Excellent Start ... Way too restrained – Stellar Horizon Review

I admit, I only played about 15 minutes, landed on one planet, looked for some resources, and that was all I could take, and I apologize for that, I’m sure it deserves more. Obviously a lot of work, thought, and passion went into the game. Thank you for that. And the game could be great if fleshed out. As is, it’s like a desert, just the bare-bones outline of a full featured game. #1 - on the planet surface, the vehicle only moves by use of arrow keys? Really? And we’re to explore a universe at that rate? Instead - use full 3-d reality and motion, make the vehicle really fly over the surface at the user’s discretion. Including to varied altitudes! #2 - Lighting! Again, use 3-d lighting set up so one can get more depth perception and sense of object location. #3 - Details! Everything needs details to bring life to the scenes. Textured surfaces will help. Ships as featureless wedges? Not nearly enough to bring life to the game. And they don’t have to be complicated ... smooth curves go a long way. #4 - Music, well ok, to get the great stuff is well beyond most budgets, but the somber, melody-less, music I heard during my brief experience with the game needs cheering up somehow! #5 - lack of people, even poster people that don’t move add drastically needed life to any scene. Sure, animation is a challenge, but it doesn’t take a lot to get in a sense of life being present. #6 - add a tutorial session, include landing on a station, planet, and the other major activities. #7 - add a story line. The human mimd is made for stories, we’ve dragged ourselves out of the mud with them. Nothing adds purpose to a game like a good story line! Look at what’s possible with Blender 3D, it’s free, and it has its own game engine. The beta version of Blender 2.8 is working and fairly stable. It features a ray-based render engine, Cycles, and a new real-time renderer, Eevee, pretty sweet!
Review by TrackerBob on Stellar Horizon.