Rebel Galaxy is a space sim developed and published by Double Damage Games. It was released in October 2015. I was curious about this unknown developer so I decided to do some digging. Their game’s website Rebel-Galaxy.com had this to say.
Travis and Erich previously co-founded Runic Games, where we made Torchlight and Torchlight 2.
Before that, Travis created Fate in 2005 and was project and engineering lead on Mythos, before it was torn out of our hands in the Flagship Studios debacle of 2008. Erich was co-creator and lead designer of Diablo and Diablo II, then went on to lead Hellgate: London (blah blah Flagship debacle).
So we’ve been making big action-RPGs with big teams for a long, long time now.
Double Damage and Rebel Galaxy is a huge, well-needed, change of pace. It’s just us two. Not to detract from the excellent art and music contractors we are working with, but DDG is just us. We wanted to make smaller, quicker games (though I doubt people will find Rebel Galaxy to be small), in a way not accountable to investors or suits, and not responsible for managing big teams. We’ve had great, exciting careers so far, but Double Damage is the funnest time we’ve developing a game in… forever? We hope you’ll enjoy playing it!
Rebel Galaxy is a Space Sim that’s 3rd but you travel and fight on a two dimensional plane. It was designed to be game of ships battling by broadsiding. Other capitals fight on a 2D plane like you do, however sub-capital ships move 3 dimensionally.
The plot is basic. You’re gifted your aunts old space ship and tells you to meet her at a remote location. You of course don’t meet her but one of her associates that gives you an ancient artifact. Spoiler alert. Everyone is after the artifact. The plot is unimaginative, uninspired, and ultimately unimportant. The music, environment, and gameplay are what kept me playing this game. If they make a sequel, which I hope they do, they had better put time and effort into a worthwhile story.
The game uses the ogre engine. The rendering is terribly rough. It’s not bad for a game developed by two people. The biggest problem is consistency. Sometimes everything looks pretty decent. One time I undocked and was awed by how awesome my ship actually looked. Then the textures went to shit again. Even comparing it to even an old space game like Freelancer, the rendering sucks!
The frame rate isn’t the best and unfortunately can randomly drop. It can feel like a game from 8 years ago.
The sound effects are at least modern-ish. They are not as crisp as modern games but the game doesn’t fall too far behind in this aspect. It feels like the recorded using aged technology. They have enough voice actors which is great. Bethesda could learn a thing or two from these guys.
When starting the game the first thing, you’ll want to do is turn down the volume on the music. It is crazy loud. Other than some pretty standard settings there are not many options. Luckily the have a decent selection of options to choose from. You can change Voice, FX, and music volumes. It has a great many other options to customize how you play as well. Developers can take another note here on how it’s done. Looking at you Ubisoft. Luckily the music is really cool and you won’t have to mute it. It’s a mix of rock and country western. The inspiration from Firefly is rather clear. It was a fantastic idea on their part to throw in some nostalgia.
Unfortunately there is one major bug. When exiting warp it can sometimes take a moment for that local environment to load. This seems especially true with the mercenary station. Normally stellar mass makes you automatically drop out of war, which is a nice feature when eating or boozing. Because the environment won’t always load there’s the chance to fly through and past your objective. I can’t confirm it but I suspect the commodities are bugged too. How can every station I check be below the system average?! This is the worst possible bug because I’ll never buy low at one station to sell high at another. Every station I try is either at price or lower. Rawr.
Rebel Galaxy requires a lot of grinding to be able to complete the game. If you hate grinding like I do you may still want to give this game a chance. You see the odd thing is I rather enjoy the process. The game has done things just right to make the gameplay enjoyable enough that I enjoy doing mission after mission. I enjoy launching missiles to destroy those pesky fighters. I love watching beam weapons rip through gunships. I love whittling away at capitals, watching debris get blasted off as I hound their much larger and better equipped vessels. I love being able to switch things up and try my hand at the commodities market. (Spoiler alert no matter what you buy every station now buys it for lower than what you paid.) I enjoy taking missions from the merchant’s guild and blasting through blockades to deliver cargo.
This is the game to play when you just want to blow shit up. It isn’t hard but it doesn’t just give you an easy victory either. You can play to relief stress, when you feel like drunk gaming or just want immediate action. So many games it can take forever to find action. Here you just undock and warp in almost any direction. It’s okay if you can only play for 5 minutes too. You can take on a quick mission or just attack a pirate base! I don’t think I’ve had this much fun with a game since Forza Horizon 2.
There are some additional minor problems with the game. The ships and how they run for starters. Am I solo running my capital ship? Is there a crew? Where did they come? If I am solo, how am I maintaining the entire ship, especially during combat?
Why did the mysterious alien race sudden start coming after the artifact. She didn’t send any long range signals. Though the story concludes it is still unfinished. We never learn more about the artifact. The game sets it up so that we should be learning more each step of the way but we don’t. Our reward each time is to be told start on the next step. We’re left with no answered questions and more questions that when we started the game. Well we all know no one plays Just Cause for the story; Rebel Galaxy is no different.
I said how the music is a nostalgia que for Firefly. It doesn’t end there. The beam weapons seem inspired by the likes of Babylon 5. Wealth acquisition is very similar to Freelancer and maybe even Privateer. Upgrading parts of your ship like weapons and shields is similar to Freelancer and Eve Online. Different races and factions use specific ships to their type which makes the game even more interesting. You can see the influence of the various ship designs for many different avenues. I’d love to see The Shoddy Cast do a hidden history on the ships in this game. If I were to say Rebel Galaxy is the spiritual successor to Freelancer I doubt anyone would disagree.
A large part of the game is making various factions love or hate you. The two guilds you can join are the merchants and mercenaries guild. You gain rank with them by completing missions and not blowing up their ships. The other factions are various pirate gangs, Local militia, and Citizenry. I’m purely theorizing here but I think only point to citizen status and ranks is to determine if they like you enough to be able to dock at their stations. The only pirate faction that has stations is the Red Devils. I’d wager that you have the choice of siding with them the whole game or sticking with the citizenry and militia. Whatever faction you go with, make sure you have high standing with them before heading off to Charon.
A humorous bug with the mercenaries guild is you can take on missions with them and be pitted against mercenaries who joined the faction you’re fighting for that particular mission. You don’t take a status hit for taking out non-cap ships so there’s usually no worry with this bug.
My overall impression of the game is a positive one. This game won a lot of points in gameplay and nostalgia. Even though the music is awesome it’ll get tiresome near the end. The rendering and skins are at times terrible. The visual effects, surprisingly, have almost no problems. Just like Just Cause, if you want a game where you don’t have to worry about the details this may be the game for you. I really hope these guys come out with a sequel and improve upon what they created here.
This game is so cheap there’s no reason not to buy it, buy it now.
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"Rebel Galaxy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Feb. 2016. Web. 14 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Galaxy>.
Travis , and Erich . "Who Is Double Damage Games." Rebel Galaxy., 2014. Web. 14 May 2016. <http%3A%2F%2Frebel-galaxy.com%2Fwho-is-double-damage-games%2F>.