Rebel Galaxy

Rebel Galaxy is nearly perfect in every way. It provides the perfect mix of player choice, balance, and challenge for fans of space combat games who don't mind the lack of 3D flight.

Space games sure seem to be a hot commodity these days. You have Elite: Dangerous for your exploration and dogfighting, FTL: Faster than Light and its DLCs for your rogue-likes, Star Citizen for all of your hopes and dreams of what you want a space game to be, and a dozen others to cover the various other aspects of life in space. But there aren’t many that focus on fast paced capitol ship battles. Enter Rebel Galaxy, a space western (think Firefly) with capitol ships that handle similar to pirate ships. With such a large number of recent space games, I’m always skeptical of the newcomers. I c...

In some ways it’s a bare-bones game, but in the proud tradition of classics like Wing Commander: Privateer and Freelancer, Rebel Galaxy makes a lot out of a little by giving you the freedom to captain your ship as you please and pursue your own fortune in a region of space loaded with pirates and opportunity. While it's not as deep as it first appears, fun and fast naval-style combat and a vast explorable galaxy made me want to try out each of its different styles of captaining, and kept me happily blasting away.

When we first heard about Rebel Galaxy, from Torchlight creators Erich Schaefer and Travis Baldree at their new studio Double Damage, we were floored. How could we not be excited about a procedural space-faring single-player RPG adventure with a full economy, factional warfare system storyline, and endless replayability? Turns out, our hunch was right and Rebel Galaxy is one hell of a game. But it won’t be for everyone. Read on for our review.

Rebel Galaxy has a ton of style and an incredible atmosphere that captures the weird little subgenre of space western to wonderful effect. But its repetitive combat and focus on trucking across the galaxy means that it’s not as exciting as it could be. There’s a lot to like, but you’ve got to work for it.

Rebel Galaxy simplifies the formula in an approachable and exciting way, but the 2D space combat, lack of direction and loneliness of single-player space-faring hold it back from reaching the epic scale of other space sims. A fun solo venture, but it won’t suck out thousands of your hours.

With Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens on the horizon, plenty of fans are left daydreaming how'd they make a living in deep space. If you've ever wondered what Han Solo might have been up to before he met Luke and Obi-Wan in a certain Mos Eisley cantina, Rebel Galaxy does its best to deliver that fantasy but suffers from stretches of repetition.

PC version reviewed. Copy provided by developer.

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It doesn’t really do a lot more than what Elite achieved over 30 years ago, but this is a fun and accessible, if rather repetitive, space trading game.

At face value, Rebel Galaxy is an entertaining arcade slugging match with controls simple enough to be picked up by newer players and customisation options appealing to the completionist. With its bombastic cowboy rock soundtrack and Wild West aesthetic, it's certain to provide a few hours of interesting content. However, the longer you play, the more the cracks appear, with the whole thing eventually becoming a grind with more than a fair share of bugs helping the game to feel overly unforgiving and unfair. Time will tell if these issues get fixed but for the moment, Rebel Galaxy is several l...

What is a fair critique is that, ultimately, none of it matters very much. As I said, the state of your ship is what keeps you going. You fight more to earn more to buy more. In this way it is a very transparent game. But also a repetitive one, and overall, a mixed bag. I know a game is not capturing me when, as a reviewer, I keep checking my "hours played" stat on Steam to see if I can fairly say: "OK, that's enough". Still, I recognise there are always those who want more space sauce, who won't mind fighting on a 2D plane, and who will be much more possessed by upgrading their own "Wobblenau...