Welcome to Space Empires: Starfury my friends! This game is a single-starship trading and combat game that takes place in the same universe as the Space Empires 4X strategy games. It came out in 2003 to little fanfare, and Freelancer pretty much stole any thunder it likely hoped to have, since it’s likely the better game. Regardless, when this came out, I shoved it aside and barely touched it. I’ve decided to revisit to see if, hey, maybe it’s not so bad. While the game gets off to something of a bumpy start — So. Much. Reading. — it begins to get a groove with missions and some combat. I might actually begin to…I dunno…enjoy myself?!
This was originally released as something of a tech demo for the 3d engine that would be in Space Empires 5. Something to give the modding community a head start on designing ships.
As you say, it came out to very little fanfare, and very few people in the SE4 community ever played it. Even so, it developed something of a following of its own. There were a number of mods made for it, some of them almost total overhauls. I always thought that I might search them out and try them some time…
But I probably never will. Thanks for playing this one so I don’t have to. I always wanted to be able to cross it off my list, but because it had good recommendations from some of the SE4 crew, I wanted to give it a fare shake.
I’m here to take a bullet for ya. ;)