REVIEW
I am generally not one for the whole survival, crafting, thing. I am much more interested in base building/management games.
Luckily for me, outside of the irritation generated by having to deal with oxygen and food, which is a minor inconvenience, this game is much more a game of base building and management than it is of survival, and even crafting (though crafting is for certain a core element of the game).
Once you get past the basics... electricity, oxygen, food... you are left with the goal of building a starship, which is a pretty significant goal. And to do so efficiently, you must leverage the power of automation.
You manage the process of digging up the necessary materials, transporting them to a storage facility, and then removing them from that facility in order to turn them in to ingots, plates and gears to craft the next elements of your base, or star ship.
The game gets you in to the flow quickly - though the tutorials need some tweaking. They break immersion and are incredibly irritating and seemingly unavoidable. Since they are delivered through, and stored as some form of email, simply notifying the user of new tutorial content would be highly preferable.
Within two hours, you are, however deep in the process of trying to build a mighty automated infrastructure, and figuring out why your robot arms are tossing your newly crafted ingots 20 yards away from where you want it.
The game is intelligently designed, and presumably combat and other threats will present themselves as you expand your search for the necessary elements for your next goal.
There are no lack of bugs - however... placing a battery may teleport you at high speed a good 100 yards away from your base for not obvious reason. Indeed, random teleportation results are common and irritating, but overall not game breaking as everything seems to be as you left it when you finally make it back to base.
The night-time element is just annoying. I get it's "value" to the game in terms of simulation and immersion, but it does nothing but encourage you to stand near your oxygen generator. A way of speeding up time at night might be a very nice feature for those who just don't plan to do much while the outside is dark.
The controls are a little bit of an "acquired" taste. A reckless player may well delete their storage facility and every one of those hard-earned items. Deletion should not be possible on an item that contains other items. This is a simple fix and one I am shocked the developer didn't consider.
Overall, though, the game is a reasonably well-designed and executed, though I would wait for a sale where it's closer to $10 than $20 in it's current state. The full retail price may well be worth it when the game goes to final release, but this early access version is hard to justify more than the $10-12 range.
First impressions video for Farlight Explorers
Steam User 30
For those that are into hardcore survival with a space theme this game is not quite what you are looking for at the moment, think space engineers but less complicated. Still it does fill a unqiue niche in the genre and even in its current alpha state is extremely addictive. If you are a early access support of games this is definitely a jewel to have in your library.
What it does right.
- Being able to hop from planet to planet with realtive ease is a beautiful and sadly rare thing amongst games of this genre but Farlight pulls it off.
- MINING! omg the countless hours you spend whiddling away for resources to build your next stick! Not here pal, mining is automatic, just plop down a extraction drill, throw in some power and let the goodtimes roll. It should be noted that you can still mine by hand faster than a extraction drilling platform initially. but put 10 or 15 of these puppies up and being able to focus on building is a huge plus in this game espcially when the monotony of placing pipes and wires and conveyor belts takes up a considerably chunk of time.
- Production is pretty streamlined at the moment. X amount of water and power will get you pretty much everywhere so the only real micromanaging is making sure you have ample amount of supplies.
- Bugs, the dev works hard at crushing game bugs as you can follow in the forums. Surprisingly enough for a EA game i have only once ever had a game crashing bug, Most have been minor annoyances that you can write off as early access.
What the game still needs work on:
- Content. At the moment the only real goal is to make a huge production ship capable of making everything and fly to planet to planet strip mining the planets dry which does not take long, maybe 5 hours if you are new to the game. Then thats it, end game. If i understand right there is only one guy making this and while hes peddling his production content out fast as his little legs can move, impressively so, being able to crank out more for a very creative game would help him generate a larger fan base. Maybe hire one or two people extra.
Steam User 25
Pros
+Single-player focused
+Helpful Tutorials
+Multiple starting scenarios
+Multiple end-game objectives
+Interesting resource management
Cons
-UI and texts needs polishing
-Bad controls
-Incomplete building blocks
-Mediocre graphics
Using only your sophisticated technology and skills, you must gather resources and survive being stuck alone in a far away galaxy. Farlight Explorers is a base building, resource management survival game, like a lot less complex 3D Factorio. And when compared to multiplayer space building sandbox games like Space Engineers, Orisis: New Dawn, Empyrion Galactic Survival, or Astroneer, Farlight Explorers instead focuses on singleplayer adventure and tinkering, a rare sight nowadays.
There is a backstory but that's about it, you are left with your imagination to explore 20 different star systems, each with their own planets/asteroids of various biomes, scattered along the galaxy to explore. Gather resources in order to survive, while avoiding hazards like native alien life, storms, and meteor showers. Build your bases block by block, with increasing complexity as it goes bigger and bigger.
Gameplay Analysis
Farlight Explorers gives the player a lot of freedom, starting with the four game modes: Peaceful is like the sandbox mode, where you are free to build anything without materials and resources or worrying about survival. Survival still allows you to build without materials but there's enemies and you now need the necessary resources like Oxygen and Water to survive. Builder mode is the opposite, you don't need to worry about survival, you only need to gather materials to build things. and the Classic mode where everything is enabled: materials, resources, and enemies ranging from alien life, meteor showers, and dust storms.
What I liked about Farlight Explorers is that they already implemented an end-game at such an early stage of development, first you need to survive and build your base, making sure that all resources and needs are well balanced. Buildings have different requirements such as power, water, oxygen, oil, fuel, etc. and you need come up with a proper feeding system to properly in ensure 100% operation. Take out one building and it might cripple your whole operation. After that, the goal is to go to the center of the galaxy to build a singularity gate for other colonists to arrive, but not until you research space ships and build it first. You also need to research the cure for your species to survive the new galaxy. As colonies gets established in the galaxy, pirates and rebels will appear and you will need to wage war with them.
There are three starting scenarios to choose from, at different points of the game. First Explorer starts you off with nothing, First Colonist starts off with the singularity gate newly established, while Born in the Galaxy puts you late in the game, founding your own colony among others already established.
The only issues or nuisances I've found is that there are literally no doors or airlocks, so it's impossible to completely close off all your buildings unless you wall everything. This is a huge turn off especially for role players like me. I also found it hard to place and rotate blocks, especially small ones such as electrical wiring or water pipes.
Technical Analysis
The graphics are mediocre, all the models and textures are plain looking, lacking the finer details that make games beautiful. The UI is lacking, even your HUD indicators are just plain text. The galaxy map is very pixelated, and the menus seem rushed. The texts also needs some proofreading, but it's no big issue. The soundtrack is relaxing, just what you would expect from a single-player space survival game. Play the game long enough, the music becomes memorable and it gives the game personality.
Value
At the moment it's just worth about half its price for what it currently offers so only get it on a sale, however if you are a fan of these type of games I'd recommend buying it 100% to support the developers and help in the development process.
Conclusion
Farlight Explorers is currently barebones at the moment, offering only the core gameplay elements with none of the complexities that you would expect from the genre but with deep end-game content. Most of the issues I have in this game comes from the technical side and will hopefully be fixed. Still I'd recommend it because it offers something new. It looks just another sandbox space game but it's really a single-player focused base building resource management game with the potential to be like the 3D version Factorio, given more development time and effort.
"This product was reviewed with a key provided by the developer for free"
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Steam User 19
Ok, I am an old gamer. I have been playing games for a long time ( 30+ years). Most recently I have adopted alot of early access games. Farlight being the most recent.
Although the overall rating on this is mixed you will note that most of the recent reviews are positive. Most of the negative reviews are about content, bugs and crashing. "It's early access!!!"
Now on to my experience, if you are familiar with Factorio and like the concept you will most likely enjoy this game as well. I will give a "+" for the graphics over Factorio's 2D sprites. The environmental models need some work but over all satisfactory for the current state of the game. Mechanics take some getting used to, and the help screens could be written better. There is a nice guide available that is a must read to get you started.
I bought the game on sale (recommended), at full price I am not sure I would say you get your moneys worth. If you adopt the attitude that you are going to encounter bugs, and crashes - it's pretty good. Has a decent concept with tons of potential. The game gets updates regularly and the developer seems keen on getting feedback and improving the title.
I give this a thumbs up, and look forward to seeing more. Remember it's early access so you will, and I did run into bugs and crashes. I offer my support to this title because I think it has some promise and will keep an eye on it as it develops.
Steam User 16
Farlight Explorers
JUL 2017
This game has a lot of potential. My guess is that it's someone's passion project, as the updates have been slow but steady since it first came out on Early Access.
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The short version:
It's a little like factorio but in 3D and with far less enemies. The ideas are very similar: Extract, Refine, Assemble, Research. Find new (different) resources and repeat. There is a pseudo-storyline which will likely be expanded on later, and additional game mechanics like founding and creating your own colonies, and small-scale military conflicts.
PROS
- Lots of depth. I'm ~20 hours in and I'm only just ready to leave the first planet.
- No really. Content-wise, especially if you're an efficiency fanatic like me, these elements will probably see you get your money's worth.
- Trains
- Building automated factories to achieve your goals
- Grind*
CONS
- There are some bugs, and some people have crashes. I've encountered one crash, due to a buggy machine (fixed when I removed it).
- Placement of certain wires and pipes can be fiddly and time-consuming, no idea if this will change in future
- Overall, it's a bit rough around the edges, especially the interface
- Grind*
*Love it or hate it, I guess!
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Long version:
There are three possible starts, and on each one you can choose anything between full creative and full survival with options in between:
1. From scratch. Empty galaxy.
2. Someone built a Singularity Gate, so colonies are available to build. Trade is possible.
3. Colonies, Trade, and Battles are all available from the start.
If you start from scratch, you're on your own. You have to extract resources, set up machines to transport and refine them, and assemble them into intermediate (construction) products, or components for research. The research machines in particular require recipes that require 4-6 machines for one ingredient, so be prepared for some trial and error while you work out where the possible bottlenecks are.
Once you've peaked on the first planet, you'll have to explore other planets to get additional materials. You'll normally start on an Iron/Copper/Coal planet, and have to venture elsewhere for things like Titanium, Vanadium, Oil etc.
I like this mechanic, as by the time you've assembled a spaceship, fuelled it and done enough research to start the tech tree, you've probably created a spaghetti mess that you'll be happy to leave behind. So, grab your essential resources and set off for another planet! Start again if you want, or just extract and refine what you need and return it to your starting planet. It's up to you :)
If you're starting from scratch, the idea is to get enough resources to build a singularity gate to allow colonists into your galaxy. This in turn opens up the colony building, which looks like another game in itself. Truthfully, I've yet to build the gate and explore this mechanic, as well as the battle mechanics that come even further into the game.
But having played this far, I like what I see. Yes, it's rough around the edges. There are fiddly things that could be easier, the interface is a little clunky, and you may or may not experience crashes. But if you like Factorio, and crafting games, and feel like branching out and trying something different, then I can't really argue with the price that this is being offered at.
As I've said, it looks like someone's passion project. It appears to be a single person developing this game, and it's been updated not often, but fairly consistently since release. You might not be able to get over the interface snags at first - I know I struggled. But it was worth the effort, and I'm glad I fired this up again to see how it was doing.
7/10 and I look forward to seeing what happens with this in the future.
(6/10 if you can't get over fiddly interfaces)
Steam User 18
It's kind of like an Early Access 3D FPS Factorio, without the Alien Insects.
It's not quite there yet. Lots of bugs. Random crashes. Missing content. ( Early-Access ) It can get a bit grindy at times. But I have seen regular updates, so there is hope.
For me? $15 - $20 is the price I pay to go the movies for a couple hours entertainment. I figure I got my moneys worth out of this game. So as long as they keep working on it, I'll give it a thumbs up.
That said, If $15 is your entire gaming budget for awhile... I would suggest not buying this one right away. It needs to cook a little longer.
Steam User 31
I don't review games often. Or much at all. But for some reason I felt the need to write one for this game.
I also wrote this review day 1 of release, so don't judge this review too accurate a few updates down the line.
To start off, the controls are a bit wonky (mostly just the space bar switching between cursor and viewing mode). That's probably my biggest pet peave of this game. Otherwise the controls seem fine.
You choose the solar system and planet you want to start on, which is kinda cool. I like that. The mining is a bit wonky in visuals, a laser just pops from your nipples like rays of victory, but in reality you're shooting from a gun you can't see.
The planet has nice atmosphere (no pun intended) and desert planets feel like desert planets. So far I haven't seen any other, although I'm not sure you're able to yet. Haven't checked.
The wiring system and water piping is a bit wonky as well, there should be a 4-way connecter to help this sort of thing out, but instead you just place them on on top of the other facing different ways, which sometimes works, and sometimes just looks rather silly.
The Ore Extractor seems a bit glitchy and wont always extract ore, although it's day 1 so I'm not too picky. The robotic arms will fling rocks or whatever it is they are moving, not just directly behind them, but if they are elavated, behind and to the side, a ways. While this would be ideal for practicing some baseball, not so helpful when the furnace is not gettin any dlicious iron to feast on.
The good parts, however, outweigh the bad ones.
It's challenging (slightly, mostly just to figure out how everything works together) to get your base all set up and automated, which is a good thing I think, makes your finished base give you a good sense of accompishment.
The artwork is pretty sweet.
The sound affects of the machines are delightful.
The game isn't broken as far as I can tell. The few bugs I've noticed are rare and not game breaking.
Runs pretty smoothly.