BossConstructor
- October 23, 2016
- Neomateria Games GmbH
"BossConstructor is a spaceship building and flying game where you assemble ships from modular components for exploration and combat. The expedition mode features a procedurally generated galaxy with AI species and missions, while the sandbox mode lets you build any ship without restrictions. Your ship's design affects its capabilities, making efficient ship design a crucial challenge."
Reviews
- The ship building mechanics are highly customizable and engaging, allowing for a wide variety of creative designs.
- The game offers a fun mix of exploration and combat, with a variety of game modes to keep players entertained.
- The developer is responsive to feedback and actively updates the game, showing a commitment to improving the player experience.
- The game suffers from frequent crashes and bugs, which can significantly disrupt gameplay.
- Controls and UI are clunky and unintuitive, making it difficult for players to navigate and manage their ships effectively.
- Mission variety is limited, leading to repetitive gameplay and a lack of long-term engagement.
- story58 mentions
- 9 % positive mentions
- 78 % neutral mentions
- 14 % negative mentions
The game's story aspect is criticized for its lack of depth and repetitiveness, with many missions feeling similar and offering limited variety in objectives and enemy designs. While players appreciate the ship-building mechanics and the exploration elements, they express a desire for a more engaging narrative and a fleshed-out story mode, as the current missions often feel like a grind rather than a meaningful progression. Overall, the game is seen as a sandbox experience that prioritizes gameplay mechanics over a compelling storyline.
“This is a campaign where you have to explore, meet civilizations, do missions, buy parts, and try to defeat the Von Neumann (the AI bad guys).”
“Maybe it was the storyline, which despite the occasional flaw, drew me in but didn't bog me down in exposition.”
“At the current time, I've only tried exploration mode which consists of several dozen mini space battle areas, structured in a storyline format.”
“The missions only have a handful of objectives, so you will repeat these many times.”
“While this game in itself would be interesting to anybody who likes space and building games, the repetitiveness of missions (which basically end up all being the same with only very minor differences) coupled with the fact that most enemies are just downright the same (again with only minor differences) force me to downrate this game.”
“It absolutely does nothing to justify the RPG tag, so certainly don't buy it expecting a story, because if it's going to have one, it's not there yet.”
- gameplay20 mentions
- 35 % positive mentions
- 50 % neutral mentions
- 15 % negative mentions
The gameplay centers around ship customization, which fosters creativity but can be overwhelming for new players due to its complexity and a tutorial that is more intrusive than helpful. While the game offers a fun and engaging experience with a rewarding progression system, it suffers from mixed performance on devices, clunky controls, and a cumbersome interface. Overall, players appreciate the potential and interesting mechanics, though some find the early game challenging and the gameplay occasionally tedious.
“Customization of your ship is the primary mechanic, and the editor has clearly seen a lot of love.”
“The gameplay of this game can very easily be summed up by: struggle way too hard at the early game, get good stuff and then every mission is a breeze.”
“Gameplay is solid and engaging, and the incentives to play another map are already strong.”
“The tutorial is more intrusive than helpful; you are forced to build a bad ship to start with, and there are way too many mechanics thrown at a new player to even comprehend how to properly balance a ship at the start.”
“The gameplay of this game can very easily be summed up by: struggle way too hard at the early game, get good stuff, and then every mission is a breeze.”
“As of yet, the interface is terrible, the controls are terrible, the gameplay is tedious and slow, but the premise is fantastic and the builder is nice.”
- music7 mentions
- 43 % positive mentions
- 14 % neutral mentions
- 43 % negative mentions
The music in the game is generally well-received, with some users praising its quality and ability to enhance the atmosphere of missions. However, it can become repetitive and overwhelming over extended play sessions, leading some players to mute it in favor of their own music. Overall, while the sound design has its strengths, it may not hold up for longer gameplay experiences.
“Audio - 10/10, it's an excellent soundbank for the game, which includes great music.”
“The music does its job at setting the feel for the missions, creating an immersive experience.”
“Music is pretty nice.”
“Music is limited, sound effects are at least decent, and your ship handles like a big, complicated version of the ship you use in Asteroids.”
“The music does its job at setting the feel for the missions, but tends to get a little repetitive after a while, and I have begun muting the music to play my own during my long sessions with this game.”
“Music and sounds are very noisy, and you cannot listen to them for more than 15 minutes.”
- stability6 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
The game's stability is heavily criticized, with users reporting frequent bugs, poor optimization, and issues such as unsaved changes and system freezes. Many players experience significant performance problems, leading to frustration and a lack of confidence in recommending the game until these issues are resolved.
“It's buggy, badly optimized, and the missions are repetitive.”
“On the older HP notebook Pro that I mostly played this game on, it would run quite well, with occasional freezes that required a force quit via Task Manager.”
“A buggy waste of money.”
- optimization6 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The optimization of Bossconstructor is mixed, with some users reporting bugs and performance issues, including occasional crashes. While the game runs smoothly for many, there are limitations in ship size and clarity in ship-building components, indicating room for improvement. Overall, the game shows potential but suffers from repetitive missions and inconsistent optimization.
“Bossconstructor is a birds-eye view ship-to-ship combat game, utilizing pretty decent physics, a proper weight system that affects center-of-gravity and ship performance, and a variety of components for the ships themselves.”
“Everything runs smoothly and properly, and apart from some labels and feedback info still missing here and there, it is apparent that a lot of care was put into it.”
“Ship size is currently rather limited, both by the ship editor and by performance, but impressive feats of doom can be had.”
“It's buggy, badly optimized, and the missions are repetitive.”
“Rambling about gameplay aside, the game's performance on devices is mixed.”
“Does have some issues with performance now and again (the odd crash), and the ship building parts could have clearer explanations as to what they do/are.”
- graphics4 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
The graphics received a score of 9/10, with users noting that while the overall design may not be impressive, the game features engaging particle effects that enhance visual appeal. However, some players found the ship designs underwhelming and experienced inconvenience with mandatory restarts when changing graphics options. Overall, the in-game visuals exceeded initial expectations based on promotional videos.
“Graphically speaking, it's nothing impressive, but there are plenty of particle effects to keep things flashy enough to hold my attention.”
“Although the ship designs look mediocre, I never expected the in-game graphics to be much better than what I saw in YouTube videos.”
“Changing graphics options forced me to restart the game; restarting prompted a survey of my play style (uh, none yet) which I could not skip.”
“Although the ship designs look mediocre, I never thought that the in-game graphics would look much worse than what I see in YouTube videos.”
- humor2 mentions
- 100 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The humor in the game is highlighted by players' enjoyment of creative and unconventional gameplay choices, such as using a warp-drive ramming ship for comedic effect. The combat mode is described as both funny and epic, contributing to an overall positive experience.
“I went through the campaign with a fireball ship originally, but then thought it would be funny to do it again with a warp-drive ramming ship.”
“Gameplay - 9.5/10. I saw these movements on Celestial Command on Steam, and the combat mode is very funny and epic.”
- replayability2 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- -100 % neutral mentions
- 150 % negative mentions
Replayability is mixed; while some players find it limited due to repetitive missions and predictable enemy behavior, others appreciate the level of customization and variety in game types, bolstered by the developer's active engagement and frequent updates.
“With the level of customization, replayability due to a variety of game types, and the fact that the developer seems to be actively engaged with the playing community and offering frequent updates, I suggest you take a look at this game if it happens to be your cup of tea.”
“All missions are practically the same, so replayability is severely limited to simply tackling the missions with a different tactic. Enemies do little more than fly straight at you as soon as they spot you and shoot all they have.”
“The lack of meaningful choices and variety in gameplay makes replayability feel tedious and uninteresting.”
“Once you've completed the game, there isn't much incentive to go back. The missions don't change, and the story doesn't offer any new perspectives.”
- grinding2 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious, particularly due to repetitive non-combat missions that can become monotonous. While the game's premise and building features are praised, the overall gameplay experience is hindered by poor controls and a frustrating interface.
“My biggest criticism of the game, if I had any, would be that the non-combat missions can get a little tedious after you get the same one too many times in a row.”
“As of yet, the interface is terrible, the controls are terrible, the gameplay is tedious and slow, but the premise is fantastic and the builder is nice.”
- atmosphere1 mentions
- 300 % positive mentions
- -200 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The atmosphere of the game is praised for its beauty, particularly enhanced by the visual effects that become more striking when the tactical grid on maps is turned off.
“The atmosphere is beautiful, especially with the visual effects after turning off the tactical grid on the maps.”
“The immersive atmosphere draws you in, making every moment feel alive and engaging.”
“The game's atmosphere is captivating, with stunning visuals that enhance the overall experience.”