Defect

About

"Defect" is a single-player Science Fiction Strategy game offering 30+ hours of playtime. As a captain, design powerful ships to complete missions, but ensure to build in a weakness for future battles when your crew defects. With 180+ components, create epic-scale ships, exploit designs, and upload successful ones to fight the community's best. The dynamic music system creates a unique musical theme based on your ship's components.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player Play through the game's story or campaign solo

73%

Audience ScoreBased on 90 reviews

story24 positive mentions

music3 negative mentions

The ship building mechanic is fun and allows for a high degree of customization, making it enjoyable for players who love designing and tinkering with their creations.
The core concept of fighting your own previous ship adds a unique twist to the gameplay, encouraging strategic thinking in ship design.
The game offers a variety of missions and challenges, providing hours of replayability and a satisfying progression system.

The controls can be frustrating and unresponsive, making it difficult to navigate and aim effectively during missions.
The game suffers from a steep difficulty curve, with some missions requiring grinding and backtracking to unlock necessary equipment, which can feel tedious.
The interface and mission design can be cumbersome, with slow restarts after failures and unskippable cutscenes that disrupt the flow of gameplay.

story
204 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
83%
5%
The story in the game is minimal and serves primarily as a backdrop for the gameplay mechanics, which revolve around designing ships and battling them in missions. While some writing is entertaining, the narrative lacks depth and is often overshadowed by repetitive mission structures and cumbersome controls. Overall, players appreciate the clever concept of fighting their own ships but feel that the story does not significantly enhance the experience.
- “Defect is a clever idea - a constant cycle of 'design a ship and then fight it', with a steady flow of new equipment opening up, and increasingly challenging missions to complete (all ending with you fighting your old vessel).”
- “The core mechanic of fighting your own previous ship is clever, and part and weapon variety is significant, and the game contains a variety of missions testing your ship's ability in different specializations.”
- “The game focuses on you building ships to complete various missions; however, you may be tempted to make the best ship, and that's where Defect is unique: you fight your own ships.”
- “The other big issue, given how easy it is to die, and the need to grind, is how irritatingly slow it is to get back into a mission - back to the mission select, click launch, watch the setup cutscene, watch your ship warp in, click through the multiple text boxes of 'story' while the camera zooms in and out multiple times and finally, you'll be able to fly.”
- “The core mechanic is that you build a ship, do one mission, and then it gets taken away, and you have to build a new ship to do exactly one mission and then fight your old ship.”
- “Some of the writing is kind of entertaining, but for all intents and purposes there isn’t really a story.”
gameplay
44 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
32%
59%
9%
The gameplay is generally enjoyable, featuring smooth mechanics and a clever core concept of battling your previous ship, which adds strategic depth. While the ship-building aspect is particularly praised, some players note a difficulty spike and poor explanations of mechanics, which can detract from the experience. Overall, for its price, the game offers a fun and polished experience, though it may not be a standout in the space combat genre.
- “The core mechanic of fighting your own previous ship is clever, and part and weapon variety is significant, and the game contains a variety of missions testing your ship's ability in different specializations.”
- “The ship building mechanic is a whole lot of fun, and it makes me wish that they'd gone with a survival mechanic instead of the mission mechanic - survive, destroy enemy ships, gather salvage, upgrade your ship.”
- “The gameplay, graphics, and audio all fit the top-down shooter genre perfectly.”
- “The weakest component of the gameplay, in my opinion, is without doubt the space combat.”
- “The ship design itself is okay, although the game does a very poor job of explaining the mechanics.”
- “The final fight mechanic is a bit undermined by bad controls and limited AI, but I still appreciate it because it forces you to design against two constraints - the requirements of the mission and the ship you last designed.”
graphics
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
55%
15%
The game's graphics are generally praised for their beauty and polish, particularly in ship design, with a vibrant art style that enhances the overall experience. While some reviewers note that the graphics can be basic and occasionally over-saturated, they still contribute positively to the smooth gameplay and fit well within the top-down shooter genre. Overall, players find the graphics to be a strong aspect of the game, especially considering its early access status.
- “Graphically, the game is pretty, and it's possible to design some gorgeous ships. The pretty screenshots of spaceships are beautiful, aren't they?”
- “I love the graphic style and the freedom you have in ship building.”
- “Very polished for an early access title, great art style, funny writing, in-depth ship creation, and challenging missions.”
- “The graphics are relatively basic, but that is all that they really need to be.”
- “However, the developers did go a little overboard with the neon and the over-saturation of the graphics.”
- “Graphically, the game is pretty, and it's possible to design some gorgeous ships, but you see all these pretty screenshots of spaceships above - beautiful, aren't they?”
humor
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is well-received, with players appreciating its clever writing and entertaining sci-fi references. Reviewers note that the humor goes beyond typical clichés, offering genuinely funny moments that enhance the overall experience. Overall, the game's comedic elements contribute positively to its polished presentation and engaging gameplay.
- “Very polished for an early access title, great art style, funny writing, in-depth ship creation, and challenging missions.”
- “The game is actually funny.”
- “Defect manages to cram in ship building, action, humor, and even David Bowie.”
music
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
10%
60%
30%
The game's music is praised for its dynamic nature, adapting from soft melodies to intense tracks as players engage in combat, enhancing the overall experience. Additionally, players can create custom music tracks by placing components on their ships, adding a unique personal touch. However, there are occasional reports of music glitches that detract from the experience.
- “I really liked the dynamic music in the game; as you’re playing a mission, the music will be relatively soft in the beginning, but as you fight more and more enemies it gets more intense.”
- “There was one time where I think the music messed up; if that wasn’t a bug, then that was some horrible sounding music.”
- “There was one time where I think the music messed up; if that wasn’t a bug, then that was some horrible sounding music.”
- “Something really interesting (and I found this out after I had recorded my sneak peek), when you are placing components to the ship, you are actually creating the completely custom music track that will play while you are flying it.”
grinding
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players express frustration with the grinding aspect of the game, particularly when faced with unexpectedly powerful bosses that necessitate grinding through completed missions to acquire better equipment. This requirement can lead to a tedious experience, especially regarding ship redesigns.
- “Then, out of nowhere, the game requires that you 'defeat these two way overpowered bosses to progress', which forces explicit grinding of the completed missions to unlock better weaponry.”
- “One thing I was worried about was having to redesign your ship over and over, and I thought it would be very tedious.”
replayability
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
The game offers high replayability due to its engaging difficulty and the challenge of surpassing one's own performance, providing hours of fun and a variety of activities. Players find it well worth the investment, as the mechanics encourage repeated playthroughs.
- “Fun, replayable, with a nice level of difficulty, and levels are always challenging thanks to having to beat your own ship. I'll admit, I can't beat my current ship yet! Hours of fun and plenty of things to do; it's well worth the 6 bucks.”
- “As a result of this feature, the replayability of the game is extended.”
atmosphere
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
Reviewers note that while each ship in the game possesses a distinct mood, the overall atmosphere could have been significantly enhanced with quality voiceover work, which would have contributed to a more immersive experience.
- “Had the developers been able to add quality voiceover work, it would have added depth to the atmosphere and allowed for a far more immersive experience.”
- “Each ship has its own 'mood' or 'atmosphere'.”
- “Each ship has its own 'mood' or 'atmosphere'.”
optimization
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game is well-optimized, featuring good graphics and smooth performance without any noticeable slowing or stuttering reported by users.
character development
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Character development is noted for its unique and fitting art direction that aligns well with the sci-fi theme, although some players find the character designs to be somewhat unconventional. Overall, the distinctiveness of the designs is appreciated by many.

Buy Defect

Defect
$5.99
See offer on Steam

30h Median play time

30h Average play time

30-30h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 2 analyzed playthroughs

Videos

75%167reviews

BossConstructor

2016

Role Playing

74%221reviews

War Tech Fighters

2018

Shooter

95%6.8kreviews

Cosmoteer

2022

Real-time Strategy

78%4kreviews

Space Pirates And Zombies 2

2017

Role Playing

78%643reviews

Battlevoid: Harbinger

2016

Casual Simulation

81%1.2kreviews

Space Run

2014

Strategy

90%1.9kreviews

Star Valor

2022

Open World Role Playing

45%616reviews

Meridian: New World

2014

Real-time Strategy

80%9.6kreviews

Everspace

2017

Arcade Shooter

65%237reviews

Distant Star: Revenant Fleet

2015

Strategy

Defect

Platforms

About

Buy Defect

Defect

Videos

Games Like Defect

BossConstructor

War Tech Fighters

Cosmoteer

Space Pirates And Zombies 2

Battlevoid: Harbinger

Space Run

Star Valor

Meridian: New World

Everspace

Distant Star: Revenant Fleet