SpaceEngine

“Gameplay is not the best and can be kinda boring sometimes; overall, it's good but lacks depth.”

“If you need objective-oriented, progressive gameplay, this is not going to do anything for you.”

“The devs have long since abandoned the gameplay aspect; it's just the premier planetarium on the market as far as I'm aware.”

“All while listening to some not very inspiring 1980s - mid-'90s synth music.”

“Music is a bit much, but can easily be disabled.”

“And sometimes it's very stressful when you're playing alone, especially when you're close to a black hole, the very depressing background music will definitely make your adrenaline rush, very immersive feeling.”

“The game is essentially a viewer for various stellar bodies and there is no instruction on how to navigate or move around space nor is there any type of storyline or mission-driven achievements.”

“However, I can't call this a game, no story, no search or cause.”

“Most games don't even get close and not because there is some intense story or because it's a real scary horror game.”

“The bug I spoke of a few days ago has spread deeper causing texture glitches everywhere even in the solar system. Planets first render as blurry then turn into 'texture-less' atmospheres that you go through under the ground. This has severely affected gameplay despite a full cache and config reset.”

“It kills the fun of discovering new planets because you never know if the environment you’re seeing is actually plausible or just a bugged atmosphere.”

“Every time I enter our solar system and then try to view any planets, it's just blank. There are atmosphere colors but other than that, it's empty with no surface texture, even if I load a user-created save that clearly shows a planet's textures.”

“After 7 years, the app is not optimized: menu functions stop working, UI glitches appear partially off-screen, objects disappear, selection stops responding, and it always ends in a crash.”

“So do not buy this unless you have a good system. Although I have a decent PC that can run many games at high 1080p, this is poorly optimized.”

“The performance is abysmal; the engine can't load textures properly or in a timely manner (unlike its predecessors), and I can't get it to look the way I want because graphic settings are missing.”

“Edit: the bug I spoke of a few days ago has spread deeper causing texture glitches everywhere even in the solar system. Planets are first rendered as blurry, then turn into 'texture-less' atmospheres that you go through under the ground. This has severely affected gameplay. I have recently done a full cache and config reset. If you could reply and give me instructions on how to reset these bugs, it would be greatly appreciated, but you may have to explain in simpler terms as I am a computer noob.”

“I understand this game is early access, but I do have a problem with game stability. Sometimes the game freezes when I exit to the main menu, and I've encountered significant bugs such as stars showing up black, getting close to certain big moons turns them black, or sometimes the entire object all together is black. I saw Saturn was blue one time, and I consistently see Earth show up without land. Sometimes the surface resolution doesn't increase as I get closer, and sometimes I go through the surface.”

“Everything about this program is low quality; the lighting is simple lightmaps; the textures are quite basic; there are no plants or even primitive life (beyond one of the aforementioned textures, small identical Earth flowers); water is just a single animated texture thrown at a certain elevation; the procedural generator is boring and 'samey' and uses a simple randomizer rather than real procedural generation; the menus are janky and buggy; the star search function is a laugh; the program crashes for no reason all the time; some of the basic menu settings don't save between sessions or sometimes between mouse clicks; the 'flight sim' is just a moving camera with an attached 3d model; there is no collisions, ongoing events, supernova, or anything beyond a static universe with basic orbital rotations.”

“You'll need a second life for grinding.”

“This is what I wanted to do in Elite Dangerous, but I got tired of the pirates and the grinding.”

“No more grinding in Elite Dangerous to have great astronomical vistas.”

“It can be very nice visually, real interstellar type stuff, but there is like no replayability to it. Despite how good it looks, I was expecting more detail, especially with the free HD packs for the planets. Overall, I just don't really see the value. I also expected more functionality, especially in a game called Space 'Engine'.”

“It's amazing looking at all the planets of the solar system and beyond; however, one thing that I dislike is the fact that it isn't very replayable.”

“-- replay value --”

“Made many videos on it, however this cash grab with a mechanic that was promised and not delivered is a fast.”

“Track to see failing on Steam by its fans who see how much this is just a cash grab.”