Zero-Point Reviews

It's not awful but it is bland and generic. It's impossible to recommend this game. [hr][/hr] Why not? It promises to be FTL in 3d. With a 3d ship interior and 3d model crew moving from station to station. It looks fun but it isn't. It's much less than "FTL in 3d". What it is is FTL's core game mechanics but without all the nice touches that elevated the experience of playing and suffering in FTL. The part that is fun is the weapons and combat/targeting, upgrading ship systems, traveling from point to point etc. The new 3d gimmick plays much worse unfortunately, and other additions are few and of mixed quality. I don't mind FTL-like games existing. Doom-likes and rougelikes, or metroidvanias. I sometimes want more of the same. But this is considerably less of the same. How? Towards the end of development, subset games hired a professional writer to go over event text and dialogues, and it shows. Even though the story and writing is simple, it is GOOD!. In Zero Point, everything you read is boring and mundane. FTL mods put more effort into writing. Then there's the music. It's not bad but it's generic. It does nothing. FTL paid attention to color-blindness, Zero Point makes zero effort to do something similar. And it's FTL hard. But you just die and get dumped to the main menu. There are highscores but they are pointless. Just start a new game with some nobodies without any character or charm, die again and keep repeating until it's no longer fun. [hr][/hr] The biggest flaw of Zero Point is that it exists. Somebody had to make this. It's a shame they did an ok job technically but failed to put anything FUN into the game. The design document must have been simple, as it basically copied the elements from FTL. Nothing wrong with that. Then a game was built according to spec, and... that was it. No effort anywere. nothing stands out. No clever writing, no fun hook. There are a couple of innovations: - the 3d ships and some bizzare time dilation mechanic that replaces pausable realtime of the game that inspired Zero Point. - replacing the warp gate battle with an intercept chance. The exit is always unguarded but every node you visit raises this chance by 1-2%. If you get intercepted, you have to fight a very tough battle but if you win you reset the intercept chance. - characters are voiced. I wish they weren't. They say a few lines and it quickly gets dull. If you want to play some FTL like combat in a 3d setting then you wont waste much money. But it is the time wasted playing this that is the problem. [b]Life is short and there are so many good games.[/b] This does not deserve more than a couple of hours, if that. It might be fun on a tablet or portable device. It feels designed for such devices and it doesn't look so good on a desktop. [hr][/hr] I have a few nice things to say about it, but bottom line is [u]it's bad[/u]. Not worth playing. If you've never played FTL, play that. It's superior. If you have played FTL, just play FTL.

While this is admittedly another FTL clone that is ultimately inferior it does replicate much of originals charm and so I will narrowly recommend. However, I will change my review to negative if the developers fail to - relatively quickly - implement new features that set it apart from the game that inspired it. I like the 3D elements and how you can interact with the environment like stoking the ships pet or opening the doors by clicking on them. I'd like more fun features involving that. I'd like more away mission scenarios, teleporting to abandoned stations, ghost ships, mysterious mining outposts. Maybe even simple planetary away missions to make exploration interesting. I think the writing is pretty good too which is important as this has been lacking in other FTL clones and the multiverse mod. Basically the game is good but it needs a lot more to sustain my interest