The Long Journey Home

I held off on picking this up for ages because of the mixed reviews, but I really enjoyed my time with this game. The story of having to make your way home in a clunky, primitive starship across a galaxy that doesn't especially care for you appeals to me a lot and the alien, encounter and quest design really nail the tone. There's some lovely writing particularly in the alien dialogue, although the crew chatter in-flight starts to get a bit repetitive by the time you get midway home.
To actually get home though, you have to do a lot of flying (and maybe a little fighting), all while staying on top of your ship's wear and tear, damage from heat, radiation, navigational mishaps and hostile action and gathering enough resources to keep on moving (and maybe even to sell to aliens in exchange for repairs, treatment or upgrades). Ship and lander flight can be challenging, requiring fairly precise maneuvering to avoid damage. This is especially true early on, before you have an opportunity to scavenge, craft or buy alien tech upgrades to make things easier. "Stuff breaking" forms a sort of soft failure timer as it gets harder and harder to stay on top of battered and broken systems that were only designed for a short-term mission. It can feel frustrating when something important breaks on you, but then this isn't The Straightforward Journey Home, is it? Careful decision-making can get you out of a mess; I ended up giving up on a quest to collect a trio of ancient artifacts, selling the two I had off to fix up my ship and lander's most pressing faults.
The real star of the show is the various alien cultures though. Precursor species (allegedly ascended)! Amoral illegally-uplifted cattle scientists! Literally one big plant! A precursor species' robotic sales department! Good stuff.

Graphics are a little slow. The story is well thought through. The variety of planets and landing zones are well balanced on each play through and that is tough to pull off for a SCi-FI rougelike. Nice game. Great work!

loving the game. especially the part were you cant complete the game one tile before the end gate because it is a black hole and you have no jumps.

In the span of one session my crew helped fend off a malevolent force of symbiotic plant people and then the old man in my crew fucked an alien at a brothel. Good game.

This is one of those stories i'll never forget. Its one of those ones where i've spent some time staring at the ceiling
wondering about the characters and what comes after. the end is so beautiful.
It is so difficult when you're starting due to the controls being a bit weird, a lack of information and resouces and
the ease of accidentally putting yourself in a situation you cant escape from
But. if you read a guide. (probably most importantly) understand and make smart decisions on what systems to jump into, and maybe expect to lose your first run, you will actually dominate the game fairly easily when you understand it. I'm not saying this as an arrogant gamer- i'm not the best at this either. You just have to play for about 8 hours and make a few mistakes before it all starts clicking. I did survive my first story after many very close calls, some frustrations and a couple of alt F4's.
And.. if you're lucky enough to return home.. The piano music, the quick end stories, the culmination of how difficult it was, its just.. special.
Only 5% of the playerbase stuck with it long enough to get home. I challenge you to finish your story too.