Subtension

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"Subtension" is an unusual but genuinely made ripoff of FTL but with submarines. I guess it doesn't matter that much because just like FTL, the graphics are really lacklustre and I have a general issue with games that rely on procgen instead of content, but being completely free buys a huge amount of leeway. If you wanted to try FTL but are on a budget, maybe this is a better alternative to get a feel for it. This has some really mediocre looking graphics that will understandably be a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarly visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises. Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves…

I only played for around 20 minutes, but this was a good experience. There are some room for improvement, but we'll get to that later. Story. It's interesting. I got to one of the endings and it was a premature one, based on my choices. As promised by the description, there are interesting twists and turns. (Edit: The story actually doesn't change much, despite your choices. Whether you negotiate or disagree, you will be forced to battle enemies. But it has multiple endings.) Art and Sound. Simple, beautiful and elegant. The color palette succeeds in conveying the grimness of this future. The quietness of the soundtracks complement that feeling of being submerged for a long time. Gameplay. It's fun for the most part, but pretty simple and easy. At its core, you point and click to shoot and fire. Like FTL and Crying Suns. I didn't need to upgrade my ship past the tutorial but again, I only played for 3/4 fights before ending prematurely. I never figured out how to repair the ship though, which seems essential and should be in the tutorial. Speaking of the tutorial, I wish there was a way to skip that. I'm going to try out the game a few more times to see where the story takes m…

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I am always honest with my reviews. This is what I dislike about this game: [list] [*]Text boxes are boring. [*]Captain tells you to drag a weapon onto the submarine and says "This room looks good" The game won't let you place it anywhere other than where he is referring to. There is no immediate way to know which room he is referring to until you hover over them. [*]The game just looks like boxes on top of other boxes. [*]Crew move slowly [*]The animations look like they were made in PowerPoint [*]Gameplay is boring [*]The simple laid back music does not make sense during a submarine fight or literally any type of military or non-military fighting. It would be headache inducing after listening to it for too long [/list]

[spoiler] note: this is a wolverinesoft copypasta inside joke [/spoiler] Well, it runs fairly smoothly. There's absolutely nothing to it though and if these guys are coding students, I don't know who is teaching them but they seem to have missed the bit where they create a worthwhile FTL-clone. These kids could be leaving university with a steady income if they'd just put a bit more game in their game. I would like to see a sequel with a bit more ultrawide aspect ratios support, some information about the submarines, lift all the good features from FTL-likes (and FTL is NOT a stand out of the genre btw - it's simply one of the least bad ones that's still going), zoom out about 500% because this is to FTL as Duplo is to Lego at the moment. The submarine has 4 room types which is incredibly boring and there's no information about the rooms that are coming etc etc etc. I've no idea what they were learning from this - the only thing I can guess is that perhaps it's about the code in the background? It wasn't lagging even running at speed so maybe they created a hyper efficient code base in comparison to FTL which can really lag when it's got a lot of stuff on screen. Who knows? Subt…