Faster Than Light vs J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars
Faster Than Light
Faster Than Light is a pretty unique indie game where you build amazing spaceships, manage your crew and set off to explore the vast, randomly generated galaxy in search of adventure and perhaps a fight. As your ship is built part by part, the enemy can attack specific areas of your ship as well. This means you'll likely encounter various challenging incidences during combat that will force you to think on your feet to save your ship at all costs... since the game's permadeath feature means you will not get a second chance if you lose your ship. Sometimes, you'll also need to make critical decisions to, for example, reroute what remaining juice you have into your shield for a last-ditch effort to defeat the enemy or to your engines while hoping for a quick getaway so you can fight another day.Although its simplistic appearance, Faster Than Light has a very intruiging gameplay that will truly challenge your ability as the commander of a spaceship. The scenarios you encounter are fun enough to solve, the permadeath drastically increase the stakes in the game, and of course, the battles are equally as exciting.
J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars
J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is truly a game that's very unique. Despite its apparent appearance - it does look like "just another space sim", doesn't it? - the game is a fun and innovative, story-driven adventure game with a heavy dose of mystery added for good measure. In this game, you'll get to step into the spacesuit of Rachel Manners, a 35-year-old astrobiologist who initially embarked on a critical mission to explore and collect data on potentially habitable planets with a crew of of other elite and hand-picked scientists, but somehow, things went awry, and she found herself alone with J.U.L.I.A., the space probe's rather tempermental AI and Mobot, the reconnaissance robot.Driven by a need to know, you'll need to help Rachel search for clues which might potentially explain the mission's failure and the missing crew. You'll also get to travel to six widely varied planets where you can then get to work trying to reveal their secrets. There will be plenty of puzzles and mini-games in your journey as well just to give your brain some intense workout from time to time.
That said, the puzzles in the game can be a tad bit frustrating to solve, mainly because it's the sort of "trial and error" puzzle-type. So, unless you have a thing or two against this specific game mechanism, J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars is a really nice puzzle-adventure game to buy and play.