Hey! Before commenting a game I left out, please check out my previous space game videos, as I didn't want to create duplicates: 20 Best SPACE Game Hidden Gems - ruclips.net/video/D_mm32eMqyg/видео.html Must Buy SPACE Games On SALE! - ruclips.net/video/AJQLlVTqLyc/видео.html
Fun fact, Hardspace was the working title for Homeworld Deserts of Kharak before the studios split. Homeworld was way more focused on salvaging at that state. They kept the name trademark and it became Hardspace Shipbreaker. Worked out for both games.
Oh man, I was not expecting to see Nexus be recommened in this day and age! It was really a blast from the past. I used to be pretty involved in the modding scene back in the day, and I look back very fondly on the community that had sprung up around this game.
A few years ago I watched the Expanse and I instantly thought of this game. I'm still waiting for a space RTS that make my heart sink when I lose even the smallest corvette or feel like I could count every single man I lost. It has that same feel as XCOM, where every ship, and fighter matters.
I can recommend Freelancer, same guy who makes Star Citizen now was working on that too as far as I remember, it has a really interesting humanity focused lore and I fell in love with space games as a child because of it. It even has multiplayer with dedicated servers, some roleplaying servers exist with mods that make all professions playable, at least these communities where still around when I last checked... I bought the game on ebay a few years back to play it again, it is timeless in my opinion and still very playable today, I have a video of it on my channel where I just play it no commentary for 40 min if u wanna see what its about
A couple hidden gems on here that I was unaware of (Tharsis & Heavenly Bodies). Nice to finally get exposure to something new rather than a rehash of all the regulars :-)
Interstellar Rift is currently being revived by the community. Due to publisher contracts, they can't do much, but the passionate are trying to do everything in their power.
@@easilydistractedgames Man, if we're gonna go back in time to Space Pirates and Zombies, I'm gonna go ahead and also shout out the game of my own teenage years: Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages. It didn't receive the attention it deserved at the time, and while it's not a sandbox like most of the games on this list, it's very charming and leaves tactics and ship loadout in the hands of the player. When it's on sale you can buy it for a dollar.
"Shipbreaker" is really cool; I just wish it had coop multiplayer, that would give it a lot more longevity. And "Endless Space 2" has one thing in spades in particular: atmosphere. The immersion that Amplitude can create is just amazing. (The same goes for its fantasy counterpart "Endless Legend", set in the same universe.)
A totally underrated space/sci-fi RPG is called "Stellar Tactics", it's party based and turn based and been written by one guy. You have land and space combat. A lot of the games here, though, are the same, or have been done before.
Genesis Alpha One is definitely one I've tried to tell so many about. It's a neat idea, although there are some issues with it. I'd say it's still worth checking out, especially when it goes on sale for basically nothing.
ES2, Tharsis, Freespace 2 (especially this one), and Nexus are all just *OLD* titles, *FAR* from being "underrated" and none of them could be reasonably considered "hidden gems" by any stretch of the imagination. Freespace and Freespace 2 were released in the late 90s, and Nexus was mid 2000s, but they were *HUGE* releases - especially Freespace, which was a spinoff from an already-huge franchise which had 2 entries before the first Freespace, and saw a third before the sequel. It's literally one of its era's AAA titles, not even remotely a hidden or underrated release, and still has a surprisingly large fanbase to this day, thanks to the devs publishing the source code and people having picked that up and run with it to keep the game alive. For similar-ish reasons, HeatSig, Terra Invicta, and Hardspace are all *BIGGER* indie titles, not "hidden" or "underrated" by any stretch of the imagination. They aren't as old (HeatSig being the oldest among them), and none of these was a small release. HeatSig is a solo dev's project, but it's a follow-up to a title which caught a surprising amount of attention for such a small indie title, and it got *BIG* for its development scale. It's now recognised as part of the "defenstration trilogy" of Gunpoint, HeatSig and TBW (the last of which I'm still hoping to see outside of Steam, so I can pick it up, because Valve have spent 5 years showing themselves to be abusive pieces of trash and that's being as generous as I can about things). Terra Invicta got masses of coverage from a variety of sources This list really would have been better labelled as "games I missed" than anything like the title you ran with. Making it a personal list of things you hadn't heard about previously, or had overlooked and not recognised the value of, or which were old enough for you to have missed their heyday, that would be fine. If you wanted to make a list with *ACTUAL* hidden gems, you should have replaced those titles with the likes of Star Dynasties and ΔV: Rings of Saturn. They're both great games, with more unfair negativity than valid criticism, and a lot less attention given to them than they deserve. Star Dynasties is best described as "Crusader Kings: Stellaris Edition" and has a notable similarity to ES2 in the way combat works. Which, by the way, is something you *really* should have mentioned about ES2, because it's a significant departure from how most 4X games operated at the time, and from how they still do. Only a handful of very niche games before and since have done similar, and the fans of these games struggle to find a similar experience in other 4X games, while most 4X fans dislike them for this major departure from the typical style of the genre. ΔV: Rings of Saturn is set, quite predictably, exactly where the title says it is. You start out on a space station orbiting one of Saturn's moons, and each run you take in the game is a "dive" into the rings, where you can blast rocks apart and collect the fragments which contain valuable minerals, encounter ships which want to race against you to prove who's got the fastest ship and/or best pilot, meet strange AI-controlled facilities and ships with their own goals, fend off (or join) pirates and bounty hunters, and various other fun things. It's insanely realistic, with a physics engine that considers an incredible amount of detail for everything you can do. EDIT: Should have included mention here before posting, but adding now. Another glaring omission from the list is Starsector, which is amazing but hugely overlooked because the dev only has it available on his own website, not through any of the big platforms (and if it does show up on any of them, I'm half hoping they avoid Steam because of the trash heap that's been turning into in recent years). I was originally not going to include it in my list because there were already a couple of comments mentioning it, but I probably should have. It's amazing and well deserving of a lot more attention than it gets.
I bet that Star Trucker was heavily inspired by Cowboy Bebop. Hauling spacetrailers, especially the triangular ones, and that laidback atmosphere are SOME clues. XD
just saw your first vid and mentioned ostranauts there, then saw this one. Love all the recommendations, you’re making them all sound very enticing! edit: also forgot about heat signature, a based game from the based dev that loves defenestration 💯💯💯
2:37 glad to see someone mention VoidDestroyer at all, but if you want to do it justice you ought to mention that it's made by 1 polish father alone. Who also love space games like homeworld, X3 games and the likes! Void Destroyer 2 is nice, but as far as i remember can be a bit glitchy in some areas if that hasnt been fixed. For those put off by the cartoony borderland graphism, if i remember correctly there is an ingame uppgrade to change your graphisms in two ways. The part worth mentioning however, is that while the 2nd game is the way it is, a bit of a mix of genres but master of none. The first game is an amazing space rts with still the possibility to control any ship on your fleet, that does not pale when compared to homeworld 1 or 2... and is definitely 10x better than homeworld 3 ahah. The graphism are more retro style, with amaeing sound design. Definitely recommend that one, wich should be less than 10 bucks. The fan of homeworlds would love to know you can effectively hijack most ennemy ships, this time not through capture boats but rather through hacking. There's even a boss that can be yoinked from ennemy. In terms of ship design, it's great, specially the miner faction. If you always wanted to chug rocks at warships... well you can...literally. Oh and story for the first game is great, second game's story is also decently good, and it may lead to a 3rd game... some day in the future if the dev ever get to be able to work on that again 20:31 worth mentionning regarding that game is neo scavenger. A sci fi survival hardcore game wich in design is mostly the same, except it takes place on a post apo planet, and you'll have to deal with weather and the like of night, fog, limited vision. It's also a grid based game instead, and the fighting mechanics are much more fun
Man I am excited for Qanga to leave Early Access, really want to give that one a shot. Starbase seems like it could be fun too, but open world PvP is always a no-go from me. I'm too old and have too little time to spend it getting ganked.
Osiris: New Dawn always looked like it had potential 4 years ago, then two years ago it seemed abandoned. I might have to give it a try again. I still think my favorite sci-fi survival game is Icarus ( you land in a pod, with some gear you buy in space ).
It pains me that you put it on the list but i wish... like really wish... they would revive interstellar rift... it was truly a sleeper game ready for spotlight
I tried playing ostranauts but found the UI so terrible that i ended up refunding it. Played 4 hours of it, but ¼ of that was trying to figure out the ship controls. And don't get me started on the interaction with the bots in the game. Was stuck in a dialogue interface for 12 minutes. Although i love the scavenger concept, The UI is terrible and the character creation is annoying.
@@easilydistractedgames Thank you, I'm really glad that you like it! :) A lot will still change/improve before the release! Maybe I'll even make an appearance in one of your videos :) Keep up the good content
I didnt like genesis alpha mostly because even tho I put so much fucking secuirty,turrets everywhere,shields everywhere and still aliens would manage to inflitrate my ship,go unnoticed in some bullshit vent.Why tf even I put up so many fucking security measures then if all will fail like that.Why even have a shield if alien spores or whatever can just past trough it.That was realy annoying to me.
Yeah, think that was a blunder on my side. From the Steam reviews and updates on the dev's social media, it still seemed like an enjoyable game. Will make sure to research better next time, sorry about that!
Hey! Before commenting a game I left out, please check out my previous space game videos, as I didn't want to create duplicates:
20 Best SPACE Game Hidden Gems - ruclips.net/video/D_mm32eMqyg/видео.html
Must Buy SPACE Games On SALE! - ruclips.net/video/AJQLlVTqLyc/видео.html
Fun fact, Hardspace was the working title for Homeworld Deserts of Kharak before the studios split.
Homeworld was way more focused on salvaging at that state.
They kept the name trademark and it became Hardspace Shipbreaker.
Worked out for both games.
That's very interesting, thanks for sharing!
Oh man, I was not expecting to see Nexus be recommened in this day and age! It was really a blast from the past. I used to be pretty involved in the modding scene back in the day, and I look back very fondly on the community that had sprung up around this game.
I was HEARTBROKEN when they cancelled the sequel. At the time, the trailer looked amazing!
@@alexanderthegreat8644 wtf there was a trailer?
A few years ago I watched the Expanse and I instantly thought of this game.
I'm still waiting for a space RTS that make my heart sink when I lose even the smallest corvette or feel like I could count every single man I lost. It has that same feel as XCOM, where every ship, and fighter matters.
Star Valor is also a very nice space game.
I can recommend Freelancer, same guy who makes Star Citizen now was working on that too as far as I remember, it has a really interesting humanity focused lore and I fell in love with space games as a child because of it. It even has multiplayer with dedicated servers, some roleplaying servers exist with mods that make all professions playable, at least these communities where still around when I last checked... I bought the game on ebay a few years back to play it again, it is timeless in my opinion and still very playable today, I have a video of it on my channel where I just play it no commentary for 40 min if u wanna see what its about
A couple hidden gems on here that I was unaware of (Tharsis & Heavenly Bodies). Nice to finally get exposure to something new rather than a rehash of all the regulars :-)
Interstellar Rift is currently being revived by the community. Due to publisher contracts, they can't do much, but the passionate are trying to do everything in their power.
Heat Signature was good fun. The teleporting equipment make it super fast paced when you get good with it.
I remember wishing it had mod support
I was sad Jupiter Incident 2 didn't succeed in its Kickstarter.
Freelancer was Legendary, and the crossfire 2.0 mod really took it further nicely
Soo happy to see you show Ostranauts.. but at the same time, disappointed that Stationeers was omitted.. great survival base build space game !!
I listed it in my previous video 😅
@@easilydistractedgames ohhh.. but deserve to be again!! naaa, joking, sorry to not watch more of your content bro/sis .. KEEP GOING !
Lots of great additions to my wishlist.
But you forgot Space Pirates and Zombies 1 and 2, two of the coolest and funniest space games on Steam.
I had it on my list, but it was growing too big. Definitely in a future one!
@@easilydistractedgames check out Delta V - Rings of Saturn too ! Super cool game. Becoming good at handling any ship is super satisfying.
@@easilydistractedgames Man, if we're gonna go back in time to Space Pirates and Zombies, I'm gonna go ahead and also shout out the game of my own teenage years: Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages. It didn't receive the attention it deserved at the time, and while it's not a sandbox like most of the games on this list, it's very charming and leaves tactics and ship loadout in the hands of the player. When it's on sale you can buy it for a dollar.
I've said so in a reply but I will say it again for visibility - Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages is my favorite space game that no one has heard of
It's the best dvorak keyboard salesman simulator ever made.
Kind of a weird accolade to hold, but it's true xD
I also highly recommend such good old games as Battlezone (1 & 2) and Breed Homecoming.
"Shipbreaker" is really cool; I just wish it had coop multiplayer, that would give it a lot more longevity. And "Endless Space 2" has one thing in spades in particular: atmosphere. The immersion that Amplitude can create is just amazing. (The same goes for its fantasy counterpart "Endless Legend", set in the same universe.)
A totally underrated space/sci-fi RPG is called "Stellar Tactics", it's party based and turn based and been written by one guy. You have land and space combat. A lot of the games here, though, are the same, or have been done before.
I've seen this one mentioned a few times. Thank you, I'll look into it more soon!
Gosh the Game was so rough at the start. I really enjoyed now that they reworked the first few hours
Genesis Alpha One is definitely one I've tried to tell so many about. It's a neat idea, although there are some issues with it. I'd say it's still worth checking out, especially when it goes on sale for basically nothing.
ES2, Tharsis, Freespace 2 (especially this one), and Nexus are all just *OLD* titles, *FAR* from being "underrated" and none of them could be reasonably considered "hidden gems" by any stretch of the imagination. Freespace and Freespace 2 were released in the late 90s, and Nexus was mid 2000s, but they were *HUGE* releases - especially Freespace, which was a spinoff from an already-huge franchise which had 2 entries before the first Freespace, and saw a third before the sequel. It's literally one of its era's AAA titles, not even remotely a hidden or underrated release, and still has a surprisingly large fanbase to this day, thanks to the devs publishing the source code and people having picked that up and run with it to keep the game alive.
For similar-ish reasons, HeatSig, Terra Invicta, and Hardspace are all *BIGGER* indie titles, not "hidden" or "underrated" by any stretch of the imagination. They aren't as old (HeatSig being the oldest among them), and none of these was a small release. HeatSig is a solo dev's project, but it's a follow-up to a title which caught a surprising amount of attention for such a small indie title, and it got *BIG* for its development scale. It's now recognised as part of the "defenstration trilogy" of Gunpoint, HeatSig and TBW (the last of which I'm still hoping to see outside of Steam, so I can pick it up, because Valve have spent 5 years showing themselves to be abusive pieces of trash and that's being as generous as I can about things). Terra Invicta got masses of coverage from a variety of sources
This list really would have been better labelled as "games I missed" than anything like the title you ran with. Making it a personal list of things you hadn't heard about previously, or had overlooked and not recognised the value of, or which were old enough for you to have missed their heyday, that would be fine. If you wanted to make a list with *ACTUAL* hidden gems, you should have replaced those titles with the likes of Star Dynasties and ΔV: Rings of Saturn. They're both great games, with more unfair negativity than valid criticism, and a lot less attention given to them than they deserve.
Star Dynasties is best described as "Crusader Kings: Stellaris Edition" and has a notable similarity to ES2 in the way combat works. Which, by the way, is something you *really* should have mentioned about ES2, because it's a significant departure from how most 4X games operated at the time, and from how they still do. Only a handful of very niche games before and since have done similar, and the fans of these games struggle to find a similar experience in other 4X games, while most 4X fans dislike them for this major departure from the typical style of the genre.
ΔV: Rings of Saturn is set, quite predictably, exactly where the title says it is. You start out on a space station orbiting one of Saturn's moons, and each run you take in the game is a "dive" into the rings, where you can blast rocks apart and collect the fragments which contain valuable minerals, encounter ships which want to race against you to prove who's got the fastest ship and/or best pilot, meet strange AI-controlled facilities and ships with their own goals, fend off (or join) pirates and bounty hunters, and various other fun things. It's insanely realistic, with a physics engine that considers an incredible amount of detail for everything you can do.
EDIT: Should have included mention here before posting, but adding now. Another glaring omission from the list is Starsector, which is amazing but hugely overlooked because the dev only has it available on his own website, not through any of the big platforms (and if it does show up on any of them, I'm half hoping they avoid Steam because of the trash heap that's been turning into in recent years). I was originally not going to include it in my list because there were already a couple of comments mentioning it, but I probably should have. It's amazing and well deserving of a lot more attention than it gets.
no starsector?
everyone's favorite "crash an overdriven capital size fuel tanker into that hostile fleet over there" game.
I bet that Star Trucker was heavily inspired by Cowboy Bebop. Hauling spacetrailers, especially the triangular ones, and that laidback atmosphere are SOME clues. XD
just saw your first vid and mentioned ostranauts there, then saw this one. Love all the recommendations, you’re making them all sound very enticing! edit: also forgot about heat signature, a based game from the based dev that loves defenestration 💯💯💯
2:37 glad to see someone mention VoidDestroyer at all, but if you want to do it justice you ought to mention that it's made by 1 polish father alone. Who also love space games like homeworld, X3 games and the likes!
Void Destroyer 2 is nice, but as far as i remember can be a bit glitchy in some areas if that hasnt been fixed. For those put off by the cartoony borderland graphism, if i remember correctly there is an ingame uppgrade to change your graphisms in two ways.
The part worth mentioning however, is that while the 2nd game is the way it is, a bit of a mix of genres but master of none. The first game is an amazing space rts with still the possibility to control any ship on your fleet, that does not pale when compared to homeworld 1 or 2... and is definitely 10x better than homeworld 3 ahah.
The graphism are more retro style, with amaeing sound design. Definitely recommend that one, wich should be less than 10 bucks.
The fan of homeworlds would love to know you can effectively hijack most ennemy ships, this time not through capture boats but rather through hacking. There's even a boss that can be yoinked from ennemy.
In terms of ship design, it's great, specially the miner faction. If you always wanted to chug rocks at warships... well you can...literally.
Oh and story for the first game is great, second game's story is also decently good, and it may lead to a 3rd game... some day in the future if the dev ever get to be able to work on that again
20:31 worth mentionning regarding that game is neo scavenger. A sci fi survival hardcore game wich in design is mostly the same, except it takes place on a post apo planet, and you'll have to deal with weather and the like of night, fog, limited vision. It's also a grid based game instead, and the fighting mechanics are much more fun
(Ediit: I didn’t watch to the end before posting, 😂) Idk if you have ever mentioned it before but OSTRANAUTS is one you MUST include. Amazing game
Of course, I put it at no 1 :) 19:54
No mention of Avorion? :p good list though many I didn't know
Of course! That made it in my other space video! These were just the other suggestions following that, as many people already knew Avorion :)
Nexus Jupiter incident is the best game on this list
@@krellin But sooooo old, not even sure it can run very well these days. Tried years ago and couldn't even get it to run. Instant crash.
19:55 Yesss, ostranaunts is great.
Great list! I'm always looking for great space-based titles. Thanks!
No problem, glad I could help!
Man I am excited for Qanga to leave Early Access, really want to give that one a shot. Starbase seems like it could be fun too, but open world PvP is always a no-go from me. I'm too old and have too little time to spend it getting ganked.
I can also recommend Cosmoteer
I highly recommend Children of a Dead Earth if you like The Expanse kind of combat
Osiris: New Dawn always looked like it had potential 4 years ago, then two years ago it seemed abandoned. I might have to give it a try again. I still think my favorite sci-fi survival game is Icarus ( you land in a pod, with some gear you buy in space ).
Delta V Rings of Saturn needs to be in this list
I highly recommend Void Destroyer 2.
It pains me that you put it on the list but i wish... like really wish... they would revive interstellar rift... it was truly a sleeper game ready for spotlight
Maybe this video can help!
You Really need to mention Starmade,. its also free now. MineCraft in space
Heavenly bodies 😂😂 i added that to my wishlist
We should play together!
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
So say we all!
Hunternet Starfighter , it's great check it out .
What, no 3030 Deathwar Redux? (I'm biased, I know)
Space Empire IV
Star Wars Empire at War
I tried playing ostranauts but found the UI so terrible that i ended up refunding it. Played 4 hours of it, but ¼ of that was trying to figure out the ship controls. And don't get me started on the interaction with the bots in the game. Was stuck in a dialogue interface for 12 minutes.
Although i love the scavenger concept,
The UI is terrible and the character creation is annoying.
Hello there!
Hi MAWO! Just checked out your game, looks pretty cool!
@@easilydistractedgames Thank you, I'm really glad that you like it! :)
A lot will still change/improve before the release! Maybe I'll even make an appearance in one of your videos :)
Keep up the good content
Space Engineers
I had never heard of starbase! I dont really like online coop, but starbase looked really cool. Might give it a try
Aurora 4X when :)
If this video gets 10,000 likes I'll do a video on it :D
DealtaV is also realy good
Starbase is dead, don't waste your money.
@@Lexe2009 The building system in it is awesome, if it was SP/steam network MP intially, there eould dot be funding problems.
Its a pity
Unless you really, really want to hand design spaceships to mine rocks with
Wait, isn't Osiris New Dawn basically dead? I thought the developer abandoned it upon 1.0 release. Maybe I should have a look at it again.
where the hell is Starsector?
In my previous space game list, it's at no.1!
@@easilydistractedgames oh thank god i thought you forgot or didnt know about it
I didnt like genesis alpha mostly because even tho I put so much fucking secuirty,turrets everywhere,shields everywhere and still aliens would manage to inflitrate my ship,go unnoticed in some bullshit vent.Why tf even I put up so many fucking security measures then if all will fail like that.Why even have a shield if alien spores or whatever can just past trough it.That was realy annoying to me.
😎
Isn't Interstellar Rift completely dead?
why even mentioned Osiris new dawn?
Its abandonware and before that it was shovelware
lmao, Osiris is a DEAD game, I dont even know why you'd have it on the list.
Yeah, think that was a blunder on my side. From the Steam reviews and updates on the dev's social media, it still seemed like an enjoyable game. Will make sure to research better next time, sorry about that!
no starsector ?
Of course - I put it as no. 1 in my previous video here: ruclips.net/video/D_mm32eMqyg/видео.html
@@easilydistractedgames hohoho go to link.