Pros: Cross-platform gameplay, simple controls, ideal for shorter casual play sessions
Cons: Graphics are pixelated on browser version, gameplay can be very repetitive, game freezes and glitched menus
Recently we got the chance to try out the browser and mobile based MMO Pocket Starships, where we got to take control of our own upgradeable and customizable ships in a battle between two rival factions. We were supplied with 100k Solar (premium currency) by the publishers to check things out, which equates to around $700 of real money to buy, so well equipped we jumped into the game to see what it was all about.
Our initial response to the 2.5d graphics was that the game looked decent enough but, even with the initial controls, felt very much like BigPoint’s Dark Orbit space shooter after its more recent graphical facelift. Pocket Starships looks decent on the whole, utilizing chunky icons and buttons to make it accessible to mobile users, but unfortunately playing on a large 1920x1080 monitor through the web browser revealed some nasty pixelated graphics at times where the scale of the images hadn’t been optimized for such a large size (something you wouldn’t notice at a mobile size). Fortunately the pixilation was generally in menus and crafting areas and didn’t negatively impact gameplay, just the general first impressions.
Once more the cross-compatibility for mobile devices was apparent when it came to the controls, for us on the browser version this consisted in movement using WASD and the mouse to aim and shoot independently from your ship (the mobile version utilizes dual joysticks). Big buttons on the side of the screen allowed us to switch weapons at a click (or at a push with touchscreen) and our big nuke icon at the bottom of the screen allowed us to drag and drop onto the area to deal large amounts of AOE damage.
After playing for a few hours it did feel like a lot of the content was all too similar, whilst there are quests for PVE where you must attack and defend a territory mining outpost from AI pirate waves, the same could be said for the faction based PVP where players entering the galactic map could see which territories their faction controlled and head to them to try and take them over. The objective was, as with PVE, to take over or defend the territory mining outpost and so whether facing AI or players the game modes and the territory maps themselves were all pretty much the same.
Our biggest pet peeve initially with combat was the use of colour coding player names to indicate which faction they were part of, not an issue in itself, but the two faction colours were red (our faction the Varian) and green (the enemy faction the Shards), which are pretty much the two colours used in nearly every game ever to indicate an enemy (red) and ally (green). So entering combat we’d constantly forget and start firing at red Varian ships (our own faction) and not react quickly enough as a bunch of green Shard (enemy faction) would appear. It was unintuitive and resulted in many deaths.
The core purpose of the game really is to simply try and get stronger so that you can perform better in the faction PVP and domination, in reality as soon as we entered a contested zone we would get obliterated (though there are optional Fight team groups you can join with other players, we were still far too weak to compete in faction wars). Getting better directly depends on the type of ship you have and the gear it is equipped with, all of which we could craft ourselves.
Crafting revolves around gathering ore by mining asteroids in the different territories, you kind of need to control a territory to mine there as it’s safer but also you can’t travel with a full cargo of ore and so need an accessible mining outpost to refine it at. Once you have your resources you need to craft at the starport in your factions home territory, it’s a simple process that consists of choosing a ship or an item blueprint and clicking create, providing you have the necessary resources. If you have 25% of the needed resources then you can fill in the missing resources with Solar, but you do have to have acquired some of the initial materials and can’t just buy them outright. From here it takes time for the item to be created, with two default craft queue slots you can keep multiple objects being created, necessary when some of the ships and higher end items can take hours and hours to craft, you still have access to a secondary slot to make your regular basics and consumables such as nukes, energy, repair kits, etc.
The second part to the crafting is upgrading; upgrading your ship opens up new slots to equip gear and items, whereas upgrading your item blueprints allows you to craft items at a higher quality. The process of upgrading requires specific item materials for each different type of blueprint looted from kills, with more materials needed the higher the upgrade. It’s a very grindy system and thankfully one we were able to blow through by spending Solar to fill in the missing materials and speeding up the crafting time for instant completion.
The reality is that without the Solar it would have been an arduous task trying to level up our ship; we had a fully upgraded level 1 Unicorn ship, with fully upgraded weapons, nukes and repair kits, and after a few hours of play we’d blown through 50k of our Solar ($350 of premium currency just to quickly get a level 1 ship to full spec, that would still get absolutely wrecked in PVP). We couldn’t get access to the higher class ships due to our low account level, and we’re not sure how increasing our level might directly make us stronger (or not), but our blueprint schematic upgrades were only maxed out for our level, they could still be improved further if we levelled up more; it’s an expensive way to be the best of the worst.
Whilst the game didn’t blow us away we do feel this was more to do with the method in which we were testing and sitting there playing for a few hours simply burning through the crafting screen with Solar. What it may lack for browser gameplay we do feel Pocket Starships would be a lot more fun for those get out your phone and play for a little while moments and much shorter sessions, it doesn’t feel like a grind, the time between crafting and upgrading isn’t as intrusive, and the repetitive tasks wouldn’t feel quite so repetitive (though without Solar we’ve no idea how long it would take to get anywhere).
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