Everspace, developed by ROCKFISH Games, is an action focused roguelike space shooter that sees players fly through multiple sectors in an effort to get through hostile space. While the goal of the game is straightforward, the journey to your destination is packed with content as the game allows you to explore multiple maps, gather and craft resources, search for loot, and of course take on anything that gets in your way.

Everspace isn’t an overly complicated game as your goal is to successfully traverse all sectors, but to do so you need fuel, and at the start of the game you are only given enough fuel to get through one sector or 4 maps, this means your primary focus has to be searching for fuel, which can be found by destroying enemy ships, containers or mined from asteroids. There is a fourth option that involves raiding neutral faction ships, but this will see them become hostile towards you and in the vastness of space the fewer people shooting at you the better.

While searching for fuel is important, exploring each map is to a lesser degree also important as exploring allows you to find crafting resources, blueprint, enhancements, credits and ship decals. Crafting in Everspace is an important survival tool because while fuel allows you to reach your next destination, crafted items will help you survive. Crafting allows you to upgrade weapons with new modifiers, gain more powerful equipment and create additional consumable items such as missiles and shield enhancers. While finding fuel and crafting resources should be your focus when entering a new destination, you should keep an eye out for enhancements, credits and ship decals as these persist through death.

Now since Everspace is a roguelike game you should be prepared to die numerous times, but in Everspace, death does not feel like a game over as death is a chance to take the credits you gained from your last adventure and purchase new perks for your ship. Purchasing new perks is an important aspect of Everspace as perks help make your next run just a little bit easier with perks that include: increased fuel capacity, additional credit from loot drops and sector scanner, which gives you information on the maps in your current sector. The perk system for me is a major reason why I enjoyed playing Everspace.

Now, let’s talk combat. Everspace uses arcade style combat that allows for some fast-paced dogfights that are accompanied by a decent array of weapons and devices. In the game’s early sectors, combat feels a bit boring with enemies being easy enough to defeat, but as you progress further you will find yourself dogfighting with swarms of enemy fighters and attempting to avoid a weapons barrage from an enemy corvette. In terms of how you defeat enemies it is all about keeping an eye on your target reticule as it helps track your target’s movements and as such tells you where to aim and fire your weapons, it can take some getting used to, especially with primary weapons, but once you master it, you will be able to dogfight like a pro.

In terms of how your weapons work you have primary and secondary weapons, primary weapons consist of Gatling guns, pulse laser etc. and have unlimited ammo, but while they have unlimited ammo they do drain your energy bar and can’t be fully utilised until the bar recharges far enough. Secondary weapons, which primarily consist of missiles are consumable weapons, this means they are limited use and when you fully expend all your missiles you need to either craft or search for additional missiles.

Moving away from combat, let’s talk about the maps. In Everspace you will find that not every map is the same as Everspace randomly generates new locations with unique seeds randomly generating the content in the map you are visiting. This randomness means that you aren’t likely to encounter the same map multiple times, all while giving players some truly interesting and jaw-dropping locations. For example, in one run my downfall was met at the hands of a map that contained both a plasma storm and a singularity.

What helps map layout is the game’s amazing graphics with the Unreal 4 engine and ultra-hires textures making the game look amazing, especially if you have a PC powerful enough to run Everspace at the highest settings.

Now, you may have noticed I haven’t touched on the game’s story, well that’s because I feel if I talk about the story I’m spoiling the whole thing. However, I will say the story explains why you can die and be reborn multiple times and fleshes out the entire lore and story of the area you are exploring.

Conclusion

Everspace is a must buy for fans of space combat games. As the game is a fun action focused roguelike space shooter that offers amazing visuals and interesting combat.

SCORE: 9/10

Pros
+Easy to understand mechanics
+ Rewards that persist through death
+ Visually stunning game

Developer	Publisher	Genre	Rating	Platform	Release date
ROCKFISH Games	ROCKFISH Games	Action	12+	PC, XBOne	May 26, 2017

*A review code was provided by the game’s publisher.*

For more information on Everspace, visit https://everspace-game.com/.