62/100
Players9 ratings

Where to get it

2018 · Snowhound Games · Adventure · Board game

Deep Sky Derelicts

Deep Sky Derelicts will bring the players into the burdensome life of a society outcast, a scavenger trying to make a living, while aspiring for a better life of a full-fledged citizen. Players will be exploring derelict alien ships, fight, loot, hire mercenaries into their team, buy new weapons and upgrade their gear. The game’s retro-futuristic comic book aesthetic style creates a distinctive dark atmosphere of deep space, unknown locations and lost dystopian society. Rogue-like elements featuring such popular mechanics as procedurally-generated dungeons, turn-based combat with card-based actions and lethal threat lurking around every corner, are here to draw the players into an unforgiving, yet fascinating world with its own unique lore.

Released: 26 September 2018
Platforms: Linux Windows macOS
Genres: Adventure Board game Card game Indie Role-playing Strategy
Developers: Snowhound Games
Publishers: 1C Entertainment
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Side view
Themes: Action Science fiction
Engine: Unity

About

Deep Sky Derelicts is a dungeon crawl video game developed by Snowhound Games and published by Fulqrum Publishing. It combines elements of traditional role-playing video games and roguelike deck-building games. Players create a custom crew, who explore and scavenge derelict space ships. It was first released in 2018 and was ported to consoles in 2020.

›Story

“They drift in the void. Desolate but not empty.”

In a grim dystopian future, where mankind has scattered across the galaxy and the human society has split into two distinct classes, you are a poor stateless outcast forced to live off scraps from derelict alien stations and ships in the outer space, yet you dream of becoming a privileged citizen and living on the surface of a habitable planet, enjoying non-synthetic air, water and food. A fabled alien derelict ship somewhere within the Deep Sky sector of space is your voucher for a citizenship and a promise of cozy life on a hospitable planet.

Hire and control a squad of up to three mercenary characters and set on to explore derelict ships within your reach from the scavenger's base. Searching the derelicts for loot and clues, you come across many friendly inhabitants and traders, but more often – various enemies. Challenge and defeat them in tactical turn-based fights, where randomly-drawn cards form your changing arsenal of combat actions, gain experience for yourself and your crew, loot dead bodies, resupply and upgrade once back at your base. The scavenger's home ship gives you the opportunity to heal and level-up your mercenaries, recruit new ones, equip them, upgrade their gear or recharge energy for life support during missions.

Keywords

turn-based
previously on - utomik

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Players create and customize three crew members sent to scavenge derelict spaceships. Each character can choose from seven character classes. Exploring derelicts is done via a 2D, procedurally-generated automap that simulates graph paper. The rest of the game uses an art style similar to comic books.

While exploring, energy is expended for life support. If energy runs out, the characters are injured. When encountering hostile monsters or scavengers, combat is resolved through turn-based combat using cards. A character's class and gear provide them with cards, which are shuffled and drawn randomly.

Development

Deep Sky Derelicts was developed by Snowhound Games, a Finnish company headquartered in Jyväskylä. The developers cited Darkest Dungeon, XCOM, Hearthstone, and FTL: Faster Than Light as inspirations. Deep Sky Derelicts entered early access in November 2017 and was released on September 26, 2018. Two DLC were released: New Prospects on May 30, 2019, and Station Life on December 12, 2019.

The game was ported to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on March 24, 2020. This version, under the subtitle Definitive Edition, bundles both DLC.

Reception

On Metacritic, the PC and Xbox One versions of Deep Sky Derelicts received mixed reviews, and the Nintendo Switch version received positive reviews. Rock Paper Shotgun's reviewer praised the combat, saying that the ability to control which cards went into his deck overcame his dislike of deck-building games. Though he criticized the game for its lack of a tutorial, he said the combat is "great fun, never over-complicated". Gamereactor UK called the art and music "brilliant" and praised the combat, though they said it "can sometimes be a slog".

A perceived poor user interface and severe difficulty spikes kept the reviewer from making a wholehearted recommendation. After overcoming a steep learning curve, Nintendo World Report's reviewer found the game enjoyable. 4Players recommended it to fans of Darkest Dungeon, though they said Deep Sky Derelicts was not quite as good.