Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game Colony

The resurgence of CRPGs in 2023 has brought fresh excitement to the genre, with titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 expanding its audience dramatically. Against this backdrop, Iron Tower Studio, makers of The Age of Decadence, have released Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game, inviting players into a vast spacefaring experience framed by tough decisions and varied playstyles. Diving into its world reveals why RPG fans crave choice-driven gameplay, where feeling either overwhelmed or all-powerful hinges on your approach.

Colony Ship’s graphics stand as an unexpected highlight amidst typical CRPG visuals. Although initial footage might not blow you away, actually playing the game showcases finely crafted environments that impress once you start zooming in.

The top-down perspective belies the impressive level of detail scattered around the ship, from everyday objects to intricate environmental touches. This depth enhances immersion as each area feels tangible and lived-in.

Locations strike a careful balance between bleak decay and vibrant life, reinforcing the heavy atmosphere aboard the Colony Ship. This nuanced design helps the setting resonate with players exploring every corner.

Character portraits also deserve praise, capturing compelling expressions and personality at the outset. The starting portraits available to players feel thoughtfully chosen. However, recurring NPC portraits sometimes clash wildly with their in-game models, which can jar the overall immersion, especially for players who like to scrutinize details closely.

Still, these few mismatches don’t overshadow the overall visual tone, which supports the game’s gritty sci-fi narrative well.

The problem was that some of the repeated portraits for the characters were extremely different to the character models in the game, and since I liked to zoom in to look at every little detail, this did ruin the immersion a bit.

Gameplay in Colony Ship will strongly appeal to fans of tactical CRPG combat and more nuanced stealth elements, both drenched in that signature Iron Tower challenge. While initially frustrating, the combat rewards mastery and creative strategies, though RNG mechanics occasionally disrupt the flow.

For players familiar with The Age of Decadence, the gameplay framework feels comfortably familiar but remains deeply engaging. Early on, you can recruit a stealth-specialized companion while others focus on combat, allowing multiple build styles.

Crafting a charismatic and intelligent character to excel in persuasion and skills opens many dialogue options, yet pairing that with rifle proficiency keeps combat viable and dynamic.

This hybrid build proved highly effective for me, smoothly navigating both social encounters and battles until late in the campaign, where enemy prowess spikes significantly.

Contrary to appearing easy, Colony Ship is punishing by design, especially on the normal “Underdog” difficulty. Without meticulously optimized builds, combat encounters can quickly become a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds.

Even when you’ve mastered mechanics, random critical hits can abruptly end confrontations, underscoring the tension and uncertainty inherent in turn-based battles here.

Thankfully, combat is seldom mandatory, as stealth and dialogue paths offer viable alternatives throughout most of the game. This design choice lets you tailor your approach, letting combat enthusiasts shine or stealth lovers bypass fights entirely.

Story-wise, the game’s initial setup grabs attention with sociopolitical intrigue aboard a ship far from Earth. You quickly face factional conflict and must make impactful decisions about power distribution.

However, as the narrative progresses, it tends to lose momentum. Near the end I found myself skimming dialogue just to move forward, signaling a dip in engagement.

The game immerses you in a tangled struggle among three main factions: an authoritarian group focused on the original colony mission, a rebel anarcho-democratic union, and a Christian theocracy, each vying for control and influence.

You, an ordinary colonist, get caught between these forces after discovering a coveted special item that all factions seek, forcing you into difficult loyalties.

While this central role avoids the typical “chosen one” trope, it comes at the cost of limited agency since you can’t forge your own faction and must choose sides without full understanding.

This results in a narrative where none of the factions feel truly likable or wholly trustworthy, nudging you toward a secret fourth faction through clever manipulation and backstabbing, though this arc can feel underdeveloped.

Characters contribute little emotional weight, making it difficult to care deeply about their survival or fate beyond practical utility in combat.

Still, solid world-building and a generally satisfying conclusion kept me invested, even if predictability somewhat dulled the impact.

Still, the worldbuilding was really good and I can say was invested in the ending, even though it was a bit predictable.

Choices are undeniably the backbone of Colony Ship, delivering the high and low points of the experience. On the gameplay side, many encounters can be approached through multiple solutions, rewarding creative thinking and skill specialization.

However, some fights with monsters are unavoidable, usually for obtaining extra loot useful only in combat, which may frustrate stealth or diplomacy-focused players who expect alternatives everywhere.

The story’s choices often feel rushed or uninformed, as major decisions about who should control parts of the ship happen with limited background, leaving players guessing about consequences.

When it comes to story choices, I felt like many of them were uneducated choices. Besides a couple of times where I just had to choose to risk my life to save someone or run away, it felt like I knew nothing about what was going on and I still had to make a choice no matter what. During multiple times in the game you will have to choose who rules large sections of the ship.