Riftborne

This is a good game for anyone that remembers dialing into their favorite BBS to play text games with others. This will bring back memories. For those that are a tad younger, this is basically like a minimal 4x in space with light management and building bit. Fleet battles and empire expansion really is where this shines. I haven’t played multiplayer yet but it should be a blast to as it’s real-time, persistent and long! Just remember that the complex and deep mechanics most games have today might not be present here. You’re not microing the number of ply each toilet paper type has in your barracks on every world/station. This is about big numbers smashing into other big numbers. For the price you will easily get your entertainment value out of this and I’m really hopeful of what the future will bring.

This game is sweet, wonder where it will go next but already the bones are solid for dozens of hours of fun. Real-time multiplayer is honestly amazing.

TLDR at 5.2 (EDIT fixed this) hrs; Looks like TradeWars2k, plays like GalCiv (with economic stuff I haven't even touched on). -- Do you like 4x space games in the vein of Galactic Civilization or Star Control? in slow realtime? More importantly, would you like to play those games via a text console interface that will have you feeling like you're a NOC op at any given university at 3am in 1995? but without changing tapes? Be perfectly aware, this isn't just simulating a command prompt execution, it is literally opening in your OS"s console terminal. If so, this game might be for you. The tutorial is short and indicative of the gameplay. The official server is popping at this time, we'll see how that persists. Time advance in single player is really useful and makes it feel more turn based. Playing true realtime on multiplayer is like a slow-motion ballet of human wills being executed and charted in ASCII. Don't let the idea of it being in realtime throw you off. It doesn't take long until some of the core upgrades take long enough or need enough resources that the initial burst necessarily slows down. You will be able to set up production queues, and fleet destinations that will take hours rather than minutes.