Starway Fleet

honestly its pretty impressive the graphics are okay but the gameplay is instant giant space battles numbering in the 100s this is the game ive been waiting for thank you very much only things i would say about its growth potential would be 1 opening it up to modding (if possible) and a freelook mouse option for us flight stick folks (playing on a logitec 3d pro works great ) again thank you dev team as a dad being able to just join a huge fight is incredible thank you

Nice Game.

Retroisch looking and feeling Game with Wing Commander style gameplay. The game is enjoyable. If you are looking for a little space shooter with a decent flightmodel, this is a good choice.

I love space dog fighting games. While I enjoy the complexity of X4, Elite and Star Citizen, some times I just want a fun dog fighting campaign experience. This game delivers. Its a steal for the price. I really hope this is successful so they can make a more elaborate story campaign. The space fighting dynamics are good. Not quite as good as EVERSPACE but pretty darn close. I would have happily paid full price for this.

I just played the first mission, it took me approximately 10 minutes on Elite difficulty. And hell, this game filled a void in my heart! A little bit of Wing Commander with modern graphics and fun controls. The content is definitely worth 10 EUR.

I wish we had more games like this nowadays! I'm looking forward to Squadron 42!

Unplayable in its current state. I tried mouse and keyboard, then an Xbox controller because this game literally has a setting just for Xbox controllers. The lag and imprecision are infuriating. It's like playing Wing Commander while drunk. Uninstalled.

I bought this on sale - it is a nice little co-op experience for one evening and as such it was worth its money.
Lack of co-op content is a pity though. @dev please open this up to the community so they can create more content.

Pros:
- There are not many casual co-op games like this (I would love to see a co-op star wars story campaign)
- (to me) Steep but motivating learning curve
- Different enemy ship layouts to "learn"
- Co-op missions that require coordination
- Configurable controls for keyboard/mouse, gamepad, flight controller
- Ship / level design

Cons:
- Game feedback (you never know where your team mates are, It is at first somewhat difficult to understand what the game wants from you / where to go, no level statistics)
- Lack of content (co-op playtime only like 2-3 hours, no real story, no ship upgrades or anything like it)
- Sound design

Although basic at it's core it's easy to get into and really reminds me of old school "Wing Commander" albeit light. Although the missions lack a a story arc they are fun none the less. It scratches that space shooter arcade itch and I have no regrets based on price. Works well with my Saitek x52:)

Fun concept, but the flight controls are just unplayable. It's jerky and unresponsive and almost impossible to manuever accurately enough to dogfight, which is the entier point of the game.

Without any sort of progression system to sink your teeth into, and not that much diversity of enemies in it, this game tries to stand on the strength of its core gameplay alone. Unfortunately, the controls aren't very good, so the core gameplay isn't very good. There's an attempt at having angular velocity on your rotation, but snaps to 0 whenever your cursor (or thumbstick) crosses to the other half of the screen, so instead of feeling like piloting an agile but heavy death machine it's just weird and clumsy. The boosting mechanic is also annoying, you get the most speed out of it by constantly tapping the button instead of holding it down.

I do like how you get a low firing rate option for your gun, it does feel nice to pop a gun turret with a single well-placed shot.

I really wanted to love this but unfortunately it doesn't play well.

You're told to target shield generators, torpedos and turrets but the game doesn't subsystem targeting. You don't have a radar either so you have no way of looking at the battlefield and prioritising targets - you always lose mission three.

Going into Starway Fleet I was so excited.
The game looks great, the sound is great and the missions are fun and solid, but the targeting...what a nightmare.

Firstly, don't even bother with a flight stick.
Secondly, that damn targeting. It's so unintuitive and jittery that you get the feeling this game was tested only using a mouse.
Even trying a controller didn't help. It's just too frustrating.

I'm a 90's space shooter fan, so everthing I play is going to go up against titles like X Wing, Tie Fighter and Freespace series - a game which I still play today.

Starway Fleet is arcadey. And not in a fun way. Frustrating and frighteningly simple, with jerky movement that made me feel a tad queezy. I spent almost all my time remapping joystick functions and saying "WTF" to some of the default mappings. Locking on enemies for primary weapon take downs are a nightmare with your reticle bouncing around the lead indicator for your target and the whole thing becomes a minigame of "keep your eradic fire indicator in the enemy leady indicator box" while you're on speed and caffeine and your opponent is on vallium.

It is a beautiful game however. But while the hud shows everything you need to know, the dash in your cockpit is wasted static space. $6 better spent on a beer.

TO developer: Make this playable with a game pad. I hated it with joystick so I tried the game pad and it was even worse. But taking that approach may highlight whats up with targeting and leading your targets manually.

All other initial bizarre input device problems aside, the mushy feel this game has I think is intentional or unique to the engine. Turning stick sensitivety down just slows turn rate even more as usual and there seems to be a lack of a dead zone parameter. Even a joystick curves app probably won't save you here. Mushy= turn rate pick up is very slow for a second then its relative to joystick throw if not to fast and by then you've over corrected. Even on one of my best joysticks I'd leave reticle locked to REDUCE the jankyness factor. I plugged in a game controller similiar to a 360 and it felt even worse but i'm not a controller guy. Its not a very demanding, involved, 6 dollars on sale game. It is very frustrating however to try and get the feel for turning the ONE and only ship choice and loadout and I'm not sure the payoff is worth the investment despite the welcome up/down/left/right slide and thats coming from an old space game junkie. A little old school fickle input funk is good but here- OVERKILL DUDES. Too bad because this game is unique= no perk grind, no score/stats, no involved campaign, accessible and affordable, bug free and runs on almost anything. Another unigue attribute would be the HEROIC lack of replayability.
10 missions and some instant action stuff with co-op availability. Custom Mission feature mechanics is as minimal, non-sensical,cool sounding and devoid as a zero-point anomaly from a bad B sci-fi flick. The Cornball voice-overs I actually enjoy but the sound effects in general are a PEW-PEW-PEW thing that is pretty weak. Destroyed ship debris conveniently fading away before your very eyes is hard to get use to which just takes away from the generic but familiar and nicely done ship designs. Suspect when I play this on a mouse with reticle unlocked in VR mode it will be WORTH a couple hours of entertainment. This game has as much effort put into it as my review and even less into updates, so since by default it's not on sale I can't QUITE recommend it. Do keep in mind this is a non-VR review.

I bought it for use with my XBOX 360 controller (and occasional Vive usage)...even after attempting to adjust the controls, the sensitivity was unadjustable and far too sensitive. I gave it about 10-15 minutes of testing, and realized that this wasn't going to work in its current state.
Also, there needs to be a controller dead zone adjustment so you're not drifting from the slightest breeze on the controller. I'm very sad to have to say "no" to this since it's unplayable.

TL:DR it is a recommendation but be aware!
Starway Fleet is a small space fighter game from a small studio. I had fun learning to dogde enemy fighters and turret fire. Also i liked the necessity for ship management. You have to react quick and strategic to do the missions with low losses.
The game runs stable and had no mayor bugs or crashes during my about 10h playtime. But i wouldn't describe it as a finished release. It is just not polished enough.
So if you want to support the dev team and are willing to play a not AAA game it is for you. Hopefully the devs can afford to expand it further.

this is also feedback for the devs (Sept17)
- it still feels a bit like early access. +Devs promised to patch and expand the content
- 10 'campaign' missions only loosly sewn together; just intro text no cutscenes
- priority mission targets are not highlighted - just anounced with voice
- just some missions have a cascade of events
- no statistics screen to rate your performance
- difficulty setting seems just to adjust hitpoints of the enemies
- once you learned where the shield generators on the (about 6) different capital ships are, they are pretty easy to outgun even with one fighter

+ Devs promised to patch and expand the content
+ 6 Degree of Freedom flight control
+ Shield/engine/weapon-management necessary
+ tutorial teaches the basics
+ nice graphics and backgrounds
+ totally different gameplay compared to House of the dying Sun or Everspace
+ i played with keyboard and mouse
+ 3pal coop possible (not tried)

I've had to play a couple of times to really get a feel for it, but with the devs being very responsive and offering quick updates, I can now safely recommend this game.

It has that "arcade action in sim's clothing" feel that made the Ace Combat series so enjoyable, with all the epic music and engaging comm chatter that puts you right in the middle of things.

It does lack a traditional campaign, and it's a shame given how immersive the missions available are, but with the custom mission settings, the coop, and the various difficulty levels - there's more than enough content to justify the admission price.

Here's hoping this is the test run of a larger scale experience with the same finely-tuned look and feel !

While I appreciate the attempt this game has made, it needs quite a bit of work to really shine in this genre. This includes an actual narrative -- rather than just some disconnected missions -- and above all else: targeting commands. In a game like this, situational awareness is KEY. I need to know what the biggest threat is at a moment's notice and focus on dealing with that threat. After spending time with this, I just feel like this game is, and I hate to say this: half-assed. It's as if the developers said, "Hey, space games are popular right now, let's make one!" and then didn't study the best games in the genre at all.

I mean let's review:

1. No targeting commands for situational awareness.
2. No overarching narrative to keep players going.
3. No scoring or anything to keep players coming back.
4. Just about every mission is an escort mission, because us pilots LOVE those.
5. It could be fun, COULD BE, if it fixed a lot of these things.

This game shouldn't have come out of early access. It needed more time in the oven, and it's a shame, because it COULD be great, which makes it all the more infuriating that it isn't.

Here, check out my vids for my pudding of proof.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6K1_LepsaN-G9o_NccnuVWQjr4ueeDoq

In short, if you have $10 and wanna buy a space combat game, get Freespace 2 if you don't have it already. Or buy it a second time. I just can't recommend this game at this time. Maybe if it continues to get love from its developers, then MAYBE it'll be successful, but right now it feels like a half-hearted attempt at the genre, and the genre deserves better.

I've played a lot with it (~20 hours). I am into such games as my first experiences are from the 90s with X-wing vs Tie Fighter and Wing Commander.

Pros:
- Feeling (like Battlestar Galactica, or the new Star Wars)
- Graphics
- Voices (I feel I'm almost there)


Cons:
- 6 mission (hope in the full there will be more)
- Controls (sometimes a bit hard with a mouse - I don't have a joystick)
- Main menu (maybe because it's early access)

I played the demo before for a while and I picked the game up not long ago.
The gameplay is great, it reminds me of the X-Wing series. The graphics and audio quality is extremely good as well. Right now there are six missions but I'm sure there is a lot more to come.
Absolutely recommended!

The game is bit lackluster in content right now, but the feeling and atmosphere is there. The Devs can really build somthing great here with the systems already in place. I hope this game does well..