Blast ships. Grab any surviving bits from their wreckage. Bolt the salvaged goods onto your ship to make yourself stronger (and repair any damage). Goto 10.
While flying about, you may spot a ship with a powerful laser cannon that you want. If it’s a peaceful ship, you need to decide whether it’s worth attracting the attention of the sector’s law enforcement by destroying that ship to get its cannon. But even if it’s a pirate vessel that’s already initiated hostilities against you, you’ll still need to figure out how to destroy the ship without destroying the cannon in the process. And as you’re bolting your new laser cannon to your ship, you’ll have to carefully maintain your ship’s balance in order to keep it handling well. But don’t take too long rebuilding; the police and that pilot’s friends are sure to be looking for revenge!
Captain Forever, created by the inimitable Farbs, is a surprisingly deep and addictive little browser-based shooter which has recently been pre-launched. By pre-launched, I mean that one can pay cash to support the game and get access to the current version and all future versions, but there is currently no free version available to the public. The idea is that when Farbs releases a major new version of the game, then the old version becomes freely available to all, and only those who have paid are given access to the new version. Oh, and at that point, the price goes up, slightly. This process repeats each time there’s a major new version; the old version becomes free, and those who have paid gain access to the new version.
Speaking as somebody who’s working on a game and would like for it to be playable by everyone, but also has to figure out ways to financially support the development, I find this approach really interesting, and I’ll be watching Captain Forever’s progress closely. Of course, I’ve already become a Captain Forever supporter, but I’d played the game during its early closed beta, so I knew that I like the game and that it runs well on my computer, so it was sort of a safe purchase for me; others may prefer to wait until the first public version is released, to verify.
On the other hand, it really is an awesome little game and Farbs is a good guy who absolutely deserves adulation and large wads of cash from random internet denizens.
