It's a bad RPG. If you're here to create a character with the wide range of skills and abilities, well, ♥♥♥♥ YOU. You will make a combat character and you will like it. Don't like it? Well, you can play the easy mode we passive-aggressively named 'hero mode' because we know if you don't want to engage in yet another dice roll combat system, you are obviously just a baby who needs to be a hero all the time. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It's not like there are no opportunities to use non combat skills - there are plenty, and they are interesting especially as resolutions to quests. It's just that there are many obstacles with only combat based solutions, and if you didn't make such a character you're SOL.

Now, if this had been communicated, or if the player's non-combat skills were limited and the emphasis on non-combat roles were placed upon certain NPC party members this would have been fine, but it isn't. Which is a real shame because the worldbuilding, writing and artistic design is literally the cream of the crop. It's just wasted on the designer's need to wank himself over his game being such a hard and elite sweaty game which is prioritised over the narrative experience, which should be the focus of an RPG.

An excellent RPG. Wish we had more good games.

Excellent RPG. These kind of games are a lost art with only rare exceptions breaking through. This is one of them. Do yourself and the industry a favour and buy this.

This is an interesting game.

Really enjoyed the game.

Colony Ship is a fairly standard CRPG set on a giant space-faring vessel. The setting is ripped right out of Robert Heinlen's Orphans of the Sky, and it makes for a decent backdrop to a well structured CRPG.

As a CRPG, it offers fairly nothing new in the genre in terms of mechanics or gameplay. You control a squad of players, you take your turns with action points, doing attacks/abilities with a variety of weapons. You have some gadgets and items you can use, each character has an array of stats to improve.

its all fairly standard fare for the CRPG genre. The game doesn't seek to innovate in terms of mechanics in any meaningful way. This is not, however, a slight on the game. The gameplay is engaging and challenging, with encounters require forethought and effort.

The story is nothing to write home about. Its a solid, somewhat interesting scifi dystopian story. It has its twists and turns, but this game is not winning any awards for its writing. Its above average, but the story in this game will not stick with you.

You will go through this game, play for somewhere between 20-30 hours, and experience a solid CRPG. Yet, something about the experience will stick with you, because as bland and uninspired Colony Ship may seem from a mechanics perspective, I am still recommending this game.



What sets Colony Ship apart is its approach toward player mechanical and gameplay choices. Many CRPGs offer a wide array of story based choices, but gameplay remains largely the same. You enter an encounter, defeat the enemies, and move on.

Colony Ship is unique in two regards. First, it avoids the norm of violence. The game is designed so that players can, if they wish, never take a single combat encounter in the game. That's right - an entire game where you do not need to fire a single bullet out of a gun. It allows you to use Stealth to avoid a very large portion of encounter,s talk your way out of others, and it is an incredibly refreshing change of pace.

This freedom of player agency is very rare in a game - in fact, the last combat-focused game that I played that allowed players to never engage in combat was the original Deus Ex, over 20 years ago. Its a very refreshing perspective to allow players this level of freedom.

However, this does lead into another aspect that Colony Ship is unique in. The game does not allow you to be good at everything. Many games claim that this is the case, but when efficient min-maxing and optimizing players still find a way.

This is not the case with colony ship. If you wish to maximize your stealth, you will literally not have enough experience in the game to maximize your combat stats. For some people, this can be a frustration, as it means you cannot live out a common power fantasy in party based CRPGs where someone in the party can tackle every avenue of progression.

However, this makes for a more refreshing game experience. If you are good at talking your way out of a fight, why are you also good at shooting? It pushes you to find ways to excel.

But it also means that being a jack-of-all-trades can feel lackluster, which some players may feel frustrating.

This carefuil consideration toward progression also results in the game respecting your time. Many CRPGs pad out their game by adding in a multitude of combat encounters that feel same-y and grind-y. This game does not do that. If it did, then you could progress to be good at everything, so it provides a two-for-one benefit.

Overall though this approach toward character progression and the way it presents challenges to the player results in an experience that is memorable. For those people who enjoy playing CRPGs, I would recommend this game. For all that it seems the same, the experience was one that I'm not likely to forget any time soon. The fact that I found myself pressured and pushed difficulty wise in a very unique manner made the game compelling.

But for those people who are not aficinados of the CRPG genre, I wouldn't really suggest this game. There are far bigger and broader CRPGs that serve as a much better introduction to the genre than this. This game is for those people who have experience those other games, and are looking for something that scratches the itch of a CRPG's progression but provides a new way for players to experience challenge and progressive difficulty in a CRPG.

Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game. A phrase that launched, by low estimate, about a billion imitators. However, Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Roleplaying Game doesn't come off as an imitator - it's an homage, and is actually worthy to follow in Fallout's footprints. Like its illustrious forebear, it's not perfect, but there's so much about it that's good that it overshadows its shortcomings by a wide margin.

Colony Ship takes place, unsurprisingly, on a colony ship. A generation spacecraft, in flight for centuries to reach an exoplanet that (we think) is suitable for colonization. (Maybe.) Without spoilers, the ship has been in flight long enough for a mutiny-turned-war, splintering of the population, creation of new settlements within the ship... and all of that is covered in the opening text. It's a wild place.


This is a gorgeous game. For a ship that's been beaten to hell for centuries, it shows all of the wear and damage in beautiful detail. Environments are engrossing and positively dripping in detail, ambient sound is spot-on, and the soundtrack fits in smoothly. It really is hard to overstate how good the graphics are in this game. Yes, there are higher-res games out there that have more polygons on screen at a time, but the sheer amount of skill and love that went into these graphics absolutely shines.

Quests are varied and (mostly) engaging. You're always going to have simple fetch quests and the like; they're an RPG staple and a necessity, and every RPG is a chain of "oh, if you want this then I want that" but that's how it goes.

Writing and design is bold and daring. What do I mean? Well, black-and-white morality in gaming has been out for a while; grey-and-grey has been the standard. Skyrim did it, Bethesda Fallouts have done it, it's The Thing. Colony Ship doesn't do that. No grey-and-grey here - it's black-and-black. There are no real good guys on the Ship, and when you have to choose among options, it's more about choosing which flavor of unpalatable ethics you want rather than trying to decide which one is better. It adds depth and realism most games don't have the courage to go into. Yes, it makes for a heavier game world, but given the environment of the game, it adds so much realism.

There are tons of pieces of equipment to find and buy. Weapons and armor by the truckload, support items, healing options - you name it. There are also biomod implants to acquire, and they add definite flavor to the game, especially since they're largely not available in stores; you're going to have to pry them out of someone else's formerly-living self, and much of the time we're talking about someone who's been dead for so long they've mummified.

Wait, mummies on a spaceship? Yup. This is a generation ship, and you've been in flight for centuries, so almost nothing is brand-new anymore, including the tech you plan to stick in your body. Hope you're not squeamish!


Alright, so it's not perfect. Show me a game that is. But there are some shortcomings that bear mentioning.

It is, in some ways... a bit cheap. There are no voiced lines in the game. None. So the game comes off feeling a little thin in engagement. Even Fallout had voiced parts and that was 1997, so there's no technical limitation getting in the way - it was a design and/or budget choice, and the game suffers a little for it. They also cheaped a bit in animations - if you want to squeeze through a barely-open door or climb over a barricade, the game will fade to black and fade back in a moment later with your characters in the new position. It's an obvious way to hide the fact that the character animations don't exist, and that would not have been a terribly high bar to clear. The same goes with every encounter you have - they'll either end in combat or "wait for them to leave," a fairly clumsy way to walk the other group out without having them actually, visibly walk. In fact, almost everybody is a mannequin; settlements don't feel alive - more like a still life.

The difficulty curve is brutal. It makes Fallout look almost cozy. The early game is particularly grim, as you have bargain-basement equipment and you're squaring off against enemies that can chew you up. Sure, early RPG combat is supposed to be a balance of attack/avoid, but when you're getting mangled every time you stick your toe over the line, that's a balancing issue. Things get worse when you deal with enemies that deal psychic damage (no, really, it's a thing) since you have little means to resist it and it will absolutely cripple your combat ability.

Economics are frankly insane. When you're buying an item for $180 but can only sell it for $20, that's not realistic - in a lawless town like the Pit, someone taking advantage that badly would've been shot a while ago for being a cheat. It's done to keep your money supply artificially low and keep you hungry, so it doesn't come off as reasonable difficulty, it comes off as a deliberate and transparent hobble.

Pathfinding is a little screwy, so you'll need to shepherd your character a bit sometimes. Only a little, though.

The biomod implants, for all their hype, are underwhelming. They don't offer much of a tactical or strategic advantage (no more than marginal in almost all cases), so they add some flavor but not much.

There are other small things about the RPG design that are questionable (like the Armor Handling stat, which will prevent you from wearing a jacket because you apparently aren't competent to manage that, a vest, and boots at the same time), and the relationship between stat elements and their effect is murky at best in some cases, but it's not too onerous.


Did you like classic Fallout? D&D? Actual turn-based RPGs that you can explore and poke and discover? Well, then this one is a great choice as long as you're fine with reading the entire game; with no voiceovers, your pace will slow down some as you read (or you can skip it and risk missing something). But the game really is rewarding enough to justify itself, and a very welcome breath of fresh air for classic RPG fans.

Just watch out for mind worms. Seriously.

A deep RPG with effective writing and engaging systems. on the surface iron tower games can seem daunting to new players, it took me a few tries to get into their first two titles but now that I have I would say all 3 titles are some of the greatest games I have ever played. The game has a very clear vision and it accomplishes it immaculately. There is no wasted time in the game and every new step is rewarding. If you haven't tried any of their games Colony ship is a great place to start. The game can be beaten in may ways and I think most people could indulge a play style which is fun for them.

Me like very much