Lightspeed Frontier Demo

Although the gaming industry is currently saturated with space sims, thanks to giants like Elite, Star Citizen and a few others, people are still trying to occupy their own piece of the market. Granted, it’s a pretty complex genre that can be designed in a multitude of ways, but the truth of the matter is that they are all alike in one way or another. Hence, it’s important that they feature some kind of original element to attract the attention of any potential players.

Lightspeed Frontier is a space sim developed by an independent studio, and its goal is to provide gamers with a way to enjoy space travel and create their own content at the same time. Hence, the selling point is the modular ship building gimmick, which allows you to use various modules in order to construct spaceships and use them to explore a pretty big universe.

The building aspect looks a lot like Kerbal Space Program, except that it all takes place in real time, so you do not have to build it on ground and make sure it’s capable of taking off first. While this makes things easier, it also makes it a tad more difficult to orientate yourself and understand how every piece goes together. Thankfully, at least the modules are pretty simple to use, especially since most of them are block shaped.

As you might expect, this alpha version has a few issues and annoyances, mainly because the developers are actively working on it and there are still missing components. One of the problems is with the controls, because the ships can be a tad difficult to control sometimes, although it depends on the situation. It also depends on how you build the ship, because it’s obvious that a bad design won’t be very agile.

In regards to the graphics, the game doesn’t come anywhere close to games like Star Citizen or the like, but that’s fine, at least as long as you do not go in with huge expectations. The environments are a bit barren and boring most of the time, although that may also be because the game is in a very early stage at the moment.

In the end, Lightspeed Frontier has a shot at greatness if everything goes according to plan, especially when you glance at the list of features planned for the final version. Until then, you can support the developers by backing the game’s Kickstarter campaign and by voting for it on Steam Greenlight.