Starbase Gunship

Starbase Gunship is a small-budget space combat game built around piloting a ship and fighting in short bursts, so the appeal is in the feel of the controls rather than in a long campaign. By our assessment, that makes it a narrow but readable pick for people who want arcade-style dogfights without a lot of systems in the way. Its strength is the simple loop: fly, shoot, survive, repeat. The downside is just as plain, because a game like this tends to run out of tricks once the basic combat is understood. In practice it lives or dies on how responsive the ship feels and how much variety the missions give you. It sits closer to an old-school action shooter than to a big space sim, with none of the buildcraft or trading layer that genre can carry. The result is something modest and straightforward, not a wide game for every mood.