Space Reign

===TL;DR===
- Scrapes a positive review because the moment to moment combat is genuinely good fun, but there's a lot of caveats.
- The progression, game modes and gameplay loop are a bit of a confused mess design-wise. Feels off.
- Contracts are VERY repetitive & grindy. As such it's enjoyable but only in short bursts.
- Lots of potential, but not a lot of content yet in terms of ships and weapons.
===OVERVIEW===
This game has great DNA as a hybrid between flight arcade and strategy game, with clear influences from games like Homeworld and settings like The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica. But it also has some very over the top and oddly proportioned ship designs too. At the moment the equipment options are bare bones, and there aren't a huge amount of ships to choose from, but what's there is enjoyable.
===PROS===
Fun weapons and effects, decent ship AI and good combat mechanics around armour penetration, point defence, countermeasures and having different weapons for different targets ranging from fighters to capital ships. There's clearly scope for some good rock-paper-scissors strategy, loadout balancing and asymmetric battles.
Watching your fighters dogfight with the enemy around their frigates before freeing themselves up to dump torpedoes into them is genuinely fun. The visual language of the combat hits the right notes, from whizzing tracers chasing weaving fighters, to missile and engine trails.
===CONS===
I'd say the biggest current weakness is the gameplay flow. The game loop gets in its own way constantly, interrupting you instead of letting you get immersed in the action; the missions/encounters feel very short and anti-climactic, yet also grindy because the rewards are very weak. You do a very short mission, half of which is just flying to a place or waiting for enemies to arrive, and then kill them (which is fun but over very quickly and without much challenge) and then jump out.
Then you're back in the hub, but even choosing the best reward/hardest missions will not give you enough currency to unlock a new weapon, and you're probably still waiting to rank up so the game will let you field more ships. So you do nothing, choose another mission, and fly over to wherever to kill a few more ships, and repeat, many times before there's a meaningful change to make in your loadout. And you probably don't like the starting loadout much to begin with.
This really breaks up the flow and gets quite monotonous. It also makes managing ammo, or needing to do in-mission repairs kind of meaningless. Constantly jumping in and out of the world like this also robs it of any sense of permanence or reality. It would be nice if these sectors felt like they were part of a living breathing world, rather than a box you keep jumping in and out of to kill 10 ships at a time.
There are other game modes dotted along the encounter map, which are optional, but have their own problems. One is a map domination mode, which is kind of cool, but the maps are waaaay too big, and you have to keep going all the way back to resupply, then flying all the way out to the front line again. Or wait for long progress bars to fill up so your side sends an attack wave for you to use as a meat shield. It feels like a game mode intended for a multiplayer game. Like you're playing a mutliplayer game with a skeleton crew of bots on a dead server. It's just.. weird.
Then there's the endless mode. I've not tried this yet, but it's weirdly slotted into the regular campaign map as an optional node. It says ships can't be lost or gain experience in this mode, which begs the question why it is on the campaign map, with all the regular missions, where progression is a thing and losing ships matters to your continuity and progress. Again, weird. I like endless modes, but I also like fixed campaigns with continuity of units & resource management, and the two do not mix.
===SUGGESTIONS===
Make contracts longer, and more rewarding. It will feel less disruptive to the player experience because you get to stay in the action. For example you could chain existing mission archetypes together - first defend a convoy trying to reach a station, then arrive at the station, resupply, and defend the station.
Make the hardest available contracts more rewarding and more challenging. Eg, 25% more rewards and 25% more enemy ships than we get currently.
Make the 'claim sector' domination mission maps smaller. They are so ridiculously, unnecessarily big. It's a huge and annoying waste of time flying back and forth between the points. It wouldn't hurt to add some more ships to both sides too, it feels quite empty rather than a warzone.
Asteroids seem largely decorative at the moment. It would add a lot if there was large space debris / asteroid fields in the areas we are fighting in to give the combat some terrain to fight around, and add variety to the combats.
Make taking damage feel more meaningful. Currently, repairing a ship from 1% hull is free, but it exploding is really expensive and punishing. This is very weird. It makes taking damage feel utterly meaningless unless something blows up. It should cost something to upkeep your ships that take lots of damage.
Remove or lessen the limit on the total number of ships a player can field - there is already a points value limit, so what's the purpose of limiting total number of ships? If a player wants to field a fighter + bomber swarm, why not let them? Two separate limits seems needlessly hostile to build freedom, in a single player game especially.

I'm gonna give this one a positive review. It's weird to play a game that's like other games you play, but it's dumbed down in a way that makes it pleasant.
I play a lot of X4 and Starsector; two extremely nuanced and heavily customized games that deal with character roleplaying, ship fine tuning, empire management, trade logistics, officer specializations, and fine fleet management. This game will simply let you blow ♥♥♥♥ up. You start small, take missions, make money, buy bigger ships and fight more complex enemies. And for what it is, it's quite cathartic, but leaves much to be desired when you start thinking about what could be added. The saving grace is that it's only one dev and the combat is fun and simple enough to encourage you to climb higher and get wilder ships. It reminds me of SPAZ in a way.
What needs to be added? More ships for starters. Enemies with different tactics to vary your combat styles. Probably utility modules like jammers, shields, repair emitters and mine layers to add another layer of customization to your ships. More kinds of ships like carriers and perhaps cloaking vessels. Visual customization to give my ships neat skins or a logo or even patterns.
But what do I see as being the biggest boon to this game? Modding. Oh man, I could easily imagine any scifi setting being pasted onto this game with how simple/robust the combat is. Halo? Battlefleet Gothic? Star Wars? Babylon 5? Take your pick.
I look forward to what this dev could be cooking and I even have a few friends looking at this game who like space sims to kill time with.

after 60+ hours into this game, and very much awaiting 1.0 update.. can i recommend this game?... kinda..
i'm a person who has come from the Homeworld series and after the bismal homeworld 3, this game is a gem..
very much fun combat and ship / weapon designs; you have to keep playing to increase rep to unlock better weapons / ships, it can be grindy but yes plz, AI on the enemy ship's is bismal; always a hit and run tactic and when the mission cover / protect the station the AI attacks the closest ship on its route and you can be waiting for a very long time for them to come, that and they always get stuck on the asteroids, or colliding with ships / stations.
personally I dont like taking control of the ship, and I always play on the tactic screen issueing commands, perhaps a polish into this ???, but for me I really like this game and right now sitting waiting on 1.0 update ;-)

This one is gonna be a banger, keep your eye on it.

Very approachable for new players, with a bit of a difficulty spike in the second zone to keep you learning. Open map style game play combined with mission based objectives, so you can take things at your own pace.
Combat feels great, but turrets kinda have crappy aim (fun to watch though!), having the wrong turret type equipped is game ending. Missiles largely make up for this, but limited supply is going to have you zipping back to friendly stations for reloads fairly frequently. (the launch and homing graphics are fantastic and mildly addictive, kudos).
Tech tree is interesting with various direct upgrades and side grades which fill different roles, can be a tad on the confusing side until you get the hang of the tier system. Different wording would sort that out though, and, as it's a work in progress, I'm not complaining. It works fairly well all things considered.
Really looking forward to spending more time on this game!

Great straight to the action space sim. Progression is definitely a bit grindy, and the tutorial is a bit overbearing. Definitely early access but it has an amazing core gameplay loop and systems, and tons of clear directions for expanding the content.

I enjoy the game. at the time of this post i have cleared the entire first sector and have entered chapter 2.
i really do not enjoy being limited by command points and hulls. i kind of think its a ridiculous limit. if i want to grind up 6 medium destroyers and lay waste to my enemies that's really...their problem.
the grind between levels the higher i go is pretty annoying. i have the money to buy more bigger ships but i am stuck doing random contracts to get my corp level up so that i can progress the campaign. hopefully this mechanic is improved as development continues.
mechanically and graphically the game delivers solidly. i do not have any complaints beyond the command, and hull limits, and the corp level grind.

solid game straight to the action Space SIm, tutorial was a bit much IMO, but overall very enjoyable. please add workshop support when you can! I found a couple bugs when in the endless mode like when your ships all blow up you can be perma stuck in it but overall pretty fun.
Overall I would recommend this game once it is a bit more polished.
P.S. model the turrets barrels so that they move when firing their shells. I'm a sucker for turrets having the barrels move into the turret when they fire and expell the rounds.