Excellent systems-driven RPG with a interesting premise and setting.

I truly believe that Iron Tower games deserve more attention, so here's my first review in a *very* long time.
In Colony Ship you explore, big surpise, a colony ship, which is headed to Proxima Centari to colonize a hospitable world. But there was the Mutiny on the ship and due to this event a lot of old knowledge about Earth history, initial purpose and overall spirit of the mission was lost (as a big part of the ship's functionallity).
I won't spoil any plot details, but the ending left a lot of bitter notes in the best possible way.

But the main question is how is it played? Well, the closest analogy I can think of is a party-based RPG like a XCOM/Shadowrun with a progression system like in Bethesda's RPGs (the more you use the skill, the more you're proficient with it). Story is divided by chapters with oportunity to visit some hub locations, very similar to VTMB. Also, this game has a lot of interesting feats, so if you love character building options -- there is a big room here for your creativity.

I have basically only two big complains about the game:
1. Working for several factions in the same time is not always possible and it least once I locked myself from the option I wanted (it was in the first location of the game, so not the huge deal, but important to mention). From the other hand, in Chapter 2 I worked for all factions I could think of, so this issue is present only sometimes.
2. The game has a guarded content behind skill checks. Not as much as previous main-line Iron Tower game (Age of Decadence), but to clean almost everything I had to replay game once (and I dropped the first run of the game).

If you're somewhat interested -- pick up the demo. It's free and as far as I know covers a lot of content, so you can make informed decision based on that.

Personally, I loved it.

Save your money. I wanted to like this game for the challenge, after the first hour I realized it was basically a linear story with a few story choices but very little else in the way of exploration. So for that reason "easy" mode didn't seem right, no fun in that. So I went to the "normal" mode that "was the way the game was intended to be played" but I ended up just giving up shortly after chapter 2 starts. In the description it claims that the enemy AI has the same chances as the player. All I can say is B.S.! I went for a combat spec and used the proper weapon the entire game and I not only did I miss WAY more than the AI, but my damage was always trivial vs their almost insta-kill damage numbers. If that isn't bad enough, most of the fighting I would get at least one person on my team killed by turn 2. And before you think "oh, he just didn't have good initiative", I call B.S. on that too. I made my character for quickness and even after stripping all of the armor off I was basically in the middle to last in every fight. Play this game if you want to see the story, or if you like an unfair fight to really "challenge your gaming prowess". But skip this if you are thinking it will be an actual challenging game that plays fair.

Interesting story, terrible combat.

The game plays statwise an progression wises like Disco Elysium. However, the combat is just bad. Your characters progress via armor, feats, and implants. They then have a slow progression by doing things in combat... but it's randomized who and seemly how much they get. However, outside of armor and evasion the HP pools don't increase.

This leads to the game essentially being built around save scuming because the RNG can allow for a character to be killed before you even get a chance to act. This experience was on the underdog setting, but it doesn't poor design.

Edit for reply to Dev: Appreciate the reply! At least in my two runs, the log after the fight showed no skill point gains for characters that were shot at, shot with, etc. Even when they did the gains are very small for the amount of hits given and taken.

The experience of getting slaughtered turn one happened were always with either a energy shield or distortion field. Energy shield (at least in it's early stages) feels useless. The first energy armor you get seems to mechanically work, but the energy shield far too much damage straight bypasses it. If you pop stims on a weaker character first round, the enemies just shift to the next weakest character. So you end up popping several stims to cover everyone and then it's race till debuff. Grenades work, if the enemy is susceptible to them which mindworms aren't.

The save scumming need feels escalated by the scars mechanic. If you get to turn 4-5 and a character goes down from lucky hits (because they focus fire on the most susceptible) it's basically an auto start over. No sense in dragging forward a permanent debuff, especially when it's HP.

I'm sure it's possible, plenty seem to enjoy it. I guess I'm just just more of a movement and action use strategy than a mandatory consumables strategy person.