First Looks// EGX First Looks: Affordable Space Adventure, Chaos Ride, Devouring Stars

Visually Chaos Ride bears a remarkable resemblance to Pod; a game from 1997 that had you racing around a post-apocalyptic environment with similar tones of brown and grey. Chaos Ride does have tracks that are far more colourful of course, but I only experienced the green/brown/grey one; hence the comparison.

I did get the same feelings of playing Chaos Ride as I did all those years ago on Pod with difficulty ramping up quickly as play progressed.

What really marks out Chaos Ride for me is the sound. The demo at EGX 2014 had the engine roar thundering through my head as my racer hurtled through the tube. I thought it did an excellent job of allowing me to adjust where I was in the tube via directional sound techniques that ensured my speed was maintained.

Chaos Ride is a very pure racing game that does away with a lot of the added features and complexity this genre has found itself lumbered with over the past few years. It's currently out on Android and iOS too, but I played it on the PC, which is promised to be a much more refined experience when it is released later this year.


Devouring Stars by Nerial

The consumption of celestial bodies is not a common subject matter of video games, but Devouring Stars is about that very thing. The player takes on the role of a god-like being who thirsts for destruction on a universe-spanning scale. Clearly, this being has 'issues'.

Anyway, play takes place across galaxies that the player moves through as either a single entity or as a collection of beings, all the sum of the malevolent and destructive god that is consuming stars at an alarming rate. To counter this other gods who have taken issue with the player's god and their desire to consume everything, and have started fighting against it.

Devouring Stars is a very tactical game in that it requires some judgement on how to combine various beings with one another to optimise the defence and attack against the other gods. Sometimes it's beneficial to combine as a single being and through sheer force of power win the day. At other times it's better to split into smaller parts to set up traps and flanking attacks that catch the opposing gods unawares.

All of these tactics carry risks associated with them and it is up to the player to determine how to alter their modes of attack as each level/galaxy plays out.

What is most striking about Devouring Stars is its visuals. They are very simplistic as each type of entity is represented via a simple iconic shape that explains what their abilities are. These shapes can be combined together to create a hybrid between the two merged beings, which can both help and hinder the player as these non-specialist beings are not necessarily as potent as their single-function brethren.

Devouring Stars is a game that has you forgetting the world as you become entranced with munching your way across the cosmos. It is currently in Alpha and freely downloadable for you to try. So, by all means absorb a few galaxies, just don't be surprised to encounter a significant amount of resistance as you do. Devouring Stars is currently available on Windows PC and Mac.