Buy Centauri Sector

Centauri Sector is a space-based RTS/shooter game where you take control of your own ship as well as assume control of land units in an effort to fight off pirates. As a member of the Omega Federation you have fled Sol in search of a better life in the Centauri Sector. However, the dream of a peaceful life away from the greed and war you fled is short lived as pirates soon come to raid your sector, the question is, can you fight them off?

Sadly, the answer to that question is probably no, at least in my experience, and the more you fail the harder it is to succeed. Before I get into the meat of the review I'll briefly outline the two different parts of this game.

Up first we have the game's ship vs. ship space combat in which you take on a group of enemies threatening your Sector in some way. You don't have to go it alone though, pirate fleets often attack other patrols in the sector who will help you out if you jump into a fight with them. As you rank up you'll also gain the ability to have your own 'escorts' which are up to two ships which will fight with you in combat. Sometimes a pirate fleet will attack a space station or a trade ship in which case you'll have to defend them as well.

The other aspect of the game is the ground missions which are basically incredibly simplified Tower Defense levels. There's a point on the map which you have to defend and you can place turrets around that point and defend against enemies coming from several different sides of the map. There's very little strategy to this aspect of the game, simply build turrets (and other things when you unlock them such as mines) where you think they'll be most effective and then rebuild them when they're inevitably destroyed.

+The compulsory tutorial provides a good introduction to the game's mechanics though it is irritating that it can't be skipped if you start the game again
+The UI is very simple and easy to use and everything you need is always visible
+Having up to two ships help you out (once you're a high enough rank) is nice, especially as you can order them to attack specific ships
+A decent amount of upgrades, including four types of weapons, each with four variations as well as upgrade modules for your ship which do things such as slightly increase speed or shield capacity etc.
+Ranking up lets you unlock skills which are useful during combat, skills range from shield capacity boosts for you and your fleet to temporary weapon damage boosts (you can unlock four skills, each time you rank up you have a choice of three skills)

+/-It very much looks and feels like a flash game. What do I mean by this? The graphics are very basic, there's very little in the way of gameplay depth, there's not much in the way of customisation etc.

-You're effectively punished for dying, this is my biggest issue with the game. When you die you're simply given the default version of whatever your main, player controlled, ship is as well as being given your 'escorts' back, this means you lose all of your upgrades. This wouldn't be a problem if the difficulty was the same throughout the game but it's not, the game gets increasingly difficult and the harder the game gets the more likely you are to die and once you've lost your upgrades when it's difficult, it's nigh on impossible to get them back
-Both aspects of the game are incredibly repetitive (I found the game repetitive after around 20 minutes of gameplay), once you've fought all the different kinds of enemies it just turns into shooting at stuff or placing turrets over and over again which does not make for a fun experience
-There's not much in the way of options, you get two sliders for sound and the choice between Fullscreen or Windowed mode, that's it
-There are only four playable ships which feels like not enough for me in what's effectively a Space sandbox, it gets worse when you realise only two of the ships are actually better than the ship you start with, making the other ship only good as a basic 'escort' ship
-Speaking of 'escort' ships, they can't be upgraded at all which means once you get into more difficult sections of the game they're effectively useless cannon fodder and therefore a waste of money
-Another part of the space combat is being able to control how much power your systems (weapons, engines and shields) are getting, sadly this part isn't too well done as you only change the amount of power by set amounts and when you increase one power level the other two have to decrease to the same level which means you always have to focus on one aspect of your ship and no more
-Shields take an incredibly long time to recharge which is rather frustrating as your ship has very little health once its shields drop
-The game has different backgrounds for the space battles which are supposed to show up in the corresponding section of Space, i.e. when you're near the blue planet you get the background with the blue planet on, but this doesn't seem to be the case, as far as I can tell the selection of the background is random which seems silly considering someone had to make a background for each planet

Verdict:
Not Recommended Unless it Receives a Hefty Discount (4/10)

Centauri Sector is a nice idea on paper but is let down in practice by its repetitiveness, the fact it punishes failure and its lack of options/customisation. Unless this game gets a very good discount or the dev addresses a good few of the issues with the game I suggest holding off on this one.

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El K.

Centaur Sector is patrol duty game with turn-based map movement, shmup and strategic elements. Sadly the game fails heavily and since it doesnt have much content I will probably talk about everything you will find in the game.


Your "fleet"

You can make a fleet.. or to be more precise, you can get 2 escort ships that got basic equipment. And you control the flagship. Customization is minimal.
4 ships to pick from(but you can pick only from 2 of them as escort ships), 16 weapons(the bigger the better) and 8 modules(you either got with cheapest or with the most expensive one, the mid one are waste of $$$). And since the escort ships die easy unless you send them away during combat you might be better off working on your ship only to get the toughest ship(Destroyer), equip 2 Heavy Ion Beams and 1 Dual Ion Turret and go wreck everything with ease. Though it may sound hard its not.. its actually fairly easy but time consuming(having a grindy feel in a game that last less than 2 hours isnt a good news.)
To try to add some more RPG elements you get levels... 4 of them... well 3 since you start from 1 ... and each level or rank as in game let you pick a skill .. that you cant change.. you can pick from 3 skill on each rank .. rank 1/3 give you active skill while rank 2/4 gives you passive one and they either affect you or the "fleet" .

Shoot 'em up combat

While I'm used to fast shmup , in this game it feels so slow. You can control the energy flow which do nothing.. you have weapon systems, engines and shields at 100% by default.. you can use max 20% from each.. so if you want to get max weapons you get 140% weapons and 80% engine and shields ... you cant go lower than 80% or higher than 140%. And never.. never bother with putting everything on shields since it affect only recovery rate which is so slow that it makes no difference.
Now there is a strategy elements : giving "orders" to your escort ships which are 2 : either attack this target or go to this position and stay there until further notice.
Also you must notice that your ship got "weapon energy" that if you use it all you cant fire your weapons until you let it cool down a bit. And ship rotation can be slow at times ... and you have 2 kind of weapons .. turret and frontal.. turret can attack in 360° arc while frontal point in 1 direction that you cant change ...


All events are being triggered on space map(which isnt big as you can see from the screenshots on the store page). You have Intercept Patrol, Help civilian Ship, Help allies patrol, Defend Planet(space),Defend Planet(ground) and Attack Pirate Base. All in all 6 missions that increase in difficulty as you rank up.

Intercept Patrol

The simpliest of them all. You intercept a patrol when you click on it on the space map and attack. Once it starts you have to destroy several ships. Kill or be killed. Once you destroy them you get xp and prestige rewards.

Help Civilian ship

Enemy patrol attacked a civilian ship. You rush to help it out(if you get on time since the attack lasts for 2 turns only) . Once in it you have to protect the ship from the enemy patrol. If the ship gets destroyed .. well you wasted your time. Also the small ships always focus on the civilian ship while bigger ones focus on you.

Help Ally patrol

Here you join with an ally fleet to destroy an enemy patrol.. that looks the same everywhere but in this encounter you fight not 1 but 2 patrols.. though the 2nd one spawns when the first one got 1-2 ships remaining. Now I dont know does you lose if ally patrol dies before the enemy but I guess you do lose if ally ships are all gone.

Defend Planet(space)

Now this one is quite funny presented. You get a msg from your commander that you must intercept a big fleet that will attack your planet.. but also tells you to go to protect said planet. So what you will see is how a normal fleet goes transit from pirate base to a planet in one go like its nothing so go figure why you should interecept. Once you get into fight you gonna fight 2 patrols while being helped by an ally patrol... and you have to defend the base. If base goes boom.. you lose the encounter. Big ships this time focus on base why smaller one focus on you.

Defend Planet(ground)

Welcome to the tower defence part where everything is hard coded and you are doomed if you decide to sell the starting turret placements. So in the TD you pretty much have to defend your base with the tools provided which are limited turret positions and unit slots. Overtime you get money to use(if you actived the skill) and I think you also get money from finishing waves. Only strategy here is turret placement which is bad since you can place it only near your base and not really close to other turrets so you are quite limited. And another thing.. while enemies are all mid-high range, your turrets are short-mid range so you may doom yourself if you place your turrets too close to the base. During fight you can build,sell and repair your turret for a cost.
Apart from turrets you got units... that you cant repair but you can send them to grab resources if you dont mind to switch your camera from the action to the place with the crate , then click ON the crate to acquire valuable resources but if you click somewhere close by then you wasted your precious seconds.
You can also build mines(which spawn 3 mines that form a triangle) or activate skills like Air Strike, turret on your base or EMP.

Attack the Pirate Base

Which is the end-game boss. In this encounter you have to deal with 2-3 enemy patrols + base. Fighting near the base is tough so your best chance is to lure the ships away and destroy them. Then go make some sandwiches or drink a beer while waiting for your shild and weapon system to recover, then go get the base and finish the game.

Goal of the Game

Your goal is to keep the morale of the system above 0 else you will lose the game. You gain control by successfully complete missions and you lose morale if you fail to protect objectives(also lose 1 morale at the start of every turn). While you do all of the encounters stated above you will get at one point a msg that the Pirate Base was discovered so you have to destroy it to finish the game. Thats it.. no lore, no quest.. only pure action!!!


At this price tag you can get much better games from close to the same idea ( SPAZ, Space Rangers HD A War Apart, Gran Vitreous are one that I personally recommend). But this game is simply shallow,boring and grindy(and calling a game grindy that ends up in less than 2hours playtime is so wrong) . It lacks content, it lacks fun, it lacks replay value.

I was pretty surprised that I actually liked the game, because it's not the type of game I usually play. A friend recommended it and I gave it a shot. Now I am trying to beat it, because the difficulty level is a bit deceptive.
The space combat is pretty basic and the skills seem useless at first, but later on, when the fights get tougher, they come in handy and will save your ship. I went with the damage boost at first, but on my second try I went for the capacitor skill. When you get the best turret, your cap will overload and you'll end up being a sitting duck. When you upgrade your ship, it gets even harder. Sure, you have more hull and shield, but you also need to rotate your ship for the forward cannon to hit and the pesky ceptors are fast. Graphic-wise, it's pretty good. I am tired of 8bit graphics and this game has none, so there's that.
The ground combat I really loved. The graphic style reminded me of M.A.X. (which I totally loved) and the gameplay is pretty engaging. I am glad that I wasn't stuck in a boring tower defense. You need to manage your repairs, you have some skills on top of that and you can set priority targets.
Overall, it's a pretty simple game, but with some nice mechanics behind, decent graphics for it genre and a difficulty curve that really challenges you. It guarantees some hours of fun. 8/10

Hi, this is actually a pretty cool and addictive game. :)
It has elements of patrol duty, ship combat, squadron control tactics, and even ground-based Tower Defence modes too.

I managed to reach Day 63 on my 1st attempt, and am still in the process of upgrading my Weapons and ship Modules.

I recommend the game.

Centauri Sector is a great strategy game with colourful graphics and involving gameplay.

The concept of the game is pretty easy to grasp, thanks in part to the involving tutorial that makes short-work of getting new players up-to-speed with controls and gameplay.

The UI is simplistic and not over-complicated, the music is atmospheric and involving and the story is something that’s not forced upon you; but relevant none the less.

The graphics are the best part of the game, they complement this type of gameplay perfectly. The settings are minimal, but arguably with an indie game like this – the main features are the mechanics of the game itself.

All in all I would recommend this game! Simply because it’s great way to kill off a few hours, it plays well and there are more pros than cons! :)

Fun, if short, little hybrid arcade space-shooter and tower defence without much replay value.

Centauri Sector's main screen is basically a turn-based strategic map, although since the only unit you can move is your own and there's seldom more than one target, there isn't a great deal of strategy beyond "intercept and engage" or "go here and buy stuff". Even shopping isn't especially strategic, all planets sell the full range of goods and there's one very clear dominant strategy for buying gear.

Once you intercept a fleet you're presented with one of 4 mission types depending on the AI control of allied units on the main map: solo intercept, fleet intercept, merchant defence and station defence. The gameplay is mostly similar: kill all the enemies. The variation comes from the defence missions being failed if the merchant or station is killed, which is quite possible if you take your time getting there or fighting.

Combat gameplay is real-time and gives you control of ship rotation and thrust, one turret weapon that tracks the mouse and a spinal mount weapon (or two) on the larger ships. You get to tweak allocation of power between weapons, engines and shields, which gives you a few tactical options, although shields regenerate so slowly that it's mostly impractical - if you boost them enough to start regenerating you'll be moving too slowly to evade fire, and even with max engines you're unlikely to be evading fire reliably enough to regenerate shields by kiting: so in practice your choices are max weapons to kill things fast, and max engines to get to a merchant or station in time to defend it.

That said, the fights are quite a bit of fun, although the AI consists entirely of "charge at target, overshoot and fly back again" for the fighters and "charge at target and attempt to kite" for all other ships, no attempts to evade or rotate shields (not even sure AI units have directional shields, there's no feedback in that regard). Mostly it boils down to whether you can overwhelm them with firepower before your shields give out or you run out of capacitor to keep your weapons firing. Fun enough but not too challenging.

Types of opponents gradually escalate and you unlock larger ships as you complete missions and advance in rank.

At four points as you gain rank a special mission will appear on one of the planets that drops you into four fixed tower-defence levels. These make for a nice change of pace, but since they're fixed layout and there's no bonuses for doing exceptionally well - just succeed or fail - there's no replay value once you've figured it out. They're quite fun, and I almost feel there's more depth and variety in this aspect of the game than the space combat, which is kinda odd because you only get to play the TD section those 4 times.

Overall the game is fun, but you're likely to complete it within two hours and even with slightly careless achievement hunting I've done everything the game has to offer in under five hours; and while I enjoyed that time, I now feel no great urge to ever play it again.

Dune 2000 meets Galaga.
I feel some aspects need a bit more polishing, the game certainly has style and gets you in the right mood. I'm only looking forward for more updates from the developers, to make the experience even more pleasant.
4/5 from me

Quite an enjoyable game, but I think one which most veterans will find relatively easy and with little replay value. I spent a couple of hours beating this game, and while I may return for a couple of forays I don't anticipate significant replay value. There are no difficulty levels and I didn't find the game difficult on the default setting. The space portions are well thought out and fun, the tower defense portions are like a poorly thought out TD flash game. I encountered and reported a few bugs during my run through, but both were fairly critical: graphics representing enemies and allies not appearing on the map for the duration of a mission. I would recommend this game when it's on sale. The experience is definitely worth some dollars, but probably not ten.

Though it lacks polish, the game has potential.

7/10

Have 1.8 hours in this game.

Had seen everything this game had to offer half way through that.