Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game

I found the setting of this game to be so compelling that I wanted to explore new areas just to find out more about the ship and its mysteries.

It's short enough that I finished it and the story was interesting enough but on the whole I wouldn't recommend it.

The skill system is just too punishing. Only getting XP for the skills you use sounds like a good idea but in practice it means that if you don't complete checks in the right order or if you don't consistently use the same method to overcome every encounter you'll eventually be underleveled and stuck until you go back and find the right order of checks you were meant to take.

This is exacerbated by there being three different approaches to most encounters (combat, social and sneaking) but sneaking especially can't be used for most encounters and neither can combat. If you focus purely on social you'll be fine for most of the main story but there's plenty of optional areas you'll have to skip due to forced combat. I'm guessing you're supposed to min-max your party in order to get around this issue but there's two problems with that 1. You get most of your party early in act 1 and it seems like if you pick the wrong dialogue options you might end up killing them instead, plus unless you've already played the game you're not going to know what skills to tag ahead of time. 2. One or two minmaxed combat characters is not enough to beat every combat encounter, you'll often be outnumbered and outgunned and there's one encounter in an optional ending that seems legitimately impossible to complete.

In summary I didn't like feeling like I was forced to run across the map over and over again trying to find the right order to take skillchecks in to not miss XP which was crucial to progress. I also hate that there's no map, why can I teleport between parts of the ship almost whenever I want but I can't get a topdown view of the area with markers telling me where things are?

Also none of the factions are likeable it's a choice between fascism, hardcore soviet style secret police communism and religious extremists. In the last act you get access to a neutral faction as well who are just robots who want to control everything to make people get their shit together so they can land the ship eventually. They're pretty authoritarian but less terrible than the other factions but they appear at the end, you here almost nothing about them and they have zero personality.

Interesting if you are looking for a fresh world to explore, but UEx, balancing and progression is clunky to say the least.

On the good side
* The world is interesting, fresh, and treated in a clever adult way.
* Combat is tactical and challenging
* World persistency : when you deal with an encounter it's gone and there's no artificial respawn...although, it tends to make the world static without a lot of surprises.

Now on the "less good" side
* UEx is clunky and I ended up many time doing things I didn't want to do because of that. (i.e. Stealth phase)
* The progression is so tight that you pretty much have to see everything to earn enough skill points and gear to succeed. I often found myself struggling to figure out what I missed/could do to reach the expected skill check level.
* The whole thing is done like a metroid vania where you need to remember where you saw this lvl 6 Pick Lock check you couldn't do earlier...that you now should be able to succeed...but...there's no map...no way to track all those places.
* Difficulty is all other the place with pretty much no feedback on the next encounter difficulty
* The world is desperatly static and waiting for your next move.

Na. This game is the bare bone basics of so many better games I've played. Off sale it's priced the same as wasteland 3 and that's just a joke. Even half off its not close to worth the full price tag of wasteland 3. I bought Encased cheaper then this on sale and even that was still better at any price lower or up to the max of this one. Id recommend those ones first or even wasteland 2 cause the whole build of this game just feels lacking for its genre. Honestly even the name is bad, i bought cause of good reviews and i might play out of boredom and money spent.

Play time inaccurate due to steam issue.
So far this is my favorite game by Iron Tower. It takes the rpg elements of Age of Decadence and the Party aspects of Dungeon Rats and combines them in a great way. If you liked the fact that you can lock your character out of options, but didn't like that you HAD to replay the game in order to know how to manage your stats, skills, and leveling to accomplish your goals then Colony Ship is right for you.
Fights are challenging but not overly frustrating if you're not new to this style.
The party allows you to spread skills in a way that lets you keep lots of options open while still requiring you to make an effort to level the appropriate skills.
The main factions can feel like there isn't any difference in who you side with but that made sense for the setting to me.
As I just completed my first playthrough I know I wasn't able to unlock all the options for endings but I had several options that all felt satisfying.
I have a bad habit of restarting roleplaying games instead of completing them if that tells you how invested in the story I was that I managed to not make a new character to try new things before beating it.
Disappointed that a sequel isn't in the works yet because I loved this one and was excited to see the alien planet, but the new project sounds exciting.
This is a very niche genre of games and I will recommend it to anyone who is even curious about it.

I was torn between giving it a thumbs up or a thumbs down because there are things it does well and things it does poorly, in the end I decided to go for a thumbs down mainly because of its price tag, if it had been about half the price I'd have been more forgiving.

The game is very frustrating because whilst it appears to be fairly open it very much has an "intended" order to do things and if you stray from it you'll get suckerpunched by the difficulty until you reload and try a different area. The skill system also looks very promising at first but it only ends up encouraging metagaming, with skills increasing by being used and there being a limited amount of checks to use them every fight you talk yourself out of is missed combat experience and every skill check you don't pick in conversations is lost forever. This all adds up to a game where you're trying to outwit the mechanics rather than immerse yourself in the story and setting. I'm sure there's an audience for a game like that, but it's not for me.

I respect the game for what it is; a somewhat old school turn and party based RPG. In general I like this game. Setting and story are good enough, the atmosphere is pretty on point. Combat is difficult, in an unfair kind of way. Most encounters can easily overwhelm you unless you bought enough doodads to drown the enemy in status effects.
If there was a thumb sideways, I'd give that. If you like turn based RPGs, might as well pick this one up on sale. If you're unsure, I'd recommend looking up gameplay on youtube or twitch or something before you buy it.

TLDR: The game might end up being good at some point, maybe its OK if you play it on "Hero" mode. But the dev's approach to game design is to spit in the players face and so I recommend you do not reward any game dev that disrespects players like this with your purchase.

--------------------

The game comes with two difficulty modes. The first is "Hero" mode which the dev, in-game, characterises as being so trivially easy that it's almost a story-only mode, which would dissuade most average gamers from even trying it. Story-modes are great for people who want them, but most people don't. So most people aren't going to choose that. The other difficulty mode is described as a "Default/normal difficulty" mode, which most average gamers are going to think is the right choice.

However, the "normal" difficulty mode is actually so unfair that the game ceases to be an RPG where you can build and play your character how you want and as long as you have good strategies and focused synergies, you'll win. Instead it becomes a puzzle game which strictly limits player choice and expression. Every encounter has requirements so strict that you need to build your characters in very specific ways, have very specific equipment, and take very specific actions in the fight to get out unscathed. The primary gameplay becomes resetting over and over until you figure out which combination of things constitutes the key to unlock "success" in the fight. No real strategy, just solve the 20 step puzzle. You are as free to make choices in this game as you are free to choose to not wear clothes in a -20 °C blizzard.

The developer constantly tells people in the forum that "the enemies follow the same "rules" as the player, so you've just got to get good at the game". It's probably true that the enemies follow the same rules, but the stats and equipment the enemies have are very clearly far beyond what your characters have, and you're very often significantly outnumbered or in a poor tactical position.

There is also NO indicator on which quest lines might be easier or harder, and in fact quests that seem like they should be easy (like taking out the first bandits you ever meet in the game) are often far harder than many quests which seem like they should be much harder. Enemies also have no level indicator and there is no way to examine them or inspect their gear to gauge their strength, so you have no idea if the fight is supposed to be done later, or if it's just the usual 20 resets to get a run where the RNG goes good on your perfectly maximised strategy for you to win.

Every combat encounter has enemies designed specifically for combat. You never fight someone who might not be a fully invested combat guy. There is no realism in this world, just puzzle fight after puzzle fight where one wrong move, or a mistake in choosing a feat at level 2 5 hours ago, spells instant failure. There are no punks or drugged out losers, or bandits who are only a couple years into their career. You only fight super soldiers in varying amounts.

My 100% combat units with the best equipment I can possibly use and all the extra HP and DR feats gets 1 round killed by the enemies who seem to have 100% reaction chance (meaning they get free attacks against you whenever you do ANYTHING) and always hit even when blinded by a grenade and my guy is hiding behind cover.

On the other hand, social tests basically cannot be failed if you have even have a single character with a specialisation in a single social skill. There is no balance here. Combat is so strict it's a puzzle, but social options are free wins and stealth is virtually free too if you're allowed to use it. Unfortunately most encounters do not support stealth, so you're probably better off building full combat, since you'll rarely use it in the only part of the game that is difficult. In fact stealth is more often used to get a couple token items here are there from sneaking into people's rooms, than it is usable in combat.

The social options for overcoming hurdles are numerous, which seems great! More choice, right? But this is a trap, because they're so easy to succeed and it often results in avoiding combat (which you may want to do because the combat sucks or because you're playing a character who wants to minimise killing, y'know, ROLEPLAYING) which ends up meaning your characters are starved of combat EXP which you need to level up combat skills specifically. You can't just get quest EXP and level up and have that be enough, it' is nowhere near enough.

There is also no way to grind EXP or money and shops have limited stock anyway, so grenades and gadgets which are often basically required to pass certain fights are in extremely short supply. In fact even healing is in short supply! You can literally end up stuck on 1 HP on all your characters (though I luckily never had that happen, it is possible!).

All of this means that it's quite easy to get to get completely stuck and literally soft lock yourself with no way of being able to progress the game. It's not unlikely that you will be forced into a fight you cannot win because you used up all your best grenades or took a feat that was useful for a current fight but not the next one, or if you're off by one on your skills and therefore cannot collect extremely useful items that are required to solve the combat puzzle that is the "default" difficulty mode.

I've played many games with symmetric battle mechanics between NPCs and PCs. Very few of them are this poorly paced and balanced. It's an extremely common design pattern, and usually very satisfying as it typically means the enemies aren't bullet sponges and your choice of tactics matters. But the enemies in this game are still somehow bullet sponges, even with the best gear available and maxed out combat feats and skills in an area. The PCs unfortunately, are not. Maybe that's symmetric but the enemies are very clearly loaded out the wazoo with full combat stats and insane DR gear to make it as hard as possible to succeed.

I had one fight against the first bandits you meet, with a maxed out team for that region (I couldn't beat them until I did every other quest) and I stealth murdered 2 out of 4 of them in stealth and then started the fight, and they still almost killed half of my team by just having 100% hit chance against everyone, 100% reaction chance, and doing >50% damage on even my tanks on every single melee attack, which they can do 5 times a round. Very cool. I eventually beat them after a few retrys but I used up some of my most expensive grenades and still had a character get a K.O. feat.

But here is where things get really bad for this game:
Given everything I've just said above, the worst part is that the game does not let you change the difficulty mode at all. Even after 7 hours of playing and grinding through the fights and finishing every single quest and looting everything you can loot. When you get soft locked on a fight because you did not have the prescience to know what the next fight would entail and therefore didn't know what might needed ahead of time, and now you don't have the consumables to solve the puzzle. Well, "Fuck you" if you want to play on the baby hero mode just so you can see the rest of the game. You need to throw your 7 hrs of progress in the bin and start again. This is just the dev spitting on the players, and the disdain this developer has for players comes across extremely loud in many aspects of the design of the game.

There are lots of games that aren't for me, that is totally okay, and I don't usually give those games a negative review. But when I come away from a game feeling like the dev despises the players and only cares to celebrate their own "genius" at game design, that's when I get pissed off and cannot help but put up a review like this.

Very good game. Realistic settings and story. Plays like a classic CRPG. Once I started I could not wait to finish it, which is kind of the point of a CRPG I guess!

review after 2 solo-run. the game is pretty good.

imagine the good'o Fallout 1-2 but with quality of life improvement.

the game is quite short so grab it on sales. it would only take you ~10-12 hrs

------------------------------------
now the downside.

the combat is not friendly to the new player at all. it filled it the gotcha moment and is not balance for solo-play at all. too bad I'm too stubborn for it and walk out with quite a sore experience.

the world building and the story are very interesting but the tone is kinda get boring fast. especially in the music and art design part. the 3 major factions are all militaristic with just a different color and it's kinda hit the lack of characterization real fast.

it feels like the game got cut the content of the final chapter and the epilogue. quite a bummer but I understand that the dev might run out of funding before the game is actually finalize its ambition.

only encounters some minor UI bugs. annoying but easy to fix. which is good

but overall I like it and I'll try another game when this dev push it out

Loved it at first but ultimately disappointing. Buy it on discount only.

I'm an old school gamer with Fallout 1 and 2 being some of my all time favorites. This game does a great job at capturing that style and creating an interesting setting. However, the skills and weapons are incredibly unbalanced and the quest line is a little too by the nose. Yes, there are choices that affect outcomes but the limited side quests are short and one dimensional and you are extremely limited in where and when you can go to different parts of the ship. Ultimately the giant colony ship feels small and restricted which lets you down on the original premise.

I'd say you should still get it especially for $20 if you like this style of game but I wish it was better.

Haven't finished this yet but it's a really solid indie RPG and well worth its price. Definitely give it a try if you like sci-fi. From what I played so far, there were always lots of ways to handle quests, ample amount of options both in dialogues and in combat. It's a small studio production but they picked their priorities well. It keeps getting surprise updates too!

I found myself strangely addicted to this game.

The setting and world building premise hooked me from the start as a breath of fresh air. Exploration is fun and I enjoyed the way certain areas were locked behind skill checks, requiring a return to levels you have already cleared to get some sweet loot. I understand that this is not ideal for everyone, as backtracking can be frustrating. Good thing this game has a quick-travel system: you can click on the name of an area you've already visited and you can teleport there (almost) any time. A real time-saver and testament to the way the developers respect your time.

The character levelling system feels a bit stiff and at times punishing for not sufficiently planning ahead, but I found myself eyeballing that XP counter in jittery anticipation nonetheless.

Combat feels tactical and rewarding and developing your party's fighting abilities is satisfying. Fun fact: there are achievements for managing to pull of a pacifism run. You'll miss out on some content/equipment though, since avoiding some fights means just declining mission opportunities or ignoring certain areas. Just a heads-up if this is your kind of thing.

The game is short, but in a good way, as it is rather the story of low-life mercs and one promising money making gig than it is about the lengthy epos of heroes saving the world (in this case "ship"). There is little unnecessary fat to the narrative. There are three major factions influencing the world. Without spoiling anything: the "Choices Matter" store tag for this game is well enough deserved.

The companions are also varied and have their own opinions about what's going on, but I wouldn't advertise them as groundbreakingly interesting.

All in all, a definitive recommendation for fans of gritty sci-fi and CRPGs.

Thoroughly enjoying this game. Baldur's Gate-level of branching side quests, story is at least as deep if not deeper, and you don't need a ridiculously high-spec PC to run it. And it's challenging - your actions have consequences that change your path and future options! I would highly recommend to anyone who likes immersive story lines and tactical RPG combat.

Pretty nice indie RPG, you should try it.

Main strengths of the game are setting and variety of choice on how to solve quests. There are not many games which take place on board of a barely functional generation colony ship and this game does well with crafting a believable picture of how such a setting would look like.

Quests almost always can be resolved multiple ways - combat, stealth, diplomacy or using enviromment (through usage of PC's technical skills). If you want you could play through the whole thing without firing a shot.

Dialogue and characters are reasonably well written but don't expect huge branching dialogue trees - this is a small game.

Downsides of the game are mainly combat and scale.

Combat system is simple and functional but largely uninteresting. It's not bad, it works just fine, but it doesn't bring a whole lot of joy either. That said, there is not that much of it and you really could avoid all of it.

Scale-wise you could really see that this game is made by a small team of developers. It's well made, but there is only so much a small studio could do realistically. Side quests feel front loaded - first half of the game is filled with good volume of locations and content but after you reach the ship's biggest "city" you get a few faction related quest lines and then the game begins tunneling hard on main story with each location getting smaller in terms of content it has. As a result, the main big political struggle of the game doesn't get fleshed out that much. There are multiple endings but most of them are a variation of the same thing where one side just takes over and gets shit done.

Literally the best game I’ve played in the last 10 years. The stat and feat systems are interesting and make you want to try different builds and play styles.
Some people complain the story is kind of plain, but I think it works just fine. If I wanted something deep and story-heavy, I’d do another run of Disco Elysium. This game seems to me more about other stuff.
The combat and stealth systems are pretty unique, but could be a bit confusing, in that case the combat log can help you figure most things out. I actually like that the fights are challenging - it can be annoying sometimes, but usually that just means there’s something wrong with your build or party. Or you’re just trying to do something your setup isn’t built for. Either way, the game usually gives you the option to avoid fights or use consumables to get through.
I’d advice for your first playthrough, stick with a more classic build so you can get a feel for how everything works — especially character building and how combat is calculated.
I bought the game during EA when only the first chapter was out, and I don’t regret it at all. Every new chapter release was exciting experience. The devs were always listening to community feedback and were really nice and responsive.
Now that it’s finished, huge props to the team — they did an amazing job, and I’m seriously looking forward to whatever they come up with next.

This is a great CRPG with not-so-great combat and balancing.
A must play if you're a CRPG fan who's fond of good world-building and story however!

Buy this game and support real, authentic creators.

I love this game! Iron Tower deserves more love. If you enjoyed the Shadow Run games but wished for even more narrative meat, player agency, and roleplay opportunities, this is a must play. The weakness in this game lies in it's extremely sparse, unhelpful quest log and confusing objectives... at times very frustrating and confusing. Otherwise, this game is a solid 9/10 for me. So many creative an unexpected ways to solve problems with or without without violence, and the stealth is quite entertaining for an isometric RPG.

extremely well written, fun and engaging combat, massively rewards exploration and problem solving. a good successor to age of decadence and worth playing if you enjoy isometric squad based RPGs

There are a lot of retro CRPGs on Steam that try to evoke the feeling of classic 90's RPGs like Fallout. Few manage it. Most are trying to hard to emulate those older games that they feel more like rehashes then something fresh.

Colony Ship is different. You can see the influences, but it's not afraid to forge it's own path. The end result feels manages the tricky balance of feeling like part of the lineage but also being it's own thing. Stylish and original world building, challenging and interesting combat, engaging and frequently funny writing. Colony Ship has it all.

Great game! Didn't kick my ass as much as Underail, which I appreciate very much

When a group of bull frogs can wipe out your party of four easily, I can see why the sales of this challenging game are lower than expectations. Just like age of decadence, the difficulty of progressing is not exactly fun. I prefer the shadowrun trilogy over this quite frankly

An excellent crpg. Fun combat. Wish it was longer

Wish there was a neutral recommendation. Reminded me a lot of the Wasteland 2 and 3 games - "a simple click mouse on highlighted things RPG". Not really ANY real replay value unless you wanna go over the same things with different flavours over and over again. Buy only at discount as I doubt it's worth it at full price.

A beautiful independently produced romp through dystopian hard science fiction. Worth the price of admission for replayability alone.

Great RPG, feels very indie but surprisingly high quality some things could be a little smoothed out like skill progression and gear acquiring as when i finally had enough skill points needed to get the best stuff(even though i was focusing hard on getting as high skill levels as possible) when i finally got the good stuff the game was at the end and i didn't have any combats to test my new gear as the hardest combats i had already done and the later parts of the game i was able to finish peacefully.
This doesn't mean i am disappointed that there was no endgame combat for me, on the contrary more RPGs should have the option to resolve things peacefully but maybe allow the player to get the good gear a little earlier to be able to play with it.
Be advised on the underdog difficulty this game is VERY hard with some fights that made me have to spend hours to almost days trying to win, that can be seem as a negative to some but i quite liked the challenge as there almost always was a way to be able to do it, but that required me to squeeze my XP gain as hard as i could to be able to keep up.
The story was simple but very enjoyable with the player's choice changing many things around how it plays a nice and good dystopian sci-fi that didn't overstay it's welcome and leaves you wanting for more.
A sequel would be interesting to see especially if it increased the character creation options, alien, full cyborg, maybe even robot would be very nice to have as a main character.

Decent Game in dire need of a bit more polish. I really enjoyed the intricate character creation, build variety and the vast amount of different weapons & equipment you can find on the ship tho.

The Story is alright, but the decision you have to make in Act 2 felt a bit forced and boring. Should have been able to found the independent stationstate of Cargonia down in the Pit instead (or just destroy the Machine).

In conclusion: Not quite as good as Age of Decadence and a bit expensive after the full release. I would recommend waiting on a sale for this one.

If you like complex and immersive RPG's and don't mind getting your ass kicked, this is the game for you

Game and story began to bore me so much that I stopped playing the game.

The game has a pretty good story. You have to think a little more about how you decide to resolve conflicts with the NPC's. Combat isn't always the answer. Gear doesn't seem to really improve your chances as much as in other games. Damage is unpredictable and erratic. The percentage chance to hit is inconsistent when neither you or the target has moved and the percentages drop from high end 70 to 90 down to 15. The easy mode isn't really easy and the hard is really much more difficult on the impossible side. Early on you end up with no good choices. You fight NPC's and loose party members or you fight the mutant creatures and die. I would give this a 2/5 and will recommend it to only those who want a serious challenge.

It's hard to start, hard to understand, and easy to excel at when you do understand. Good game for players who enjoy more unforgiving storytelling.

Im enjoying part of the game, the history is something meh, good characters and a lot of missions, but only few of them really seems like part of an story.
But, enough to recommend it.
Then why not?
Just have a lot of combat mechanics not well explained, or just dumb (6 hour in game and I can not rescue a down character?¿?), some enemies just have the most ridiculous mechanics, and you are not prepared for it, and you have no fucking clue about what its happening, of course, you can go outside the game, search in discussions, reddit, and then prepare a team and combat equipment, wait a few levels and comeback... that just horrendous game mechanics, all red flags together, pls game devs, stop that nonsense, your game is not "cool" cause its difficult to the point you need to spend hours outside the game investigating, or just scum loading dozens of times, that's idiotic, and mostly people hate it, you will scare most of the players or make them stop playing.

I will keep playing it, but really, when a game made me pause and put a bad review, due to Im mad cause stupid game decisions or ego or whatever the reason behind that nonsense, and Im enjoying part of the game, and hate the other part, maybe game dev need to think twice, if its just cause he like that in their games, then I can tell you, run from this game, you will stop playing at some point, and then think about those hours lost in a stupid nonsense.

The game makes no fun. This is not even a game: developers made a framework but forgot to add a gameplay.
Moreover, the developers have ignored all the legacy of modern culture: Sci-fi literature, most of RPG games experience, etc.
I'm a fan of "Generation ship" genre of Sci-fi. My favorite book is the "Ballad of the Beta-2". Unfortunately this game has nothing in common with sci-fi...

Great game for those that enjoy a challenging RPG style with choices that matter. Great story and factions to join, these guys make great games and this is right up there with AoD which I also loved

Has Fallout Vibes
with Less Clutter, More Visual Candy
Good Story
Combat is intense, very hard to be OP
Maybe 20-30 solid hours of game play, more if you are completionist.

Colony Ship and it's older brother, Age of Decadence, are certainly not the type of "RPG" pushed out by modern AAA studios, which lets be honest, are really nothing more than action games with a thin veneer of "role playing mechanics" haphazardly smeared on top. Iron Tower Studios two games though? No. They're reminiscent of the golden age of CRPG's, standing alongside the likes of Fallout 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Lionheart (christ I bet that shows my age if anyone actually recalls such an obscure title released right before the death of Black Isle Studios and Interplay) Arcanum, and a host of other CRPG's that some of us were lucky enough to be alive when they released, are joined by Iron Tower Studio's additions to the grand hall of CRPG classics. While it's clear that Iron Tower Studio is a lower budget small studio, they're still able to make games that are easily AA quality when it comes to asthetics while blowing most "modern" RPG's out of the water with their writing and settings. That's not even getting into the difficulty of gameplay, which doesn't hold your hand or make you some kind of demigod able to tank your way through thousands of opponents. Instead, you're just a man (or woman), trying your best to survive in the rather bleak settings of the games and working your way up and forward through hard work and grit, not godlike abilities to take punishment and deal out death. Even though my stats say I only have 1.4 hours on record with Colony Ship, I actually have easily over a hundred hours playing offline, thanks to Metronet going down for almost a week and me starting up a game of Colony Ship and getting sucked into the setting and world building.

This team knows how to make an RPG. Setting, storytelling and background lore is always on point. They enjoy creating the game that is in a sense more realistic - That is going in guns blazing, swords slashing into every encounter is likely to make you dead fast. It was this way in Age of Decadence and it is so in Colony Ship.
While that is true the game still allows you to feel powerful, it just gives you a suite of options to round out your character in a way that you enjoy that can handle situations in different ways.

I think they handle the psychology pretty well too, if a little optimistic. Being on a generational ship in cramped quarters with what is likely all that's left of humanity is and would be nothing short of a powder keg. The differing political, ethical, and moral ideals would create such striation that I don't personally think this mission could ever be a success in the reality.

It's a compelling tale and I think they tell it well. If you've needed a good story with high stakes, do yourself a favor and pick it up. Hopefully they can make Colony Ship 2 so that we can see what happens in the next bit of the story.

Colony Ship is a wild story of a uniform culture gathering together and reaching their goals, then falling apart generations later where you come in. You're a scavanger in post apocaliptic situation on a ship that's going to another star system. You'll never see the sun. Any sun really and never walk on grass.

The question is, are they going to tell good stories about you when you're gone?

If you're into classic Computer Role Playing Games this is one you need for your library.

Fantastic CRPG in an original setting with choices more challenging than its combat.
I love the atmosphere of this game, the story and all the characters who are just drudging through the misery and rust of their setting.
It's an rpg where your build really does matter, which I always appreciate, and where if you build correctly and really think about your dialogue choices, you can go the whole game without experiencing actual combat, which speaks to just how much depth and confidence Iron Tower place into their games, they give you the ability to skip entire mechanics, so long as you can master other ones.

Colony Ship has a compelling story coupled with a skill based and/or guns-ho approach.
The world is plausible and draws you in and you can make multiple runs to see all the game has to offer, so it is well worth a shot.

They finally released it, and thankfully added a little custom difficulty slider. Without that the game plays more like a puzzle where you need a guidebook - "which sequence of quests or battles do i take to get my persuasion to X, so I can do Y in chapter Z"? Or which sequence of doors do I need to click to get lockpick to 9 to unlock a box in ABC?

Do yourself a favor and set the custom skill gain to +50%, maybe limit the enemy crit to 5% and you are all set to finish the game, *without* it being a puzzle game.

I feel the real test for a game is how many hours you are willing to play it.
Let's face it, everyone has competing priorities in life.

Any game that can hold my attention for 40+ hours is a great success in my book.

Love the atmosphere, the neo-Christianity setting, the combat, the multiple paths one can take.
Yes, I did restart 3 times, but found it still enjoyable as I was learning from my mistakes.

Thanks Iron Tower Studios!

The game is amazing, enjoyed every bit of it. Love the story, characters, combat and the setting. Highly recommend. Loved Age of Decadence, too, so give that one a shot as well.

In this world of gaming, it can be hard to find PRGs that provide a rich story, challenging play and enough variance to make me want to replay a game more than once or twice. This is especially true for games developed from smaller companies. Every once in a while you find a diamond in the rough and Colony Ship, to me, is that diamond. To say I enjoy this game is an understatement. At this point I have completed the game three times using different character builds and honestly, I am planning on playing another run through soon. If you prefer a strategic leveling and equipment system, without the constant grinding, then you will find this game to be an enjoyable use of your gaming time. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys fun and challenging RPG experience. Looking forward to future projects from this team.

I would absolutely not recommend this for any fan of casual or "fair" tactical games.

This game is like Shadowrun Returns with the combat difficulty of X-Com... except your characters are not random soldiers, they're actual NPCs with personalities and backgrounds, so losing them is more than just losing a soldier. And unless you min/max every aspect of the game, from your stats to how you use your weapons and skills and rely on consummables a lot, you -will- lose them.
If you play on Underdog difficulty, that is.

If you play on Hero difficulty, the game is just too easy.

And the Custom Options don't allow for much in-between.

Colony Ship has many aspects that make it an amazing game and I can say that it is one of my favorite games. The concept of the story is awesome, the fact that there are multiple generations of people living on a space ship is kind of scary and interesting. The soundtrack for the game is good too, as well as the creators other games too (Dungeon Rats, Age of Decadence).

Another fun part of the game I enjoy is the combat system, and the many difference item options and combinations there are. Each weapon in the game has different sound effects too, and a cool description to come with it.

Overall I love the work that was put into this game, I never have seen so many small patches for a game like this and for the cost too. The small updates they did, like adding in extra quests, and areas to explore show that the creators love their games and I think that's really cool.

This game, is a great tactical squad based RPG game. if you enjoy games like pillars of eternity, baldur's gate, divinity of sins. etc etc all these great games. you will absolutely enjoy this game. this game does have multiple different endings and your choices do impact what happens. I've only seen one, and I will one day see the others.

bottom line, TRY THIS GAME! you wont be disappointed if you like the games like the ones I mentioned. its a hidden gem, that shouldnt be a hidden gem!

A game for those that enjoy table top rpg style mechanics, isometric old school crpg party based games, and strategy combat, all bundled together with a reasonably well written sci-fi dystopian story.

Overall. 4/5. I would put this game as a solid contender in the genre that does a good deal to get the job done and satisfy you. Some failure points, but this is a solid game you would put enough hours into to get your money back.

Combat. Very in-depth mechanics. This is probably what you are initially coming to the game for. You will need to experiment and problem solve a bit to figure them out, but afterwards, it will provide some recurring satisfaction and rewards for your understanding.

Gameplay Difficulty. Can be changed up, but really, if you put the time into understanding the combat mechanics, LOOK at what the enemies are doing AND LOOK at what/where they have items equipped, you won't have a problem on any difficulty. As a player, you just have to be observant and problem solve a bit.

Writing. Has some failure points, sure, but overall is much better quality then you will find in similar, or larger games.

Party/Companions. Varied enough to care about and be interesting. Each have there own related quests.

Lone Wolf Play Through. it is challenging, but most of my time playing the game was figuring out how to do this and the executing.

Choices Matter. They do matter at the level you would expect with a tighter story with a couple of factions to choose from and the game being from a smaller studio. Endings are more varied then, "you get a different colored explosion", so you will feel like the story path you choice actually made a difference in the end.

After hearing that this studio has not made enough from this game to pursue an ambitious sequel, i've decided to leave a review to increase visibility. I'm not the most articulate, so I just want to express that both this game, and Iron Towers' previous game, Age of Decadence, are incredibly underrated RPGs. Mechanically complex, sometimes unforgiving, but rewarding both in combat and story and roleplaying. Iron Tower are the kind of studio that RPG players should want to keep thriving into the future, pushing the envelope and exploring new settings. More people should be able to experience what they have to offer.

I'm a Brotherhood of Liberty guy btw.