Starlight Inception™™

30fps LOCKED. This alone should be enough reason to avoid it.

I sadly bought it when it was in EA and you can see how much playtime I have got out of it.
Just don't do it. The developer seems to of vanished also, No forum posts for years, and the only game this developer\publisher produced after this was a year later, and used this games assets and is also abandoned.

I bought this game on one of the old steam sales which means it was pretty cheap, and it was early access, so i though it would be a little clunky but functional.

It was not, animation was awful, story was awful, campaign was awful and the controls were just abysmal, even with mouse targeting the aim in the center would snap in pre-fixed positions, like if you could turn 360 degrees but actually only in increments of one, 1º, 2º, 3º and so on but never 1.5 or any subdivision for that matter, it was just unplayable.

But hey, early access right, all of those could be just placeholder mechanics just so they can show anything at all and get money flowing, i get it, lets just wait for it to release.

And so it did.

While they did fix the controls a little bit it was still very clunky, clunky but playable, so lets see what else they can offer.
Animation, still terrible, i dont know why they even bothered to include some outside ship sequences but god dammit it was bad.
Actual space, ok, not amazing, not terrible, it is decent, models are kinda nice, the background art is kinda nice, weapons are at the low end.

Campaing, horrible, look... i have 20 hours clocked in, that's a respectable amount of time, there are jrpg masterpieces that are less than or close to 20 hours long. Not a single time i actually knew what the hell was happening or even bothered to actually figure it out, its the most generic sci-fi setup you could ever hope for, escort things, shoot things, deliver things, run a space lap and that's it, why? Because its your job. Its like a perfect simulation of what being a boring everyday worker would be in a space station.
Is it fun?

Absolutely not, there are clunky games that are fun, there are bad games that are fun, even some boring af games can be fun in a casual setup but this one is not any of them, every hour that i clocked in this game was spent in hopes that the mission would end quickly so that i could try to advance the plot, but there's no plot, at least not one that i had the patience to witness.

And you know what? Even the positive reviews that are somehow not ironic have less than 5 hours of playtime, the one guy who played the most endured 36 hours of this.
36 hours!!! That's it.

No one bothered to ever get to the end of this sad mess, no one even knows how long it is, or if anyone knows none bothered to write a review.

If you play the 2000's era games like Tachyon the fringe, Freespace 2, any X game or even the playstation one title Colony wars: red sun you will have a way better experience from the aged 2000 titles than what this one offered in 2014.

This was a nice attempt and far better than I could have done. With so many space combat sim options now there is no reason to buy this.

Pros: Tries fairly hard to be a good Wing Commander / Freespace 2 clone and briefly captures the nostalgia.
Cons:

- Very outdated graphics.
- First person out of cockpit experience poorly implemented. The actual movement lags behind a reticule causing motion sickness and an overall bad experience.
- Shield / Stealth Module / Missiles / Mission contextual special device all tied to the same secondary weapon cycle.
- The large amount of ships have been copied and pasted from an online description somewhere without even bothering to change minor things to make it "spacey".
- There is no incentive in the campaign to use more than 1 top notch fighter with a single configuration after the training mission despite the impressive number of ships.
- Missiles have a description of Air-to-Air and appear to be copied from the same source as the ships. They should be described as Ship to Ship or Ship-to-Surface.
- Taking out satellites is a very boring extra bonus objective that really doesn't seem to affect the overall outcome of the mission or campaign. The point of secondary & tertiary objectives are to enhance the overall campaign or to be of good effect in case the primary objectives can't be reached or if there were extra ordinance & time/fuel.
- Some ground targets sink below the surface of planets/asteroids making them unreachable by weapons and blocking mission completion at 100%.

In summary I love the spirit of the game, and the desire to make a space combat sim again. When this was greenlit, there was almost nothing new out at the time and it was a gap waiting to be filled. Now that Elite Dangerous is "out" and Star Citizen is maybe about to release something more fun to do than run people over with golf carts this game is relegated to the never to be installed or played again pile with about 100 other games in my library unless it receives some serious changes.

it says, that there was a new patch from early acces to full release, but i'd didn't recieved an update since a year i think...

NEVER NEVER buy it -.-

Great concept. Beautiful graphics. Wonky controls. Unable to change the way the mouse controls in 1st person. 1st person treated like you're still in a fighter. Difficult to center the view. Re-mapping keyboard controls doesn't work -- unable to change controls. Difficult to find objectives after last waypoint. No way to review previous communcations. 1st person controls slow. Exploring the ship is cool, but time consuming and difficult.

Skip it. Not worth a $1.
The devs either set this up as a pathetic attempt to swindle money, or they have made a ton of errors in making this game and are too lazy to fix them.

This game is the perfect example of why I will never be duped into buying something "early access" again. I've been told several times that the bug that renders this unplayable for me has been fixed, and each time it's B/S.

Freespace 2 is better, is 15 years old and is free now. I'm not saying this game is bad, but it's just been done better for a long time now, and I expect a lot more from a modern space shooter.

Horrible controls, super annoying gameplay (voiceovers, mission launch sequence). Walking parts between missions are super painful.

You know, if I wanted a terrible carbon copy of Descent: Freespace, I'd have found and re-installed that. No thanks.

I bought this game knowing it was early access. First time i tried to play it i couldn't because of a movie loading glitch. As soon as it loaded and you came to the splash screen it crashed. First i asked the devs to take a look into this matter, and they say they had it fixed. Four months later i reinstalled the game and the same thing happened. So i took it upon myself to try to fix the game and found out if you delete all the movies you can get to the menue and play the game. The controls are not smooth and if you don't play with an xbox controller, you have no hope in completing the game. Even the contols for the xbox are not smooth and jerky. Trying to aim at a moving target is hopeless if you want to use your guns and you only have limited amount of missles that you have to buy after each mission.
The lighting is so dark on everything. You cant see the ships you are shooting at just the aiming reticles in front of them. Walking around on the ship is like you are in a cave and everybody has a tan. The frame rate jumps up and down like a jack rabbit on crack. The second mission you have to turn the dynamic lighting off to even get a frame rate you can play it at. And then you cant see anything until you are right up on top of it. The developers say this game is ready for final release. If you buy this game you are in for a big surprise. If this game was freeware i wouldn't even bother downloading it. There isn't one good thing i can say about the game except the demo movie looked good. The people are talking statues and not very realistic. They talk and you cant listen to them for more than a few seconds before you jump to the mission so you dont have to hear them anymore. The narration is like, give me a break. Hope they didnt pay anybody for the voices. Game is just crap is the final word to describe it.

When i purchased it, it was in early access (didn't pay attention. Never buy early access). It is now not in early Access anymore.

Few things:

No options menu. Keys are not rebindable. Graphic options are What kind of window you use and dynamic lightning on or off. 1/10

Trainings Mission. I didn't get past it. Not because it's hard or anything the like. It's just horrible. First of all, handling, graphics and sounds are as generic as possible. I could get over this. The targets you are supposed to destroy don't show anywhere. They, if you are lucky, pop out right in front of you. 0/10

Voice acting is terribad. Nothing else to add. Not that important but i thought i should mention it.

There seems to be some kind of mouse acceleration ingame. It's very clunky.

Bugs. Bugs bugs bugs. Full release. -5/10

Last but not least: The performance is not acceptable. A game that looks like this should never drop below 200 fps on anything. Sadly it does. It flickers, it has horrible draw distance and the graphical fidelity is.. indie. Maybe the only thing to say about it.

TL;DR: Don't buy it. Unless it's on sale. Not for full prize. Never.

I played this during early access and while they was developing it and I had some fun time talking with the game creators on improving the game. The game it self is very fun but the controls are some what hard to me. But I've not played this game for many years now and perhaps it's easier to play now.

This is nice arcade game when play with keyboard and mouse. Space flight simulator? No, this is terrible with joystick. I am big fan of space flight simulators. xvt and freespace. 3rd person and mouse = overpowered = arcade.

Sorry my bad english.

Well I got this game. The first looks of it is good. It has a somewhat primitive but to me good enough cockpit view. They actually did a lot of effort in the capital space ships models and you can look around in one of the space carrier ships. Pretty awesome. The music and sound effects are good.

What the game lacks is a smooth joystick control. I tested this with my Logitech Extreme 3D pro that I usually use for the fast pace arcade style (space) simulator games. If you use the keyboard then the joystick stops working, but after you shoot it will work again. Also rolling the spacecraft to level you with the spacecraft is difficult with a joustick. A minor few nuisances.

So it is a promising game but not finished yet with those bugs mentioned above. Would I recommend it? Yeah if they iron out the bugs go for it. If not just wait a little.

At the time of this review I seem to have the most hours playing this game. I will recommend this game but there are caveats to this. 1) This game is awkward in play. The eating dinner over your best friend's house, after you have just been caught making out with his sister awkward. I absolutely hate the FPS movement through the ships. It's slow and when your alerted to report to the ready room you just mosey along to get there. The tutorial flight needs to more indepth. I "accidently" found out how to allocate power and command wingmen 3 missions in. 2) The flight mechanics are disturbing at times as you find yourself struggling to get the ship to right itself on a trajectory. I like being able to fly near the surface of a planet just not in one. One mission requires you to go underground killing bad guys and finding a scientist. You take damage hitting walls but the enemy ships ping pong ball of the sides making it impossible to hit them and they take NO damage. Loose this mission or change the scientist to a surface station. 3) Voice acting poor. The briefer for the first few missions looks like his is in his fifties but the voice is of a later teens to early twenties young man. Same akwardness with the stories one pilot who liked he was straight out of high school had 10yrs of experience. 4) The credit system isn't consistent. I completed a round and saw all sorts of bonuses flash up and completed bonus missions and recived nothing after the brief. All the work for nothing. Prestige points? Really? I have to earn a certain amount of points to get descent equipment? I would understand completeing some missions and getting extra stuff in mission to have new equipment to be researched then availible after a period of time.

Now after all this I really do like the game, I hate the fact it's VERY Crossfire unfriendly. I had to disable it all together. The game has promise but it needs alot of work. I do recommend this, just be prepared to be annoyed a little bit.

Let the Buyer Beware. I bought this game based on some of the positive reviews posted here, and I had seen that this was a Kickstarter baby. That gave my high hopes for either something innovative or a true throw-back to Wing Commander. In truth, this is less WC or X-Wing and more a knock-off of Strike Suit Zero...which SSZ reminded me more of those lousy Wing Commander clones you used to be able to get for the PS1. I played the game through a Patrol mission and the first Campaign mission. All i can say is that I really want my $20 back. For being a game no longer in Early Access and the "Final" version, I encountered my first bug a few minutes in when the targeting reticle in cockpit-view mode disappears after firing the gun for a few minutes. Also, the cockpit graphics themselves are awful, ugly and appear (IMO) to be slapped on as an afterthought. Reinforcing this opinion is that the starfighter handles better in 3rd person mode than cockpit mode. The VO sync with the Ready Room animation is like watching bad muppets. I was so disgusted that by the end of the 1st campaign mission i uninstalled and was compelled to write a review. Bottomline: lousy graphics, poor space mechanics, derivitative gameplay of shiity knock-offs of a much better game = AVOID, it's not what it claims on the tin.

A very, very poor man's version of "Freelancer" and SWTOR Galactic Starfighter.

A good idea, not very well executed. Space flying and weapons are not convincing or exciting.

The internal game physics feels "dead" to me. It doesn't "feel alive" which is a bad thing for a space flyer.

If you like the American flag, you'll love the names of things in this game. There's a spaceship called the "Colin Powell".

If you are dying for a fill-in between Freelancer, SWTOR GSF, and Star Citizen, this might satisfy you for a few days. It did not satisfy me, however.

I have only played roughly and hour and a half, but I must say it is definetely the highlight of my day. This game reminds me of all the Wing Commander games from the days of old. When I first heard about this game, they wanted to bring back the dog fighting space days of the past. They succeeded. Hands down, succeeded. The love that went into this game is so visable. Now, ofcourse being an early access game, there are quite a few bugs. Good news, the developers are well aware of the problems and are constantly working to improve and fix gameplay issues. The controls of flight can sometimes be a bit twitchy, but spend a little time with it and they become as familiar as Xwing VS Tie Fighter. Pick up this game, support these guys. This game will definetely keep you busy until Star Citizen is released.....in 2024. lol

It has potential. I like that you can wander the ship between missions. If you could jump into the starfighter and launch/land from the flight deck, it would heighten immersion and cool factor. Mouse feels laggy and optimization is poor at this stage. Despite the poor performance, the graphics are not stellar. Feels like a slightly updated wing commander game. Again, this could be awesome by release, but only slightly enjoyable currently. Multiplayer was just added today, but I missed where the steam advertised "coop" features were, as I only saw deathmatch/capture the flag type multiplayer modes.
I look forward to seeing improvements from future updates.