SGJ Podcast #71: Elite Clones for Your Space Trading Needs

Surprisingly Pretty

Say you wanna play in the open playground that is Elite: Dangerous, but don’t want to shell out $75 for the beta version. You’re in luck, my friend, because this week Jim and I take a look at some of the open-source Elite alternatives that cost significantly less (or nothing at all) yet still scratch the same type of itch as Elite: Dangerous. These include:

Oolite – This free clone of the original Elite has over 200 mods one can download in the game to make it more expansive or appealing, but we found the difficulty to be a bit on the brutal side. Still a good time if you want that original Elite experience.
Pioneer – This free clone of Frontier: Elite II has an expansive universe and detailed gameplay, and I was quite enamored with it, at least until…
Paragon – This is a $15 fork of the Pioneer project, and comes with prettier graphics, more streamlined gameplay and a more alive universe. While this is the only one of the games we tested that cost moneys, we found it was worth it, as both of us (especially me) have put a good amount of time into it since purchasing it. It’s still early access, so it’s got bugs (like a sometimes-suicidal autopilot) and crashes here and there, but overall, it’s a great time.
First Encounters D3D – This is a free port of the third (and worst) game in the original series, Frontier: First Encounters. Since we couldn’t even get this game to run on the stream, and found it as cumbersome as the original, we skipped it, but I put it here for your reference.

It made for a fun show, especially in the surprise discovery of Paragon, which I sadly forgot about until we were rolling. ;)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:48 — 40.8MB)

As always, if you have a suggestion for a guest or a topic you’d like us to cover, hit us up below or directly at hail@spacegamejunkie.com. Also of note, the video had some issues as we were streaming, both with my audio and with the Twitch cutting out a few times. YouTube can stitch videos together, but it still might be a bit jarring, so please keep that in mind if watching the video. Thanks again!

Brian Rubin