Oolite

Do you enjoy first person, single player, open ended space trading and combat simulators? What, you’ve never played one? Well we have something for you. Reach for the stars, then past them, then left a little bit and you’ve reached Oolite by Giles Williams. This game is a predecessor to many of the space exploration games you may have heard about in recent years.

Gameplay

You take control of a spacecraft, capable of interstellar travel to nearby planets and planetary systems. You do this using the ships engine which can create wormholes for you to travel through. Throughout this game the player can encounter combatants and engage in dogfights with armaments like lasers and missiles. A big part of the game is the players ‘Elite rating,’ it increases when defeating enemies and increases with the more enemies you kill.

There is a small number of built in missions where you are given tasks to perform but these are rudimentary and don’t carry the gameplay much, if at all. The real meat of the game comes from the mods and updates.

This game reminds me of No Man’s Sky with the vastness of it all. There’s so much to do and see and absolutely nothing holding you back. The sky isn’t the limit because this is space and if space the limit then you’re in luck because space is limitless.

Roleplaying

This is an open-world space opera, like an interactive Star Wars but you don’t have to tongue your sister. This game lets you be whoever you want to be, a billionaire trader to a dashing pirate. The universe is your oyster and you play the game your way. You got bounty hunters to miners, everything. You may find yourself out gunned and out manned but with some quick thinking and a well armoured ship, you might make it out okay.

Mods

An incredible amount of content has been added to the game through its players. Over 500 expansion packs ranging from small tweaks to huge missions that take you days, or even weeks, to complete. There’s a great deal of open ended career opportunities for you to embark on such as courier, where you move goods across the universe for a fee, to hitman, where you do the same thing but the goods are lasers and missiles and you deliver them very, very quickly.

Pros

• Still being updated
• Huge modding community
• Huge amount of content

Cons

• Low visual quality
• Difficult interface