Earlier this week, I picked up Marauder Interactive's early access game, House of the Dying Sun. This tactical space sim definitely had a sense of style to it that wasn't quite pushing me over the edge until I saw it in action. It took watching Giant Bomb's Unfinished look at the game to really double down on it, but I was legitimately impressed with what I saw.

While it doesn't seem to entirely deliver on the super-tactical elements, it provides a scratch to an itch I didn't realize I had that was somewhere in the vein of the old Rogue Squadron games. The flight itself is pretty arcade-like and never really demands too much from the player beyond the occasional drift through space after cutting the engines. Commanding your fleet that you build up over time is fairly simple: if using the gamepad, the D-pad is viable to order all of your fighters or all of your larger capital ships to perform certain actions (cover, attack, defend, bomb, etc.). If you're looking for a more micromanaged sort of order set, you can enter the tactical view by hitting back on the gamepad, at which point the game will allow you to pause in order to consider your next move. All units, friend and foe, are displayed here and actions can be assigned on an individual ship level. It's a mechanic that seems like it would be more useful or necessary than it is. By the end of the game, your fleet is upgraded and outfitted in such a way that generally the most effective course of action is the Halo Wars "All Units" style of approach and systematically destroying your foes one at a time.

It's a bit light on content. As of this writing, I've already completed the game after clocking about two and a half hours with a few achievements and upgrades left to unlock. They make up for the lack of content by trying to bolster it with replayability. At any time, the game allows you to reset the universe in the options menu so that you can start the game over from scratch. The difficulties themselves aren't... the most well balanced. From the very start of missions it will be apparent if you're properly equipped to handle it. This leads to situations where you occasionally coast through on the easiest difficulty, reap the upgrade to your fleet from the missions and then jump back in on a higher difficulty. Completing the optional objectives on the missions will award you with Favor, which is traded in return for varying ship upgrades, such as different armor to reduce damage from flak, shield piercing ammunition, or the one I found most useful throughout, armor piercing ammunition, allowing your ships to burn through the dangerous capitals ships and weapons platforms throughout the game. All in all, there's plenty of reasons to go back through and continue playing the game, but it's fairly easy at some point to have seen all there is to see in about five or six hours.

For what it lacks in content it does make up for in spades with style. The audio design is truly next level. It really encapsulates what it feels like the vacuum of space would be. Flak and autocannons thud bassily through your speakers in a muted fashion that just hits that hard to place mark. Radio chatter is constant and nigh incomprehensible... save for when they begin counting down the arrival of a Traitor Flagship and letting you officially know you've been there too long and it is time to extract.

The lore is reminiscent of Warhammer 40,000 in a fashion. The Emperor is dead, an individual who has reigned for thousands of years. You play as his proclaimed Dragon, a being capable of inhabiting the bodies of other, lending credence to the mechanic of jumping between your fleet's single pilot Interceptors. Your mission is simple: Hunt down the Traitor Lords and bring ruin to their people. It's dark, it's dreary, and there is no honor in it. Civilians are not collateral damage in these missions: more often than not, they're targets if not liabilities. The game liberally throws around the terms "Purge" and "Heretics" when referencing the rebels who have overthrown the Emperor's regime. The story itself is fairly barebones, giving you just enough of a hint of what's going on in the universe to crave more but never quite get it. This sparsity is used effectively in the end game however, and a choice you make can quite literally recontextualize your actions and motivations throughout the game.

All in all I'm excited for them to finish up the game and put it out for real. The developer has stated more or less that the only thing remaining to add will be a wave-based survival mode and that it is feature and content complete. Unfortunate, given my desire to want to spend many more hours with that game in a fulfilling fashion, but I've really enjoyed my time with it thus far regardless. Given it's current sale, it's hard not to recommend it.

Edit: As a person who has no reasonable means to play VR, I can only speculate as to the quality. Given how incredible the rest of the game feels outside of it, this seems like it would be a must-play software addition to the VR lineup.