Highfleet: Deus in Nobis
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Set to release sometime this month.
I came across this game after discovering one of the newly revived MicroProse's other upcoming games, Carrier Command 2. There's something very old-school about the interface and the way this seems to play, sort of sim-lite aspects to it but it seems to be laser focused on achieving a strong feel with the gorgeously detailed handcrafted looking visuals and simple but impactful gameplay. Not really sure what the overall experience will be like to play just yet, but I'm super interested in trying it out.
Here's a good article about how the game plays - https://www.pcgamer.com/highfleet-is-an-action-strategy-game-thats-like-nothing-ive-ever-played-before/
HighFleet kicked the absolute crap out of me. If aerial physics is involved, I seem to have an almost pathological need to crash and explode. And there's a lot of dizzying sky brawls in HighFleet. It demands some fast fingers when you're controlling your ships in its brisk arcade battles, but before that comes tonnes of preparation, strategy, and even a spot of diplomacy. It's an unusual cocktail of systems and genres that collide to create something quite surprising.
Its closest relative is probably FTL. HighFleet puts you in command of a ship on a dangerous mission, undertaken across a large map dotted with cities that can be traded with, refueled at, or contain new people that you can chat to and maybe recruit. There's even an analogue of FTL's invincible rebel fleet nipping at your heels, which constantly forced you to keep moving forwards; this time, though, it's a whole bunch of roaming strike teams packing nukes, and avoiding them is even trickier.
Diegetic stuff in games is something that I think is very important in terms of the immersion and feel of a game, it's a large part of why I was so excited about Carrier Command 2 which does this really well. I'm really happy when developers take it to heart and put the UI in centre stage of their games -
The real eye candy comes from the diegetic UI. Aside from the main menu, nearly every UI element is part of your command station, so when you want to drop your ships into a city, for instance, you have to yank a lever, and you can use your compass, ruler, pencil and eraser to chart your course on the map display. It's a bit imposing, but it also begs to be played with, and this is one place where the tactile nature of the game really works to its advantage. It simply feels great. The sound effects then elevate the fantasy of being in command of this fleet of steel titans. There's just something deeply satisfying about hearing gears grinding and mechanical components clicking away as you watch ammo being reloaded.
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Only watched the first 20 mins of the bottom video but it looks excellent. Landing the fleet in that second city was gripping, despite it being basically Lunar Lander off of the 70s. The atmosphere and immersion are top notch. Games like this are the only ones that make me contemplate buying a gaming PC -
Yeah this and games like Carrier Command 2 and Noita have really made me realise how a strong visual style backed up by tactile game world are far more important to me than like 95% of the big AAAs with their amazing graphical tech but relatively vacuous content.
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Release date has been confirmed for the 27th, same day as the Xbox and performance update launch for Flight Simulator, so it'll be a few days before I get round to this.
Came across this old game which looks rather good and seems to have similarities to Highfleet -
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The game is looking great, there's some complexity and somewhat poorly explained systems to navigate but otherwise it looks pretty solid.
I didn't realise you could completely build your own ships too, people are going to make some bonkers death machines -
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GurtTractor wrote:Release date has been confirmed for the 27th, same day as the Xbox and performance update launch for Flight Simulator, so it'll be a few days before I get round to this. Came across this old game which looks rather good and seems to have similarities to Highfleet -
I'm a fan of the thrust-em-up (hence my obsession with Asteroids). That type of game in particular was a spawn from Atari's Gravitar which was a commercial flop - it was just too damn hard - but a beautiful game in the day. Released in 1982.
Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Going to pick this up tomorrow, currently well stuck into Flight Sim again. So far the early reports have been positive, it's apparently pretty brutally challenging and confusing at first though, so you may want to watch videos and reviews to see if you think it's for you. It definitely has some old-school / small developer jank, for better or worse. I'm pretty excited to try it out, the ship building looks like it will be really fun once you get a full fleet of your own badass creations.
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Turns out I'll get it at the end of this month, decided I'd save my money for Carrier Command 2 first which comes out on the 10th, as that's multiplayer and Highfleet is singleplayer so I can wait a bit. Really looking forward to playing it though, and it's probably for the best that I get it after the updates -
• Fixed acceleration of the mouse in the game. Added a slider for mouse movement and wheel scroll sensitivity in the options.
• Added three reticle settings on a slider in the options
• Simple - The current crosshair
• Adaptive - A crosshair that changes based on distance to target
• Long Crosshair - A long crosshair
• Added support for different resolutions while maintaining aspect ratio.
• Added borderless window mode.
• Added a slider for adjusting the amount of flashes and glitch effects.
• Added selection of opponents for testing the ship in the editor.
• Difficulty: Set the difficulty of the encounter from 1 - 10.
• Enemy Type toggles: Small, Mid, Large, Carriers
• Added a slider that turns off visual effects in order to increase performance
• Fixed aircraft behavior in battle and on the global map.
• Fixed several crashes on the global map.
• Fixed an issue which would cause infinite money in the editor.
• Added bonus points for passing the campaign.
• Fixed an issue with the delete button in the ship roster.
• Fixed a crash in the editor when installing guns.
• Fixed issues when using the Esc key in different situations.
• Fixed an issue at the end of the prologue.
• Added the ability to twist radio dials by holding the left mouse button and dragging.
Such a cool looking game. -
There's an extensive and pretty cool PDF manual here that gives a good idea of the depth and complexity of the game.
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Gonna give this a go, I like Cohh, nice chilled streamer for this type of thing -
I like the look of this but the lack of options for resolution puts me off. I have at least one indie game that has no resolution options and automatically goes for 4 k because of my monitor. It's pretty annoying and I don't want to have to change the monitor settings every time I play and then back afterwards. -
Yeah it definitely has some classic small dev PC game jank. It looks like he has added better resolution support in that last patch -
Though apparently there's still some issues with ultra-wide monitors. I think a big part of it is that all the artwork and UI has been designed for 1080p, and so needs to be scaled for other resolutions.• Added support for different resolutions while maintaining aspect ratio.
• Added borderless window mode. -
Finally got this. Just started and I'm already absolutely loving it. Stunning sound design and attention to detail, and the story and lore is surprisingly quite compelling so far. There seems to be tremendous depth and variety in how you approach things, and it's proper challenging too, expect to be smacked about quite a bit. Definitely recommended to read through the manual if you play this. There's clearly been heaps of love and attention poured into this by the lone developer.
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This really has some of the best explosions of any game. Hauling a big lump of an attack ship round to a heavy cruiser's weak side and unleashing a full salvo into it and watching the fucker go up in a giant flaming smog cloud, and also getting the full chunky thunderous assault from the sound design is up there with the most spectacular shit I've seen in games.
It can be super tense too, very old-school Microprose. At some point a sudden strike will go awry and you'll give your position away, alerting nearby strike groups who will come chase you down and feck a bunch of cruise missiles at you. So you have to hastily get enough fuel from a town and try to pick somewhere safe to run to, based on radio messages you've intercepted and decoded. As the strike groups close in you'll go dark on your radar and rely on the infrared display, nervously watching the waterfall display to gauge the enemy fleet's movements.
I can't tell I dread or relish going into battle with a strike group now, after somehow managing to beat three in rapid succession with a combination of cruise missiles, desperate and focused fighting, and even a ramming attack with a ship at the end of its days. It's a great little story generator, aside from the great built in story elements.
It helps that you get a starting funds bonus based on your previous best performance, means you can stretch a little further each time before inevitably getting shredded. I'm still trying to figure out a really good fleet loadout to start with, it's pretty tough and you really feel it if you lose one of your fast attackers. -
I would have bought this already but it isn't on Mac and even if it was I doubt mine could run it
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I really wish I could play this. although I think I would be a little saddened at how certain aspects of it are underdeveloped. The character interactions, for example, don't appear to do much of a job of masking the underlying spreadsheet. it looks to me as though it could really benefit from some voice acting and better scripting in this respect, making it feel less like a card game of sorts.
love the concept though. figuring out how all those instruments work and then experimenting with them in devising a strategy looks like just my sort of thing. hopefully by the time I get around to playing this (unfortunately likely years away) there will be some dlc or updates to address a few of the shortcomings -
The character interaction stuff isn't the meat of the experience, it's there for some story flavour and influences the strategic side, with random events and gaining allies which becomes pretty important. There is some interesting meta stuff with the dialogue options though, what you decide to say will feed into your fleet's 'Worldview' was has some interesting implications later on -
The game is really about the tense constant pressure to keep moving and make the right strategic choices, and it throws a lot of dilemmas your way, some scripted or random with the dialogue, but mostly it's what you do on the main map that will determine your chances or survival and success. It's actually perhaps a little similar to something like Dead Rising, constant pressure to keep moving, planning the optimal route and managing basic resources, tricky decisions on your optimal route. It is quite rogueliteish in how long 'runs' take, and how much you will die and make mistakes until you figure it out.
It's definitely a small/solo dev kind of game, and there's good and bad things about that. It's mostly very positive in this case though I think.
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