Alpha Centauri is the final destination and you have to prepare your crew and new powerful star cruiser for a long journey!
Your crew consists of many important and indispensable members, who are divided into classes such as pilots, engineers, researchers and archaeologists who are essential and few common crew members as well as scientists and some of the media and mission planners who will not be present during a normal flight. You are supposed to pick members for your team from a list of ten volunteers. Each one has his own personality as well as specialties, strengths and weaknesses. Their skills and talents can be helpful in different operations and missions, therefore choosing them carefully is very important. The need of experiments and risks to understand them completely through undertaking them for different tasks will be required.
Three different models of space ships are available since the beginning. You can choose from ISV Ulysses, ISV Endurance and ISV Discovery. They come with distinctive characteristics and attributes like flying ability, a capacity of a fuel tank and so on.
Unlike many other games of this genre, The Long Journey Home has more than just a smooth gameplay. There’s also a story, which is surprisingly not a dull connection of plain dialogues. The story is definitely a worthwhile experience and we highly recommend you not to skip this part of the game!
Reaching the universe, meeting aliens and conquering unexplored terrains with a minimum amount of resources that you have at hand is a completely different affair. There are plenty of resources available and you will be in need of them since the beginning of your journey. Gas, metals and minerals are probably the most common ones, you will meet on your long journey home. It is also important to take care of your crew's health. Your spaceship gets damaged from hostile attacks and your crew members can get seriously injured. Therefore, having a standard knowledge of trading and barter is necessary in order to survive and minimize possible losses.
That’s just one side of the story though. The main storyline is about a team, which is lost in a space and they try their best to get back home. They try every possible way out, by hook or by crook. It is all one big space exploration mission, which gets glitched up and members of the crew are pushed to another side of the Galaxy. Now, their only goal is to safely return back to Earth. Looting everything on the way and utilizing the resources in an effective way will be necessary!
On this journey, many planets are discovered and unearthed. Each planet has its unique ecosystem (with various environment visualizations) and serves you different chances of getting benefits, dangers and objects of great values which can be traded for scarce raw materials and other important resources. That being said, resources are not the only thing you will encounter on your way throughout the Galaxy. Prepare yourself to meet aliens and other races as well. You will have a way how to negotiate with them throughout a communication channel. The communication channel is available in most of the cases, despite the fact your dialogues with them will be only basic sentences and phrases (pick-an-option dialogues). Sometimes not even communication will be enough to solve all the problems so direct confrontation with easy rules will be the only way. The last man standing is the winner! The fighting system is pretty simple, yet it suits the gameplay well. Don’t expect any ultimate space battles though, this is not EVE Online. Maps are also provided for easier navigation and guidance.
Audio and visual section of Long Journey Home has indeed its unique style which might not be for everyone, nonetheless, I really liked it. The Long Journey Home is full of vivid and detailed planets, particles and visual effects in general. When it comes to sound effects, they are good overall. Playing this game without sound is similar to having a pen without ink. Something is missing, right? Sound doesn’t even matter to some players, but only true gamers know its importance and that’s the point here because everything in this game has its own, authentic sound effects, which highlight the atmosphere. You will face unique sound effects even for things such as landing or colliding.
To sum it up, now, you get a chance to experience an endlessly shifting universe all by yourself. Truth is that there are tons of space exploration games on Steam, but The Long Journey home brings a unique, yet entertaining concept, which makes it highly favorable and distinct experience. Thematically, it wins hearts of many players and it is a very good option for all sci-fi fans, who are looking for a challenging and complex space-survival game.
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