If you enjoy strategy games that pose varying levels of difficulty (if sentinels are involved then it gets a lot tougher) then this may be a game for you. Personally, the custom character creation is my favourite part of game. Then comes the fact that every level you encounter has a COMPLETELY different layout, unknowing of what may lay behind every door and if the decision to open a door or blast open a door may:

1. Get your Deadnaut 'decapitated' by a sentinel.
2. Get your Deadnaut dragged away and torn to ribbons.
3. Become susceptible to a horde of enemies.

. . . and etc. One of the greatest elements this game poses is the feeling of unknowing what lies behind every door, or what may be in the very room your deadnauts are searching. It can feel like no one is ever safe and pulls it off very well.

tl;dr: For me, this teeters on the brink of both a yes and no recommendation. If you get a kick out of experimental titles, the $10 entry price is perfectly reasonable and you should probably check this out. If you're looking for something to entertain you for more than a couple of days, I'd give it a miss.

---

Deadnaut's concept has real potential, and the devs nailed the visuals/audio here in my opinion - a wonderful cramped aesthetic combined with atmospheric sounds and visual effects really creates a claustrophobic feeling and oozes tension, whilst allowing the devs to utilise a very minimal graphics set for the primary "gameplay" portion, fleshing it out with the logs you find and the descriptions of the enemies you encounter that you'll analyse between missions.

Most of the "tactical" portion comes in determining how to leverage your squad's innate skills with the available equipment and dealing with whatever negative traits they have. This isn't as much fun as it sounds - I've not found any reason other than people not getting along to want to split your squad up (there doesn't appear to be any other tactical advantage to doing so - the squad that stays together has an innate firepower advantage), so it feels a bit like a forced carryover from Zafehouse that probably could have been left out, or the relationship factors made an optional "bigger challenge" difficulty.

Combat feels a little uninspiring - your guys will exchange fire/blows with the enemy, and whether you've kitted them out properly (in accordance with the intelligence you've collected in previous outings) is going to be the primary determinant of success, meaning if you screwed that portion up, there's no way you're going to recover. I'm yet to make it past the second mission in each set of four though, so I might be missing elements that get introduced later.

Exploring was great fun at first, but I was hoping for a bit more variation in what you find on ships - every single "investigate" icon I've clicked on has been a crew corpse - some more descriptive flavour text from your troops on what they see when they enter a room would probably also make it feel less like I'm exploring the same randomly chained set of rooms over and over.

I'd love to see this fleshed out further in a sequel - perhaps with an XCOM style "base" mechanic, where you send Deadnauts off to explore derelicts, research tech, and lose hundreds of "volunteers" in the process, perhaps collecting information that will stop you suffering the same fate as the aliens whose ships you explore.

In summary - much like Zafehouse, it's a great concept that draws you in, but some of the execution will leave you wishing parts were more fleshed out.

Early impressions with edits and later to a full review once I get more playing time in.

Okay, rogue likes, rogue lites, rogue whatevers have made not only a comback but have crept into the mainstream; these aren't just for the hardcore nerdist anymore. Deadnaut is one of the most atmospheric games in any genre I have played ever. Period. [I've been a gamer since the Amiga, Atari St, and C64 days].

Deadnaut has a gritty aesthetic, this isn't Star Trek with everything looking shiny and somewhat sterile. In fact, Deadnaut feels more "primitive" than being aboard the Nostromo. It sort of looks like the interior of a World War II sub yanked into the future. It feels somewhat claustrophobic and that adds to the tension. Moreover, your sensors aren't exactly Star Trek issue either. As you monitor your squad to their impending doom, the viewscreen - or port to be more accurate - will sometimes experience staic due to radiation levels. As in Alien, squad life signs are monitored and that too is rather panic inducing as you try to get your squad out of harm's way - and there is a LOT of harm lurking in these derelict ships you are exploring.

Character creation is deep. You have points to spend on each phase of each crewperson's stats. But, Deadnaut goes beyond mere D&D type stas. You are creating a sort of skeletal bio of each member. Their education earlier in "lie" directly impacts their performance on missions and even more interestingly it impacts how each individual squad member interacts with the rest of the squad. Yiu get a sense that these are truly mercenary type space scavengers and there is no noble quest to fulfill.

The action is in real time though the pace is not frantic. The sensor representation of the derelicts and your crew are somewhat abstract but rather than that being a distraction, it actually adds to the atmosphere of this gem out of nowhere.

I have played as of this writing only 21 mintes or so. All but one of my squad died and we are talking perma-death here. That said, the game is not unfair as many rogue type games can be. I suppose I would call this a successful (so far) marriage of RTS, RPG, and Rogue like.

It's fun, dark, grimy, and weird - like my girlfriend but without the Satanic tattoos.

See you out there sister and brother Deadnauts!!

*** UPDATED : After putting a little more time in the game I've fleshed out the review to paint a better picture of the game. Don't be put off by the real-time aspect of the game, your Deadnauts aren't idiots and will automatically fire at any hostiles they detect. ***

Searching derelict ships from ancient civilizations in deep space is pretty much as deadly as it sounds, however, a well balanced party with the appropriate equipment can brave the dangers and emerge relatively unscathed. While your first few attempts might result in you getting your party horribly maimed, a little attentiveness and situational awareness will go a long way and allow you to play an entire game with no casualties. Make your own party and name them after friends and family, and if they die, no worries! You can clone them! Just don't get too attached to the clone...

There will be incredibly tense moments in game that are not arbitrarily forced on you via a streamlined story and can't be replicated every game you play. Each ship has it's own challenges and enemies that can potentially shorten your life span. Since enemies, loot, and ship layout changes with each new campaign, there is no reliable way to game the meta and ensure victory each play through.

Between traditional zombie-like space enemies that want to disembowel you, giant Sentinels (laser turrets!) that can gun down your entire party in a matter of seconds, and artifical intelligence programs known as Watchers that are essentially cyber ninjas patrolling the ship's network you have your work cut out for you. Running around guns blazing might work in one campaign and get you killed within five minutes in another.

Imagine the following scenario : Your hearty crew breach a new room and as they cautiously advance are suddenly swarmed on nearly all sides by almost a dozen enemies. Fear sets in and bullets fly in every direction, your non-combat oriented Deadnauts not having the best accuracy under the pressure. Inadvertently, the stray rounds bounced around the room far more than recommended and comprimised the structural integrity of the room you're in. Life support fails and your crew is mercilessly exposed to the vacuum of space. You quickly dart towards the door you just entered from, when unexpectedly, your video feed dies, you can't issue orders to your men because your audio feed has been cut, and the door they're attempting to reach has been sealed. Congratulations, a roaming Watcher just ruined your day because you forgot to install a firewall earlier to counter it.

The watcher can't maintain the jam for a long period of time, and your audio/visual feed comes back just in time for you to realize the majority of your party is at half life from standing in the destroyed section of the ship. Your Deadnaut hacker hauls ♥♥♥ to the door, opens it, and everyone throws themselves into the safety of the adjoining room. Or maybe everyone dies horribly because your hacker got dragged off and flayed earlier. Unfortunately, it takes 15 seconds to open the sealed door and everybody dies in the mean time.

That is just a sample of the fun you can expect!

As far as party composition goes, your crew of five's roles are determined by the type of suit they're wearing, as it will allocate different slots for equipment in weapons, tech, sensors, or protection. When you complete missions, find blueprints on the ships you're searching, or purchase new ones on the marketplace afterwards, you might have a suit with slots for weapons and tech. This changes each game, however, and the slots each type of suit has is different every time.

But just because there is no class system in Deadnaut's does not mean you're going to assign a dumb grunt the role as the group's techie responsible for deactivating turrets or installing firewalls to keep Watchers off your back. Characters have four stats that correspond with eight abilities, and where an interesting aspect of the game comes into play is character creation. You can customize your roster of Deadnaut's to fulfill specific roles.

These aren't going to be Master Chief's with flawless personalities and sparkly clean criminal records, since only the desperate or deranged would seek what usually amounts to a one way trip into deep space aboard alien derelict ships. If you want a character with extra stats to allocate you're going to have to decide if you want to assign them extra flaws, such as taking stims without being ordered or maybe they periodically steal money from the group. Is that trade off worth the extra firepower?

At the end of the day this game offers a lot for $10 and while I probably won't be investing 100s of hours into it, I've enjoyed the short time I've spent and will log more later. For me it scratches an itch and even reminds me a bit of Firefly, in the way that you have a motley crew, all with different motivations, just trying to make ends meat in the darkest corners of the galaxy.


Pros :

- A unique game that pulls no punches, you're punished for your mistakes and rewarded for careful planning and positioning.

- The game changes with each campaign, one might have you searching medical ships discovering what went wrong, while others will have you salvaging military warships with active turrets around every corner.

- Good amount of character customization, I was able to reconstruct my family with pretty accurate detail (or, what our futuristic Deadnaut alter egos would be). Each Deadnaut had their place in my party and if one of them died it made the mission harder.

- Intense atmosphere, the sound is well done and when alarms start going off, you start to panic.


Cons:

- Even after reading the manual it still took trial and error in game to figure out what was happening and how to use abilities in game. It didn't take very long, but it could be a potential source of frustration.

- While the atmosphere is pretty interesting, the crew logs aren't particularly intense and are repetitive. Once you've read the log of one ship, you've pretty much read them all.

- Replayability might be questionable for some people. My first successful campaign completion took 2 hours, and my second one took barely 66 minutes. That doesn't mean I'm done with the game, however, as each campaign has individual challenges and I've only succeeded on about 2 out of 9 attempts. Others might finish one campaign and be done though.

- Confusing relationship mechanics. I couldn't tell why one of my characters with high cohesion (the charisma stat) was hated by everyone else. Sometimes your characters mesh really well together, and other times they start fighting within minutes of a new campaign, even with the likeable trait.


TL;DR = Even if the game doesn't receive substantial updates, this is a game worth trying if you're into strategy games or rogue likes/lites. Or dying surrounded by friends and family on an alien ship in deep space sounds really fun.

Pros
Complete control over your crew customization
Well thought out game mechanics
Easy to use controls
Fun to play
Haven't run into any bugs(Yet)

Cons
No tutorial
Frustrating

Deadnaut, is really not an accurate name for this game as more often then not im dead again. Luckly for me i can be a glutton for punishment which this game has in spades.

Im mainly going to address my con list here as i feel like although the game has cons they are also part of the gameplay.

No tutorial is a con simply because there is so much to understand and if you just go straight to new game you'll just die instantly with no idea why. Such as what each part of your UI does, took me three campaigns before i figured out where to see what an enemies health was, and i still dont know how to see the HP of my own crew members.

Frustrating is certianly gonna happen, mostly at the start of the game because as mentioned before there is a small amount of information given to you

Over all though it is a game i would recomend because although it is hard to understand and frustrating at times. It has the great quality of being able to make you want to play it one more time because this time you know how to do it better.

This game is pretty interesting. It has a great feeling of curiosity to it where you want to play more than once to see the different kinds of enemies and the different...things...that happen with some of them.

The gameplay mostly consists of top down tactical movement with your Deadnauts firing automatically. You can use certain items during combat such as a rocket launcher or a 'field' that can slow enemies or shield your allies. There's also hacking sub part that fits in pretty well with your signals being interfered with if you just ignore it, but it doesn't feel forced at the same time. There aren't a ton of graphics, but it doesn't feel like it needs them, though the small viewport does take some getting used to!

There's also a shop after missions where you trade 'knowledge' for equipment. You also get to create your own Deadnauts too which is fun in of itself. Figuring out which perks and flaws you want can take a while and makes the game more interesting. Also custom portraits so you can kill off your friends if you want.

Overall I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes Sci-fi and atmosphere and can stand dying. The game definitely has a mildly steep initial learning curve. To me the only real downside is the length of campaigns and really it's not that bad since the way the game works is that you'll want to play it multiple times.

Oh and if you do play, keep playing until you go up against the 'disturbed' and 'horror' enemy types.

In one campaign your fighting off waves of fast moving xenomorphs, through the flurry of fast moving xeno's you see one of your men get dragged away through a airlock. Yet in another campaign you may be contending with the possessed remains of a former crew driven insane by unknown artifacts, behemoths throwing your soldiers around as artifacts obscure your command and control with horrifying visions of death and torture.

Deadnaut's is a game that wants to immerse you in its universe. Your hud looks akin to something from a WW2 submarine simulation and your control over your soldiers is sketchy at the best of times. There are a large amount of things to take into consideration with Deadnaut's and many ways for those under your command to come to harm or die, this may be the one area the game faulters in. It is a real time tactical squad based game, essentially a rogue like.

So what do you do? You command five "deadnauts" as you scour decaying alien ships from a long gone era. Your objective is typically to figure out what happend to the crew, learn more about this civilization and clear out any hostile remnants, examining the dead crew and reading their logs. Your characters are divided into four seperate roles, a Assaulter, Shielder, Hacker and Scanner. Assaulters carry the big guns and are more hardy, however too much firepower could result in you destroying a section of the ship if not outright blowing up the ship. Shielders can project a powerful shield onto your deadnaut's, as well as allow your men to move through area's of the ship with no air, however they lack on offensive firepower being forced to only use pistols or knives. Hackers can hack into the ships systems, open locked doors, establish firewalls and alter the ships power levels, creating two whole levels of combat between the ship's anti-virus systems and its "crew". Finally the Scanner can scan areas of the ship to locate hidden enemies and for you to plan out your attack.

Your charactes can be customised fully, and have unique, and random, backgrounds and relationships. You may get one crew who are all on good terms with one another, or one that is divided into two groups and hates the other. Character creation is in depth with you assigning points to areas to boost their statistics, you can get more points by applying negative traits to your character.

The ship itself is dying and decaying, parts of the ship may have no lifesupport and its defence systems are in a varying state of readness. The ship itself has several ways of defending itself. Doors are its first line of defence, simply closing them or keeping them locked can slow you down, the second level of defence are Watcher's, moving programs that will attempt to undo any hacks you've made, so closing doors you've opened for example. The final level of defence are sentinal turrets, extreamly lethal but they can be hacked to your side, until a Watcher reverts the hack.

The actual enemies themselves also vary, as you would expect from a roguelike. Fast moving aliens, zombified crewmembers, etheral ghosts, plague carriers and much more. Each enemie type has to be respected and observerd to determin their weaknesses. Some may die from a single bullet from a ballistic firearm, others may be impervious to bullets but not to lasers. Some might be hidden to your sight but your scanners can pick them out easily, they may move through walls or drag your men away from you. There are many combinations that will keep you on your toes.

However, for all the good I can talk about this game, it does have downsides, like any game good or bad.

Death can be quick and sudden, and the difficulty can vary from easy to impossible at times. You may enter a room only to see all your men drop dead instantly. The game is also glitchy, some time's you may not be able to select something to examine in game, or log entries will be jumbled or unselectable. Losing control of your soldiers can also be frustrating, having your men decided to run away and get killed because of a misclick or some wierd personality trait that caues them to ignore your orders.

There is also no real in game tutorial, just some one off tool tips. There is a manual that you can read (and I highly recommend you do) but even that can be hit and miss.

The game is also heavily RNG dependant. You may never recieve the tools on the market, meaning if the enemies are vulnerable to Beam Cold weapons, yet you may never be able to buy a Beam Cold weapon. Also you may never recieve vital equipment like uprgraded suits.

However, at 10$ this is a solid game that is very immersing. There is a lot to do and see, a wide range of tactics to apply and a lot of replayability. It can be frustrating but at the same time your skill can surmount many obsticals.

I only wish the game had more to do, such as a XCOM style game of sending out Deadnaut's to difference areas in space to explore and more of a metagame. Or even just a way to carry over a team from one campaign to another. Nonetheless, this game is fun.

Intro
You are the captain of greath intersteller salavage ship
Your mission will be diffrent eachtime often suicidel
Your enamies wont be easy nor the same
Your crew will be a bunch of hero's or a bunch of fools
However

Your willing to give it all inorder to become a rich legend


Gameplay
The first thing that stands out in the game would be the Ship Command panal ( Interface)
This really give's you the feeling you are in charge of a old salvage ship and you have
to managed your missions & crew & database.

Durning missions you will face random problems like radios malfunctions to interfance storms
ussualy if the captain ( player) deals with them cool headed, he will be able to solve most
upcoming problems, however sometime's one small ship malufction could lead to the dead of your team

This will make the game more tenste & interesting ontop of that you will allso have to deal with
the aliens, you will come across diffrent kinds and each of them is diffrent some are weak against bullets
while others are slow.. However sometime's you will come across a really deathly kind and for those
you might want to try to counter becauce if you dont. . . it might cost you a couple of crew members


Storyline
The storyline is simple you are a captain of a salavage team who's going to salavege xenos vessels
Eachtime the game will generate random background story

the game is mostly build around the idea that you will have your own storys to tell however
i feel the game is build too mutch around this and the fact there's no voice storyteller in the game
Just saddens me

Technical
The game is fairly well programmed, I dont have problems regarding frame drops and i havent encounteted game
Breaking bug

You only need a decent Ram card for the rest a simple CPU & Video card will do fine


Mechancis
There are allot of random generator mechanics build into the game.
For example there is a R.G for encounters / Missions / Enamies / loot / Crew / lore

One partically interesting Random generator mechanic would be the one
that they have build for the aliens, you will never come acorss the same kind alien
in another campaign offering a refreshing & interesting expirance eachtime

i have Allso noticed there's a deep charater creation mode where inn you can
add new possible Crew members for your salvage missions, The CC mode is
well build and give you the option to give a crew memeber a real background

However there are mechanics that need inprovement like combat & Ingame Acitions
they are fairly limited, Allso the loot mechanics needs inprovement
the game simply lacks interesting loot


Sound
The music & aliens & Background sounds are really well done, it slightly reminds me of watching one of those old 80 sci-fi horror movie aside from that what's allso interesting that sound plays a role in the game for example it help you reconise what kind of enammies are behind a certain doors


Overview
Gameplay 8/10
Storyline 6/10
Technical 10/10
Mechancis 6/10
Sound 9/10

Finnal
Even though the game lacks certain game mechanics & Feature's this game caught my attention
It's fun & refreshing it's worth the money and im looking forward to the upcoming content

p.s this game it's hard & unforgiving :,) be prepared for the horrors in space

When I bought Dreadnaut and entered the game, I didn't expect much based on the trailers available. It seemed just like all those top-down squad RTS games, which there are hundreds of. It was only 10 euros, so I decided to jump it and test it out.

I immediately reached out for the character creation. I've always been one for creating my own party/character, since the game experience feels a lot more personal. The character creation has two minor bugs, which I did not realize were bugs until I read the forums for a tutorial on character creation. The bugs:

• You cannot proceed "Early Career" -phase without having at least 1 extra point.
  
• Selecting flaw Attention Seeker bugs out, so it disappears from the list, making it impossible to deselect.

Other than that, the character creating didn't seem to be that extensive, but it lets you fleck out certain bits of personality on the character. There are a certain set of different charasteristics you get to choose, if you want to spend a point on them. For example, "He likes combat, he doesn't like ruined rooms, he likes tight corridors" etc.

It took me nearly 2 hours to flesh out my squad consisting of five Deadnauts. After that, I finally got into the game. And oh boy, here comes the best part...

The game itself plants you, the "Commander" in the charge of leading your squad through those derelict ships, looking for whatever the mission is. On the way, you collect Knowledge, which is the currency in this game, from bodies, artifacts, killing enemies and simply finding new rooms. After you've finished your mission, which might be "Destroy artifacts", "recover ship's log", "eliminate all resistance" or something along those lines, you simply reach your starting room's Escape Hatch or you use any of those you might've found during your search on the ship. The combat is pretty straightforward. You say where your guys go, your guys (might not) do that, and when they reach there they shoot the baddies IF THEY SEE THEM. You better pack a scanner with you, because those damn Spectres are near invisible. You can also manually target a single enemy, which gives you a great freedom on choosing the most important target first.

Now, why should you call this creepy? Because the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ soundtrack is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ creepy. All those howls, yells, screams and growls make my hairs stand up. They sound extremely authentic. You're a commander behind a radio, giving orders to your squad, when you suddenly hear your squad firing their weapons, and you hear loud, unnatural screech. Your squad starts backing away, but on the comms, a message, "We've lost Johns!". Soon the enemy, whatever the hell it was, lies dead on the ground. Your squad makes your way through the derelict ship, completing their mission and encountering little resistance. However, when you're heading back to the escape hatch, you encounter one last enemy. Again, on the comms arrives a message. "Wait, is that Johns?" as you notice your squad starts rupturing apart like flies.

This game is minimalistic on the graphical side, although the UI with the scanners, character profiles and information screens are just like you would expect on a high-tech commander's station on a spaceship. The UI isn't that user-friendly, and takes a lot of getting used to. It is confusing at first, but when you learn how to use it, it becomes effective. Replayability on this game is a huge 10/10, since the missions are dynamically generated. The story, the enemies you encounter, the ships you go on, the stuff that happens, it's generated. Aside from the bugs on the character creation, I haven't encountered any major bugs in game. You can import your own character portraits, which is great for more personality.

My personal score for this game is 8/10, and a place for top 10 games of 2014 on my list. It isn't on the top 5 of the games, but it is still high. This game is for dedicated rogue-like fans, with lots of imagination and patience to get through the not-so-userfriendly firsthand experience.

Also, if you liked Zafehouse: Diaries, you WILL like this game.

Tense and very difficult, this isn't a game for everybody. Your interface is very faliable, and at times comes under direct attack. You will lose your visual display, your communications will be cut preventing you from issuing orders, your troops may panic, or go space crazy at times. If you can't stand games that use the interface as a difficulty mechanic and occasionally remove control from your hands, this isn't going to be your game.

Having said that you will not be getting your hands dirty in this game. Instead you get a chance to be one of those guys that sits in a comfy chair back on the ship, watching the commando team as it breaches the spooky alien vessel through a glowing CRT, sipping a fine scotch whiskey as the whole mission goes pear-shapped and everybody gets killed. Don't worry, you can always hire another crew. The important thing is that you didn't even need to wear pants for this operation.

I would encourage fans of 70's 80's sci-fi to check it out. Definitely brings back memories of Alien, the thing etc. It actually has elements I found were missing from the recent space hulk release. It is minimal yet atmospheric. Sometimes brutal and unfair. I reckon it will reveal itself favourable over repeated plays.

So, this is an early review. A VERY early review. Literally had two attempts at the first mission, and died both of them. (Should've rolled my own characters, I guess, and not relied on random ones!)

But so far it's utterly compelling - a very different take on the usual roguelike or Space Hulk-type games. The display screen system is inspired, the graphics are clean and incredibly good, and it's definitely going to get a lot more play going on. I especially like the character generation system and some of the in-game comms (both the character banter and having to tweak the system power to reduce interference). Sound is atmospheric, controls are fairly intuitive, and whilst it's a touch unconventional, it really is a bargain.

I've only scratched the surface of Deadnaut so far, but it's looking to be a corking indie title. Well worth a try.

"How many drops is this for you Lieutenant?"

"38... simulated"

"How many *combat* drops?"

"Uuuuhh, two... including this one"

That's my thoughts on it so far after my first two games folks: You're pretty much Gorman running the show, except this time you're hanging out in Operations while you send 5 marines (and the tech guys lack weapons) into the Nostromo...

A Nostromo that's infested with Alien Queens and rogue AIs and hostile gun turrets.

This here's a hard game, and I love it it bits. Highly recommended for those who like a tactical challenge where things can (make that WILL) go wrong; being able to adapt accordingly to surprises is the name of the game. If you can't, you will learn to do so :)

Always remember: Your plan will not survive contact with the enemy :D

Man, this game... I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it right now and I mean that in a very good way. I love it for the atmosphere, the asthetic, the tense moment-to-moment gameplay, the customization for your crew and the unrelenting difficult of the game. At the same time, the unrelenting difficult of the game also makes me hate it. I don't mean hate as in 'despise' it, I mean hate as in me going through a mission carefully and methodically and either making a mistake or getting a bad room and completely wiping after several successful missions. All it takes is one slip up and the entire campaign can be over! This definitely isn't a game for people who don't embrace the 'Losing is fun' mindset that comes with many roguelikes and games such as Dwarf Fortress. I have more speciifc thoughts that I'll list below.

The atmosphere and aesthetic of this game is fantastic. You, the player, are a character in the game. Specifically, you are the overseer of the Deadnauts, your crew of five you send on missions to derelict ships to discover just what happened on board the ship in question as well as to complete various missions, like recovering data from the ship, restoring power to the ship to initiate a sterilization procedure, destroying mysterious artifacts on board and so on. To this end, you use the games UI to order the Deadnauts about. The UI resembles something you'd see onboard a submarine, with a radar screen with all sorts of switches and knobs and whatnot controlling various functions of your display. It's very 'hard sci-fi' with plenty of retro love thrown in. Perhaps retro isn't the right word. It's along the lines of the type of equipment you'd see on board the Nostromo from Alien, only more primitive. This display is your only window into the world your crew is entering. It gives you all information you need to know in the form of health displays for your crew, a log window and a chat window to show your objectives and your crew's responses to what is happening and the center view screen, which gives you a very light but detailed look into the action with each of your crew members represented by their last name and first initial and the Deadnaut insignia. Here, you move them around and instruct them to interact with the environment-things like opening and closing doors, unlocking doors, investigating objects and bodies, initiating hacks, attacking hostiles and so on.

Since you are not actually with the crew and are instead onboard the Deadnaut ship supervising the mission from afar, there are many ways for the display to fail. It will never fail completely, of course, but there are forms of interference that can and will affect your ability to issue orders to your crew as well as to see just what is happening within the derelict ship. These different types of interference can be something within your control or something out of your control. An example of one within your control is a Flaw that you can take for one of your crew to get more points to customize them that causes the Deadnaut in question to occasionally interfere with the display, causing static to flicker across the screen and some lag to occur between what is actually happening and what your scanner is telling you is happening. As well, for one that is out of your control, certain enemies can interfere with your scanners when they are nearby your crew. This can provide some really tense moments when your display is washed out with static and you are left not knowing just what is happening.

The customization for the Deadnauts is great. When making a character, you start off at their birth by allocating points to the four stats in game Vigor-physical ability-, Acuity-accuracy and detection ability-, Wits-intelligence and hacking ability-and Grit-mental fortitude and cooperation ability-. You then move onto their education, which has you spending points to pick what kind of education they received. The different typs of education provide training in specfic stats. After that, you move onto their early career and select a flaw to give you more points that you will need to select what kind of training they have received. Again, what kind of training they receive provides training in particular stats that will decide what your character will specialize in. It is absolutely possible to either go with a general 'jack/jill of all trades' type character that will be good at everything for you to fall back on if a specialist dies or run with a full crew of specialists at certain tasks. After the Early Career, you can save the character and use them right away. You can also choose to select their Late Career and their Wisdom, both of which also provide further training and bonuses to the character to make them better at what they do while also forcing you to take more flaws to be able to afford these abilities. Once you have a full crew of five Deadnauts, you are able to jump into the game. If you do not wish to create your own Deadnauts, you also have the ability to just jump right in with Deadnauts created by the game.

So far, I can't get enough of this game. I have written quite a lot about everything I love about it. I suppose now I'll have to talk about what I dislike about it. While the punishing difficulty is certainly fun and I certainly feel that it is a core aspect of the game and it's 'one more run' type of gameplay, it can also be unfair at times. More often than not, if you end up losing a crew member or getting a wipe, it is your own fault for not being more careful as far as scouting out a room and ensuring that those crew members of yours that are better suited to taking hits for the team and returning them are out in front or rushing into a room and having a defensive turret open fire on your crew and kill them, there are times when the randomly generated nature of the game can rear it's ugly head and remind you that randomly generated levels and such aren't always a good thing. I recall one campaign where I started the mission, opened the first door and before I even stepped through the door, a turret on the otherside of the door with a clear line of sight to the only exit to the inital room of the ship opened fire and killed two of my crew. There was no way to get around it so I ended up quitting and starting a new campaign. Stuff like that hasn't happened a ton for me but it has happened. This is when the game's difficulty goes from 'punishing' to 'unfair'. It doesn't happen often, as I said, but it would be nice if stuff like that could be prevented from happening. If there was another exit to the room then alright, that was my bad for opening the wrong door. With only the one exit and what is basically an instant kill turret aiming at the doorway, though, there isn't much I can do other than quit and start a new game.

Don't let that last bit deter you, though. If you like tough, challenging games, games within the 'rougelike' genre and games that demand that you play them one more time for a better run, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It is a fantastic experience and one I will continue to enjoy. For the price as well, it's hard to beat. If any of this sounds like something you might like, I hope you come to enjoy it soon enough as well.

Great atmosphere, punishing gameplay, good times all around.

There's a special feeling of doom when you open a door and your injured hacker gets splattered by a rehacked turret, and you realise that now the rest of your team can't get back to the escape hatch.

I'd have preferred a longer, more drawn out game though, 4 missions in a campaign can be done within 2 hours at the most, unless you end up getting your party killed halfway through a lot like me.

Party relationships seem to minimally effect the game, and the party banter ends up getting recycled an awful lot.

I like the random generation of enemies and scenarios, and it can range anywhere from relatively easy to kill melee ghosts, or genetically-modified aliens with blast weapons.

All-in-all, it's worth the under $10 price tag if you can roll with getting killed a lot.

A spooky randomly generated space horror narrative game! The basic premise is that you have 5 randomly generated characters with varying skills and quirks. You are playing some ship bound captain that gives orders to them to move around so called "Deadnaut" ships. They are always in some way full of nasty aliens, and the aliens are it seems different. I got some kind of space ghost that infests artifacts that I had to destroy (which I learned too late my guns don't hurt). All of my team died except those in the heavy radiation suits who booked it across the dead creaking ship and got the information I needed. The 3 others are now clones with varying levels of DNA damage.

A must buy!

This is excellent, I love the atmosphere, however it could use a lot more content, those randomly generated crew logs seem to be variations of the exact same thing. At it's current state it feels rather minimalistic, and after a few missions it gets rather repetative. Perhaps the devs should consider adding an 'easy mode'?

Also, I play in 1920x1080 and the fonts are hard to read, at least for me.

EDIT: Just finished my first campaign. This thing needs to be a lot longer, seriously.

It's basically "Event Horizon" the game, but better.

Fantastic depth for characters, unique & challenging game-play, and an amazingly immersive experience!

If you're looking for some fun then grab this gem!

I want to like this game. I really do...

and i DO !!! :D

This game is awesome, you'll for sure adopt it IF :
>U liked FTL
>U found Space Hulk too easy
>U like chess
>U loved Event Horizon movie STORY.

For my part, im having a damn blast exploring derelict spaceships in space, in dark, and in a scary atmosphere !

Let me preface this, I say "Yes" to this game only because I see potential, but I was marginally disappointed in the full outcome.

The game has a lot of elements to it that make it incredible.
- A great 1990s Futuristic style
- A compelling mood that draws you in and engrosses you
- A good range of customization and tactical planning.

The main problem is, at least for me, was that just as I was getting into all of this, the game ended. No joke, I bought and finished a campaign in under 2 hours. While the content was good, it was over way too fast?

DO NOT READ PAST HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT THE GAME ELEMENTS TO BE SPOILED---------

A few key bothers I have because the game is so short:

- Crew morale and relationships is a dynamic that slowly deteriorates after each mission. I thought that I would need to worry about this in the long run and try to be very efficient in my mission times before my crew started killing each other. However, the campaign ended before I saw any of that become a factor. A main factor of the game is these derelect spaceships causing crew members to go insane. Isn't that something I should worry about happening to my team as well?

- There's a wide variety of weapon types and similarly defense types. It goes from standard, light, medium, to heavy.
... I finished the game just as I got my first Heavy items. I was still using tier 2 weapons on the last mission, no problem. Not only that, Because it was my first run though, I just defaulted to run and gun, simple weapon choices and keeping my group together at all times. I expected to eventually be outsmarted or something, but it never happened. If I can just muscle my way through this game, what's the point?

- Crew deaths. you only get 5 crew members in this game. If one dies, you can clone him again for a cost of credits and also a significant hit to his or her stats. It was a terrifying revalation, and I was incredibly worried that deaths late in the game would cost me a victory, but I beat the game shortly after my very first death. This factor would be a lot more terrifying if I actually had to worry about long-term effects of making a mistake and losing a crew member.

- Storyline. Once again, this is probably one of the best elements of the game. Everything they do is kind of perfectly built around the ability to set the mood for this story, but just as I was getting curious about where the plot would go, it ended. "Congrats, you found all the things. Have a gold star." What? There was no closer to this storyline, just me making money, spending that money on better gear, and going on a harder mission thereafter for more money (rinse and repeat.)

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All in all, great potential, but a let down in the end. This could've gone so much further and been so much greater. 6.5/10 is my rating, but up until the "Campaign complete" screen it was going on a solid 9/10.

Hopefully in the future Screwfly can add a little more meat to the game before sending it out.

Finally, I don't regret paying $8 for this, but if they had filled in the holes, this game could be worth at least $30 in my book. It reminds me of great old strategy games like fallout and dungeon keeper with the creepy setting and unforgiving cost of messing up.