ΔV: Rings of Saturn – Spotlight

We get excited when a game is able to do more. Anyone who has played a video game on the basis of “and you can x and you can y, wouldn’t it be cool if you could Z as well?” knows the feeling.

Rings of Saturn is still a work in progress, especially in terms of its promised narrative. Nonetheless, the core of flying through dangerous space and devouring rocks is already calming and almost hypnotic.

I often make the assumption that a game about space travel will include combat, trading, and other such features. You can float around and occasionally change your course, or thrust and rotate back and forth in just the right increments to peacefully accelerate after an errant chunk of ore, without needing to do that. I’d use an afterburner to snatch it in another game. The physics model in Triangle V Colon Rings is realistic, and there is no need to rush. As soon as I’ve figured out my trajectory, I can sit back and watch as my ship, which is travelling at a speed just a little faster than the ore, drifts up to it, opens its maw, and then closes it again.

That’s what it’s all about, really. In asteroid fields, you open rocks and eat the ones that are most valuable. It’s possible that you’ll come across something else to sell at the station at some point in time. It’s possible for troublemakers to target you. We need to make upgrades and hire new employees as well as make important business decisions. But most of all, it’s the most tedious and uninteresting part of every other space game transformed into a fun physics game.