If you take real-time strategy (RTS) and add in a splash of resource management and station maintenance, voila! You have created the perfect recipe for Starport Delta (SD), a title that is set in the future where bases are being built and maintained, but sometimes the leaders aren’t that great so players are sent in to fix the issues. Cloudfire Studios has taken this RTS into space and will take players’ skills to the limit with challenging gameplay. This is our Starport Delta quick hit review.
RTS games have always been fun for me, but this one takes it into a different direction. While it is still fun to play, the addition of having to handle resources versus income and taking care of your residents at the same time adds a very steep learning curve to the game that isn’t always fun. It can go either way though. It makes Starport Delta feel more realistic as it progresses. A lot of RTS games handle the economy through money only, while SD makes you learn to juggle resources, money, and people. Resources and money are simple to handle once you learn how, and making enough power plants, housing structures, and oxygen bubbles will keep your people happy.
The tutorial will help instruct players in the way of base building and it gives an in-depth introduction to everything that needs to be learned in order to progress through the storyline. Things such as how to build housing units, where to place power stations, and how to build shields or defensive weapons are crucial lessons players will take away from the tutorial. Some missions will require building up a base for a specific task while others will have players defending bases from meteor strikes. Those are the missions that will test newly learned skills the game the most.
Early on players will need to protect a base against meteor strikes whilst simultaneously learning how to build shields. That is where organizational skills learned earlier will come into play. There are lots of ways to handle this kind of situation. For instance, I sold half my base and started from a small solid foundation before moving forward with the mission. All of the missions are based around building your starport, developing resources, and moving forward with your objectives. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can be tedious in the long run.
There are a few things that don’t sit well with me with the game, however. The cookie-cutter missions are rinse and repeat with only a little variety. Sure you can defend your station from pirates, space worms, and meteor storms, but you can’t move anywhere beyond your base, build offensive units, or fight against an AI like other RTS titles like Command and Conquer games. This makes certain aspects of SD very dull and boring.
Other, smaller areas of concern begin with the economic system that is very difficult to deal with and needs to be constantly attended to. In addition, the length of some of these missions should allow for an option in the settings to increase the speed of the game. This way, players aren’t sitting there for an hour waiting for NPCs to populate buildings as they wait to end the mission. Lastly, there are only eight campaign missions, which makes this a very short game. However, the price of $24.99 makes up for the shortness of this title.
Overall, Starport Delta is an RTS that feels like it could have been more but fell short. If there was a way to build units to fight other units or factions in space beyond defense turrets, then it may have been a more suitable game for fans of the genre. As it is, SD is fairly priced at the aforementioned $24.99 but is relatively short. It is available to play right now on Steam.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by PR.
