I've tried this game a few times over the year since I backed it on Kickstarter and the game has only managed to get increasingly worse despite still being in early access.

The idea of Epic Space: Online was to have an entirely infinite world which would eventually be filled one day with players who can set up their own home bases, take part in missions, fight, quest, the usual MMORPG style things. It delivers on none of them.
I knew it was a long shot to want to play an MMORPG that wasn't too well known but the basis of the game seemed solid enough, the gameplay seemed basic, but something that could be enhanced upon and there was constant talks of all the advertising that would get done in order to make this game known.
Well that's where the problems started. After Kickstarter the game never gained any traction and no new players bought into the (rather expensive) idea. The players who had backed played for a while, but there was no tutorial or even a little notepad guide despite people asking the developer for one on multiple forums. The game wasn't easy to understand so like all multi-player games that have no playerbase and no instructions it died out pretty quickly.
After a few months I think the developers realised there was no chance in making this game a massive MMORPG like planned and instead implemented a new core game style 'War Games' which seems to be PVP 16 player matches but I can't say for sure because each time I try to play the game is entirely dead. And I mean 100% dead. Not a single person has been on at any point when I have tried to play the War Games mode.

The truth is your money is better spent elsewhere. The players who paid into this game feel disappointed and if your current playerbase doesn't even want to play your game I find it highly unlikely that any new people will want to spend their cash on it. The concept was great but unfortunately the game isn't.

The game will not open for me and hundreds of other users. When we ask for help on the forums we become banned as if the Dev's do not want potential users to see their problems. Seriously i bought this game and cannot use it or ask how to fix the problem. This game closes in under 1 second I had to click play 400 times to get the total 5 minutes in game time to even write this review. If i can save 1 person from wasting money than it's worth it

Been playing this on and off for a few months and originally was a founder. I really liked the concept of this game as I've played several similar games but this game suffers from the same pitfalls of most space games. That pitfall being way way too much empty space and slow travel. Nothing is going on in this game still just you and empty space. There needs to be a lot more npc type ships and aliens roaming space communicating with you or attacking with you. Needs to be a waypoint systems to warp between points. None of this just you and a slow moving ship in a colorless game because it's space as told to us. It's been a year so the alpha and beta excuses are wearing thin and I don't see them attracting many more players this way with dead dark grey space.

I asked if I was alone in the Universe multiple times as I had seen no one, I never recieved an answer after 2 hours of game play.
I ran out of fuel twice "exploring" as no one gets 1,000,000 credits anymore, just 20, which you can't even buy fuel with. I tried refueling and I didn't have the credits, so the station's I'm guessing mafia stole all my hull(health?) ammo and fuel I had remaining.

Never met a single person, in-game, or in-chat.
Gameplay felt pointless as the first ship has no way of making any amount of money to buy other ships. (Think of getting 20 ore per haul. Each haul takes an entire fuel tank that costs 22$ a piece, each ore is worth 1-5$ and to even sell it you have to buy more fuel. Let's also say if you wanted a new ship, they cost 50,000$ minimum.)

TL;DR Might as well be just Epic Space: Empty Beta, No progression, No where to go, nothing to do.

Can't recommend the game.

The game is currently ifested with lots of bugs. Most of the features are not documented. Have fun studying guides and forums trying to understand how things work.

The game has awful user interface and controls. The space is not seamless. It is divided by sectors into grid and you have to travel between sectors by reaching the edge of the sector. Very bad mechanics. Especially for PVP. You can dive in and out of a sector to evade fire. Sectors are pretty small, it takes several seconds to cross one on full speed.

There is no map for sectors beyong the core. Even if you will travel beyond the core you have to draw your map of outer sectors by yourself. The game won't help you.

There is no minimap of the sector. You will find it very inconvinient to navigate inside the sector.
No ship customisation or modules. No base building. You just put a station into space and that's it.
There is only crafting in the game. Space factories do not produce anything. They only give you some station specific bonus if you will craft something inside it.
Crafting is mostly useless, you will loot or buy items much faster than craft them.
The only interesting activity in the game is scanning resource nodes for loot. But there is only one ship suitable for this task - Falcon.

The game is sadly pay to win. You can buy in-game money and capital ships for real money on official site. I don't know why anyone would want to waste money on this. The game has several serious duping glitches. Eventually there will be a wipe.

The worst problem is absence of any mechanics that will regulate sector ownership. If you will claim it you don't have to do anything, it will always be yours. With station assembly duping most of the sectors are already claimed.
Simple ships can't damage stations. The only way to lose a sector is a capital ship attack using torpedoes. And cap ships are only available for real money.

It is not massively multi-player online game. It's massively single-player online game. You won't see anyone there, though there is only one server in US that lags a lot.

All in all the game will be a stillborn or it will be dramatically changed and released in 2 years. Anyway it isn't worth your time and money now.

30 bucks to wander space in a 2d stripped down version of EVE........can't believe I bought this.....

Would be a good concept where it a few quid on a tablet device but for this price for a PC game im sorry but no. Just no.
Hasnt been updated for months and the current content is just no existent.
Quite probably the most boring waste of money i have ever spent and i cant even be bothered writing a proper review.
Just dont get it.

This seems to be a great game in concept, Almost like Eve online but in 2D. Sadly there are very few things to do in this game and even less people playing it. I would have liked to see atleast some physics or even some combat. Updates are iffey if they even come at all. Graphics are ok.. However gameplay is total garbage in this stage. 2/10 Do not purchase.


On a personal note I think the devs were listening to this while coding the game; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WCFUGCOLLU

This Game is not worth the 30$ price tag. There is a similar flash game called Flash Trek Broken Mirror, that this game hasn't even taken basic notes from, it mostly feels like a small arcade shooter. The system for leveling, seems redundant, waiting for the first of every month to actually gain a rank. Ships are limited, and you start with a very small fighter type craft that is pretty much useless. As you level up the individual ship, through scanning and discovering objects, your ships fuel, cargo, and health go up. Again to me, this seems pointless as simply adding ships to buy would be much more encouraging to actually go out and do things.

Making money and leveling up is repetitive, and boring. You are given no direction from the start other then, "Scan things, make money." Thanks to the Infinite system, you will not bump into any players, which actually takes the point out of a multiplayer game. You'll come across vacant station left by alliances, but the only thing to do there is "Sell" random resources you get through scanning items, that and refueling. Other than that you'll just be floating and chatting, it might as well be a chat hub with a space ship in the back round.

Yes, Only played 19 minutes, but it we're the worse 19 minutes ever.

Slowpace, yeah, very.... sure, it's a alpha, I can get into that, but really, the instructions are bad, the space is bad, the ship is bad, the controles are bad, everything is just bad, I love space games, I really love it, but this is just...

Let me say, you start at the beginning and you get a small tutorial about how to use your ship, using the wsad keys, that you can use your grabhook etc, then you need to find resources to make something, you look into the empty space, find some planets, found a asteroid field and a broken ship.

I tried to loot the broken ship but my ship was to small to carry even something? how the hell do I need to loot stuff then? took me 15 minutes to even find something?

Sorry guys, but for 30 euro's, this game is totally not worth it, not now atleast, hopefully you guys will find a way to make it better or make more broken spaceships that have smaller loot so you can carry some, make the controles better ( keep the speed of the ship the same while you turn or adjust it just a little, don't make the ships stop, it turns way to slow btw )

- Graphics needs a lot of improvement, it's 2D I get it, but the graphics could go way more up for this game )
- Make the ship turn faster, it's not a big ship, this should be spinning twice at fast atleast.
- Make more lootable things
- Better tutorial, maybe with a test area? ( so people actually know what to do )
- Better grab hook that only fires from the front of the ship, and not to a random side
- Bigger hud, or more visible ( it's to small for a 24" I guess that has 1920x1080 )

Hopefully this is just a alpha alpha ( I said it twice yes ), because it needs a lot of work
I'm not trying to ♥♥♥♥♥ of the game btw, again, it's a Alpha/Beta, but it would've been nice to lowered the price a little for the thing you get now ( See space engineers and other space games that are currently in the alpha )

An very accurate simulation of space, just vast amounts of nothingness.

Dull dull dull. £23 worth of dullness. Nothing to do, nowhere of interest. I love space games and exploration but flying past a 2d sprite of a planet and saying that I have found/discovered something is not a game. Seriously tho some early access games are not worth buying and this is one of em, It never gets updated and is boring to boot. STAY AWAY.

When I wrote my review and said that it would be possible that next week most of the problems would have been solved, I meant as "anytime soon". Somehow the developers took it literally and decided to really solve them before weekend.

Some aspects of the game are still slow paced and give a browser-based game design feeling, like the rank requirement, or the several days long timers for crafting some items that aren't even something you'd actually desire enough to wait that long. Although you don't need to spend the waiting time in game and may have lots of stations with separate assembly lines.

But the game is playable and if you're into universe exploration and a bit of management you can have fun with the game. Most bugs are the kind you'd expect from EA and relogging will fix.

The missions still have ridiculously low rewards (worse than shooting trash to sell scraps). But, unlike many other mmos, they're not the main source of money until you're able to work the player market. And the npc ran stations are not the best way to get anything other than fuel. You can pretty much scan a planet and find the $10mil ship.

I'm keeping the original review and the patch I noticed the problem solved.. but do look for videos:

If you're still making up your decision on whether to buy this or not, make sure you watch gameplay videos.

The game seems to have a lot of potential, although it is not likely to ever be a mainstream game. But as for now, it would only be worth buying if it was on a 95%-off sale. Of course, this is early access and the team actually seems to be working, so it is possible that next week most of the problems will be solved. To be fair I'll try to update whenever I see any change.

Playing this for 6h, I haven't experienced any sign of lag, only seen minor bugs and got disconnected a couple times.
There's only a few problems... have you ever played those browser games where you'd click a few buttons and come back 6-24h later to click a few times again? I had the impression that I was playing one of those. Except that I couldn't just wait the 6-24h. I actually would have to navigate for countless hours to get $4000 and repeat until I make a few millions to get an upgrade on anything.

[v7.6.1] After you log in, you get dumped in the middle of nowhere with a ship that will make you wonder if you shouldn't just get out of it and fart your way across the universe to see if you go faster. And, the answer is yes, you would have a much higher chance of reaching something before you die than using that ship. Unfortunately, it's not possible.

Along with your space exploring snail, you get a message that seems to be a sketch of a tutorial quest. The problem is that the quest will pretty much tell you to go around the universe looking for stuff and to bring them to someone somewhere. Yes, you have to figure out by yourself where are the stuff they asked for, along with who and where are "us" from the message. And you'll probably die in real life before you figure out how many of those you could have found.

[v7.6.1] That's about when you'll figure out that other players might be able to help you.. so you decide to give the chat a try. Then you'll hit enter to start chatting and say hi... it won't work.. so you'll try to say "testing"... then the chat willl open with "esting" and you'll find out that the developers decided to innovate and T is the hotkey to start chatting. All fine until you notice you're going in a random direction for a while and try to move your ship. Then you'll notice they innovated even more and the escape button doesn't close the chat... all you can do is say "wwwwasdadsdwasdaswddsdawdsdawsdwomfg how do I close chat?". Then someone will tell you to send an empty message to close it. Still all fine.

There are some players that will really be helpful whenever they can, and some that will tell you to go play CoD. And you'll probably be directed to the wiki. Don't go. You might feel scammed if you see the part that reads "We currently have 113 articles about the free-to-play MMORPG set in an Infinite Universe". It didn't feel very free-to-play when I bought it here in steam.

Anyways, after a while you'll feel lost and unsure if you did complete the tutorial mission or not. This will be solved a few hours later when you figure out what the mission dude meant by checking your PDA and you'll see that they actually wanted you to deploy a station. It wasn't just if you wanted a challenge. That was the mission.

Then you'll feel desperate because you have no idea how to accomplish that. And at this point anything seems to take at least a couple weeks of non-stop gameplay to be accomplished. Then you find out that the little triangle button is where you get missions from. "So that's what the chat people were talking about! Holy Crap! 17x323?????". Yup, the best paying mission is offering you about $4000 to travel 340 sectors. It takes a bit more than 2 minutes to cross 1 sector. Which seems perfectly reasonable given that it would only take like 13h of gameplay each direction and you only need about 5 million to get started. So.. if everything goes well.. you should be able to grab a cargo ship in about 3 years of gameplay (rl time). Then you can start gathering assembly parts to work on a station and complete the tutorial mission.

[v7.6] That's when you decide to just enjoy the environment and fly around exploring the universe. You're almost starting to enjoy the game and you suddenly stumble upon an unknown planet! You can name it! Or maybe not. The game asks you to "donate" in order to be able to claim objects (to name planets and stars). What in the seven hells do they mean by donating after you just spent so much for the early access of the game (which might eventually turn out to be just for the early access if the wiki is right). I have no idea. No one online was able to explain. But it seems like it means exactly what the text says... after you purchase, there are parts of the gameplay that will require you to make "donations".

If you pretend you didn't see that and refrain from deleting the game immediately, you might stumble upon the "wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Nebula". That was the apex of the gameplay for me. I couldn't stop laughing when I imagined the player wondering wtf was wrong with the ship that wouldn't move because the game was setting the name for the nebula instead of controlling the ship.

[v7.6.. still can't place orders, but the npc stations have purchase orders so you can sell some of the stuff you find] Then you might decide to go to the trade hub people were talking about and make some profit out of the stuff you looted. Only to find out that "You must own this station to place orders". So... you need a station to get the money to buy a ship to get the pieces to build the station you need. Either that or you can spend the next few years holding the space bar to save fuel and navigate around the universe on quests that pay nothing.

That's about it. This game is not slow paced. This game is too slow to even see something slow paced. It's a slower version of a browser based game adapted so you have to actually spend the countess hours in-game instead of clicking and coming back in a few hours/days. And the extremly slow speed made no sense to me given that the universe is infinite.

[turns out that the bug wasn't about having no station, but the map won't show up the edges of the sectors when zoomed out. The station exists right in the border of two sectors and it's pretty tricky to find unless you imagine that zooming in would allow you to see farther.] Other than that, no one was able to explain to me why the game said I claimed a sector but had no station or deployable units on it and couldn't deploy the units I found there because "someone" had claimed it. I'm just guessing that's a random bug and the game shouldn't have said I claimed it in the first place.

The ploy of suggesting that this game is hated by many and loved by few may have more to do with the few being those who can actually play. I bought it because everyhting about it appeals to me. I'm sure that if I was able to play the game, I would enjoy it thoroughly. The problem then, is that despite repeated requests for aid in circumventing a bug which prevents me from logging in at all, the devs have simply stopped responding. Quite a few of us are simply unable to play the game that we paid for. No one has su[[;ied us with a fix, nor suggested that one will be available in the future. So, this is a gamble. If you can play, have fun, but there's a significant chance you'll just be throwing away $30.

You enter the game and you find out fuel is limited and there isn't even a HUD indicator of how much you have left (later I found you hit TAB and it shows your fuel above your ship as a % for a brief second). You have no idea what to do, where you're at, or where to go. So you wander around for a while (with your limited fuel). I got lucky and found a fuel station, but with your fuel only showing a % you have no idea how much it takes to refuel your ship so you buy one, but then have to undock from the station to check your fuel level % and redock if you need more.

I kept playing because it's like watching a movie that you heard was supposed to be good. Then it starts horrible, but you keep watching thinking in your head, "this has to get better." The game starts you with 1,000,000 credits. I found a shipyard and saw a better (better pretty much only meaning faster in this game so far) the Ship was 1,000,000 and I had 1,000,120 at that time. I clicked to buy the ship to assemble it and it tells me "insufficient credits".. so now I can't buy anything with my over 1 million credits..

It gives you a task to build a space station.., What parts do you need? Where do you get those parts? Can you carry those parts or do you need a special ship like in the X series? The Wiki helps a little, but it's out of date, it says your starter ship doesn't have a scanner and it does, but I've scanned dozens of things and never get anything out of it or maybe it really doesn't have a scanner and the button an animations work, but it's not really doing anything, I have no idea. That new ship I tried to buy says it has a scanner..to bad 1,000,120 is insufficient credits for a 1,000,000 credit ship...

I don't expect a game to hold my hand and show me everything, but imagine going to sleep tonight and waking up on a spaceship with no sight of any planets or other people or space stations. If the game was realistic, you would die of hunger or asphyxiation before you found anything.

The universe is infinite, but who needs an infinite universe when it's empty and nothing to do? If you want a game like this (although it's single player) I recommend Space pirates and zombies (S.P.A.Z.) and it's only $10

I would have recommended this game actually if it was $5, but it's $30... This is the first time I've felt a little swindled on these early access games. I understand, alpha's, beta's and early access, but I was expecting a lot more for $30. If you want to donate the money to the games developement, Throw down the $30 and hope they make something out of it, but you probably won't be playing it.

This review will be totally honest. When I first started playing I was very confused on what to do. This was mainly because the game doesnt tell you the controls only that you should go and scan everything. Well this is true, to get any loot worth your time you need to fly into the far reaches of space and scan things. There you will find good loot like ships. Now that I know how to play this game seems fun. Right now I can't recomend this game due to it's $30 price tag and it's lack of tutorial. This game is on early access so things are bound to change but at this point in time, I can't recommend this game.

I would honestly love to sue for my $30 back with how terrible this early access is. Controls are very clunky, any type of auto travel other than drifting is non-existant, in game economy is a joke, craftign system is TERRIBLE, ship designs and attributes are TERRIBLE. Honestly as a amature software designer I could write somethign BETTER than this in my spare time and make it freeware. This looks like it has strictly been designed for tablet use and release for PC becasue they could. Save your money and DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

I'll update this review as the game updates.

As it stands right now, the question you're all asking is, "Is this game worth £22.99" The simple answer is.. No.
The game is quite liturally full of bugs right now. The sprites are ripped off from much much older games, and the game is lacking any real depth.

What happens when new players join in a years time and the only way they can start a faction is to fly for 4 hours in one direction? Who knows... There are far to many un-answered questions.

When you start the game, you'll be placed in a neutral sector where weapons fire is disabled. This will give you some time to get to grips with flying your ship, and what to do.

You'll no doubt like me, start exploring straight away, but you'll soon be bored and fear running out of fuel, so you'll head back. I spent quite a long time pondering how I would make my first 5mill to get my Falcon. I would need this ship and 20 levels to be able deploy my first station. Soooo I check out the market, sell some items, but wait one second!! Did I just scan some nebula and find a falcon ship? Yes I did! Infact in 1h of doing some scanning I ended up with 3 ships, 3 stations, and a whole heap of crap.

Like a giddy school kid, I go grab my new ship, create a faction (Eventually after trying to work out how to do it) And then find a sector of space to deploy it in. I deploy my station, only to have it completely bug out. It's my faction, it's my station, but I cannot name the station, and I cannot set home. Apparently I need to do this at a station that's in my faction land... Ermmmm.. Guess I should tell the game that's what i'm trying to do.

The grappling hook at times has a mind of its own. Sometimes thrusting me miles without me even pressing a key. At times my gun just starts ripping at anything infront of me, and half of the time other ships appear doubled, or jump around like crazy frogs. My ping being in the UK is about 130, however I shouldn't not be able to see a 2D graphic run smoothly across my screen. It makes combat practically impossible.

The concept is great. But it's not been very well put together. There are very few ppl online at anytime, and apparently they've had to upgrade there servers to handle the new load. They boast one server, one universe... But at the moment, it's looking very unlikely.

Hold off on this game till it's free to play. Buying now for the extra 1mill is NOT WORTH it. In 1 hour, I had 15 mill sat in my cargo bay just waiting to be sold.

I would call this "Epic Fail Online". Concept is good but the game is very poor (engine/graphic, interface, mechanics..everything). It is year 2014 and not 1997. I'm sorry, but I had to say this (I was rly looking forward this kind of game..sandbox MMO with 2D or isometric view), but this is FAIL. ..for only €28. (even €5 would be too much).

This game, while it has promise, lacks content, meta game and a reason to even be multiplayer. I understand that this game is still in developement, but it is NOT worth the pricetag.