Thank You Peter Tkačov for providing us with a review code!

The vast emptiness of space can captivate almost anyone, so it’s no surprise that tons of media are based on what could be out there. A single developer by the name of Peter Tkačov tried his hand at a space simulator called Towards the Stars. The general plot to get the ball rolling is that a group of surviving humans are fleeing their planet after a meteorite has hit it and made it uninhabitable. Their goal is to explore the solar system to find a new place that they can call home.

However, life in space is far more dangerous than one will find on any planet. Between the thousands to millions of miles of nothing are asteroid belts, vicious space storms, intense temperatures, and black holes. All the while you have to make sure your crew is sustained enough through fuel, energy, and life support to live. The majority of the gameplay loop consists of salvaging materials from asteroids to keep your crew alive while slowly building more facilities and parts to make space travel a little easier.

There is a huge hurdle that one must overcome, and that is the controls. Because of the zero gravity setting, piloting this ship takes quite some time to learn. You use the A and D keys to turn left and right in a 360-degree motion, and the space bar to move forward. Moving isn’t immediate and you’ll keep moving in the direction unless you push in the opposite direction. Using the thrusters takes precision and accuracy. Too much will offset your course or even cause you to crash into an asteroid. Navigation is also key to landing on asteroids to mine materials as you have to slow yourself to a point where the bridge parts come out and let you safely land.

Unfortunately, there are issues with the cameras when moving. with how the camera functions, it’s more like everything moves around your ship instead of the other way around. By default, whenever your ship turns, the camera turns with it. The constant swirling and circular motions can cause motion sickness—I even started to feel it after a while. You can turn it off in the options to have the camera stationary, but I found certain things such as landing to be less accurate with the alternative camera. In a way, it was a “pick your poison” as there was a downside no matter which option I chose.

The gameplay does evolve as you explore other solar systems and you’ll eventually gain missiles and guns to target and blow up other hostile ships. You’ll also build more things to protect your crew such as cryosleep to preserve your crew mates, and hyperdrive to warp to other places (while also saving your progress). Even the option for reproduction is available if you so choose. Your crew does age and eventually die after all, so someone has to take their place. However, the childbirth mechanics are very simple as they occasionally happen every time faster-than-light travel happens and you have no option to pair crew members together.

An additional local multiplayer exists that you can play with up to four players. You can race, participate in team deathmatch, or have a free-for-all. Various settings can be tweaked such as enabling and disabling certain weapons. It controls just like the standard game, without all the simulation aspects so if you're capable of finding like-minded people in close proximity, it can serve as a satisfactory time waster.

Towards the Stars is one of those games that was specifically made with the developer’s preferences in mind. He wanted to make the game he always dreamed of and he did. It does result in an extremely niche product. While I do like the game, it's hard for me to make a recommendation to a general audience. It has a steep learning curve, it is rather difficult even on easy, and requires extreme patience to yield rewards. But if any of this looks and sounds interesting, you may just find one great time investment.