EVERSPACE 2

Space is mostly bleak and empty,” says Michael Schade, CEO of Rockfish Games, the developer of Everspace 2. Without getting too Douglas Adams about it, this makes open space combat games “boring, because most of the time you shoot at tiny pixel clusters in the distance without having a concrete sense of player orientation and movement”.

We’re playing the prototype build of this space shooter, the one that appeared at PAX East back in late February and which would have been shown off at this summer’s entertainment shows if they hadn’t been cancelled. It’s playable, in that it functions – you fly through space exploring, shooting and trading. It’s not exactly coherent yet, however, with little sense of purpose or mission structure. A whole mission-tracking system exists in the game but doesn’t