Not as fun as a Beer Run

Space Run isn't very shy about drawing influence from the board game Galaxy Trucker. It has the same kinds of tiles (lasers, missiles, thrusters, shields, generators, cargo...) and the same basic mechanics of attack and defense (asteroids or enemies coming from specific angles).

And while it's cool to see these ideas play out in real-time, what made me tire of Space Run was the same thing that makes Galaxy Trucker irritatingly challenging: there just isn't enough room on your ship to do a good job. Turrets get in the way of other turrets. Forced trade-offs between thrust speed and rear-facing defense. Higher-powered structures take up a huge amount of space. Like its board game inspiration, it isn't really possible to build a robust, adaptable ship; you need to configure it for specific threat vectors (and, frequently, tear down and reconfigure for new attacks).

There's also a grinding problem: Engineering upgrades are expensive, and you're not going to have enough money to keep up with the upgrade curve just by passing each mission. The game seems to expect you to replay old missions in order to earn upgrade money -- missions which are, as far as I saw, pretty boring once you've done them the first time.

Space Run manages a fresh take on the Galaxy Trucker premise, and its lighthearted flavor text is a nice touch, too. But its flaws made me bored with it before very long.

Better than: Battle Group 2
Not as good as: Kingdom Rush
Props to the voice acting, too: And un-props for the spelling and grammar errors.

Progress: 38 Reputation