INTRO:
The setting of space remains a popular backdrop to future sci-fi games to this day. The setting itself has a wondrous allure, and plenty of potential due to the possibilities that are promised by the final frontier.
Unfortunately, lofty ideas and ambitions don’t always match execution and implementation of design. Battlevoid: Harbinger is an example of this.
PREMISE:
To say that Battlevoid: Harbinger has a story would be giving it praise that it does not entirely deserve. There is an attempt at making a backdrop, e.g. multiple sapient species with different motivations, a human civilization that is just getting around to know its (horrific) neighbours, and the heroic efforts of the humans’ space navy at fighting back against their aggressors. The player character is, of course, a sterling officer of this navy. The influence of Star Trek is obvious.
That said, any attempt to have a coherent and epic story is stymied by the implementation of the writing as the excuse for run-based rogue-lite gameplay.
ROGUE-LITE:
Speaking of which, the game has rogue-lite gameplay, i.e. the player goes on runs that end with either a game-over or success; there are no re-tries or game-reloads partway through, unless the player cheats.
Yet, runs are not short. They can take several hours, depending on the player’s luck, e.g. changes in circumstances that allow the player to bypass obstacles, or get stuck on them. Speaking of luck, bad luck in the form of things that the player could not foresee can very much end runs.
PETRI DISH SPACE:
The setting of space is not that is easy to implement in gameplay. The matter of complete 3D space with no limitation to motion is a daunting thing to code for, much less taken advantage of to craft riveting but not overly complex gameplay. Thus, the simplification of space to a 2D plane is a frequent occurrence in games with gameplay that occurs in “space”. Battlevoid: Harbinger is yet another example.
Specifically, the game uses the “petri dish” variant of 2D space; the player sees everything from a top-down angle, i.e. seeing only one profile of anything in the game. The player would have to depend on recognition of silhouette shapes to determine whether something is a space vessel, drifting debris or asteroids.
THE PLAYER’S FLEET:
Despite the name of the game, the player controls a fleet instead of an immobile militarized space fortress. (That there is a notable contrast between the title of the game and the gameplay should already be a clear sign that design direction is not the developer’s forte.)
Anyway, even though the player character is the commander of a fleet, the player starts with only one vessel. There is no clear reason as to why the navy does not better equip the player from the get-go.
On the other hand, the fleet does have the ability to grow and become more powerful. Thanks to the trend of readily usable space scrap that Faster Than Light (FTL) established, fleets can be expanded by gathering enough scrap to be somehow cobbled into ships and their components; there will be more on scrap later.
ENEMY FLEETS:
It may take a while for the player to notice that there are indeed enemy fleets out and about, but they are not pointed out to the player in any tutorial. Specifically, there is no tutorial in the game that mentions the presence of red chevrons arranged together indicates the presence of enemy fleets. That said, these ships move together, and will be a threat throughout the run. There will be more on enemy fleets and ships later.
SHIPS – OVERVIEW:
Ships are the main protagonists and antagonists of what passes for combat in this game. They are made to thrash each other – something that the new player would learn quickly.
FIXED STATISTICS OF SHIPS:
For better or worse, the ships have statistics that are mostly fixed. Hull strength, i.e. their hit-points, are fixed according to their models. Their forward speeds and turning rates are fixed too. The only statistic that can be altered are their amounts of shields (i.e. ablative and automatically recoverable hit-points, as “shields” typically are in video games).
These fixed statistics are utilized as some of the differentiators between different models of ships. Ultimately though, they are not as significant as the turrets on the ships.
TURRET SLOTS:
Speaking of which, the armament of all the space vessels in the game are mounted on turrets. There are no broadsides or spine-mounted weaponry.
That said, there are two types of turret slots: sponsons, i.e. those mounted on the flanks of a ship, and dorsals, i.e. those mounted along the spine or lateral exterior of the ship. The two types of turrets also mount different types of weapons, as will be described later.
The number and arrangement of the turret slots across the exterior of the ship are the main differentiators between different models of ships. This is a significant factor to consider when choosing which ship to use; the reasons are described in the following sections.
SPONSON MOUNTS:
Sponson slots are further differentiated according to their relative location on the ship. The main differences are their arcs of firing. The slots that are near the prow of a ship cannot shoot at anything at the rear half of the ship. As for the slots that are in between the front-most and rear-most slots, they can fire at any target on their side of the ship, but not anything in front or behind the ship and certainly nothing on the other side.
Weapons that are mounted on sponsons are meant for close-in defence; they do not have much in the way of range or damage. They are intended to shoot down incoming missiles, bombs and enemy strike-craft. Still, they can shoot at enemy ships too, just to contribute a bit more to the damage exchange between opposing ships.
DORSAL MOUNTS:
Dorsal slots have full 360-degree arcs, thus allowing a ship to fire at anything within range. However, the range of each mounted weapon is measured from the mount itself, meaning that the turret that is closer to the target will fire before the ones behind it. This is important to keep in mind, if the player wants to avoid overkill or wants to balance the range of weapons that are mounted on the ship.
That said, dorsal-mounted weapons are the primary damage-dealers in the game. Hits from these can readily eliminate strike-craft, if they can land. Of course, the best targets for these weapons are the ships, most of which would be too slow to avoid even the slowest projectile, much less evade the hit-scan or fast-moving ones.
There will more on the weapons that ships can use later.
COMMANDER’S SHIP:
In the case of the player’s ships, the first one is always the player character’s ship. If this one goes down with its captain, i.e. the commander, the run ends in failure. That said, the commander’s posting is a liability; it does not grant any benefits to the ship.
The commander can survive the destruction of the ship, if it has an escape pod. However, the escape pod takes up a dorsal slot, which is not a good use of space. Furthermore, the escape pod must latch onto another ship, so that the commander can remain with the fleet; that ship then becomes the new flagship.
BIGGER IS BETTER:
Firepower is a major factor of success in runs. Consequently, the bigger ships have much better chances of success, mainly due to their ability to mount more weapons. Although the smaller ships may be faster, they are not fast enough to evade attacks reliably, and they are not tough enough to have the necessary staying power for whittling down bigger foes.
More sophisticated games with a space sci-fi setting have combat akin to combined arms, e.g. lighter ships outflank enemies while heavier ones pin them in place. That the gameplay of Battlevoid: Harbinger progresses in a manner that is simplistic is disappointing.
WEAPONS – OVERVIEW:
The weaponry sported by the ships are perhaps the only designs that show any sophistication. Even so, most of them have been seen in other games with space sci-fi settings before.
BALLISTIC WEAPONS:
Firstly, there are weapons that fire projectiles that cannot be shot down, but they require travel to the target and they can be blocked by sci-fi shields. These weapons have been generally referred to as “ballistic weapons” in video game history.
There are two archetypes of these weapons in this game: rapid-firing guns with relatively slow and low-damage shots that are intended to fill space with metal, and slower-firing ones with faster-moving shots that are intended for precision hits. Neither is truly better than the other, though the latter archetype generally have better reach.
The shots from these weapons are readily blocked by shields, and they do not inflict much damage on shields. Thus, they often have to be paired with anti-shield weapons to bring down the first layer of protection that ships have.
ENERGY WEAPONS:
Speaking of which, energy weapons are intended to be used against shields; they tend to inflict much more damage on these. However, they inflict much less damage on unprotected hulls. Otherwise, energy weapons work a lot like ballistic weapons.
MISSILE LAUNCHERS:
For whatever reason, missiles are sometimes considered as being able to bypass energy shields in games with space sci-fi settings. Excuses like missiles being too slow to trigger shields are not always acceptable.
Of course, from the perspective of gameplay balance, this is understandable; there have to be weapons that can go through shields so that shields are not functionally just ablative hit-points that can be regenerated. On the other hand, missiles can be shot down by close-in weapons.
That said, missiles in this game come in two varieties: dumb rockets, which are not guided, and homing ones, which try to fly toward the target while adjusting their direction. The unguided ones typically inflict more damage, and/or their launchers fire more missiles than the launchers with guided ones do.
NUKES:
The player’s ships are the only ones that can mount nuclear missile launchers. Nuclear missiles function like other missiles, but they can take more damage; this is just as well, because nuclear missiles are targeted by fighters and strike-craft above all else. Nukes, of course, inflict massive damage in a large radius if they land.
In practice, nukes will not be as useful as the player would think. They are likely to get shot down, in which case they would be distracting enemy fighters and close-in weapons at best. Nukes do have the odd advantage of not inflicting any damage on the player’s own ships and strike-craft, meaning that using them at close ranges is actually viable, as ridiculous as this would seem.
RAY/BEAM WEAPONS:
Next, there are weapons that fire a beam of energy. These instantaneously reach their target location, meaning that fast ships and strike-craft will not escape them – assuming that the turrets had been directed at the correct angle, of course.
Anyway, the beam weapons inflict their damage over two seconds. If the target is destroyed, the weapons immediately stop firing and are considered to have completed their attack, i.e. they need to recharge for the next firing. However, if the player has the ship switch target during firing, the beam weapons continue firing until they have spent their charge.
ION WEAPONS:
Perhaps the most contentious weapons in the game are ion weapons, which can immobilize enemy ships while also damaging them. They fire shots that are very slow, but often compensate by firing a lot of them. Indeed, ion weapons with fully upgraded “burst” profiles can spray plenty of shots into space. It would not take much to slow down enemy ships to a halt.
REPAIR DEVICES:
Repair devices are alternatives to the weapons that are mounted on dorsal slots. As their name suggests already, these repair damaged ships – including the ship that they are mounted on.
However, in the case of the player’s ships, repairs are not done for free; they cost scrap. The costs are not clear, but it would appear to be 3 hit points for each unit of scrap; the in-game documentation is quite lacking on this matter. The payment of the scrap does not seem to be regularly effected either; the player may be charged 20 units of scrap within a short while, or 40 units after a longer while.
Improving the repair performance of the device does not appear to make it more economically efficient; it just repairs faster, and spends scrap faster. Furthermore, repair devices cannot be disabled, meaning that they will expend scrap to make repairs whether the player likes it or not. If the player runs of scrap, the devices stop working.
In the case of enemy ships, the repair devices work without any need for scrap. This can seem like an unfair advantage at times.
SHIELD RECHARGERS:
Shield rechargers behave in the same way as repair devices. However, they restore shields instead of hitpoints and do not need scrap. Indeed, players may appreciate them more than repair devices, if only because they are more economical to use in the long run.
CLOSE-IN WEAPONS:
Close-in weapons are intended to shoot down incoming missiles, bombs and hostile strike-craft; they target the latter in the aforementioned order. This means that if there are enough incoming missiles, the close-in weapons would not be eliminating the others.
However, if the player designates an enemy ship for focused-fire, the close-in weapons will fire on the enemy ship in lieu of anything else when the enemy ship is within range. In other words, it is possible to make use of these weapons to eliminate enemy ships, as long as the player is aware of their limitations.
Speaking of which, close-in weapons have narrow firing arcs due to their use of sponson slots. Thus, the player will have to angle a ship such that its close-in weapons can maintain their rate of fire. Still, it is unlikely that the player will be able to have a ship bring all of its close-in weapons to bear on a single target.
SHIELD BOOSTS:
In lieu of mounting anything that actively contributes to combat, the player can mount shield boosters in the slots instead. These increase the maximum shields that the ship can have; boosters that are mounted on dorsal slots provide greater increases than those on sponson slots.
Still, the sponson slots are better choices for shield boosting. After all, regardless of the position of the slot with the shield booster on the ship, the shield booster always imparts its benefits.
TELEPORTS:
The player’s ships have the option of mounting teleport devices; these allow the ships to instantly move across short distances. This is a significant advantage, especially if the fleet is entering a system with powerful enemy monitors. However, giving up a weapon slot for such a device is a major trade-off that the player will want to be careful about making.
ACCURACY:
For better or worse, there are RNG rolls that determine how accurate weapons would be. Fortunately, the rolls are not of the horribly fickle hit-or-miss types. Rather, they are of the sort that scatter the projectiles or rays after they have left the weapons that fired them. The projectiles and rays are very much still in the battlefield, and can hit something else if they did not hit their intended targets.
STRIKE-CRAFT – OVERVIEW:
Some ships have slots for strike-craft hangars. These allow ships to produce, carry and launch strike-craft. The location of the slots does matter; for example, slots that are set near the prow of the ship will launch strike-craft from that prow.
Strike-craft are produced for free; therefore, the player can use strike-craft as ablatives, i.e. “meat-shields”. Incidentally, they are vulnerable to any weapons that are mounted on ships. They can “intercept” incoming ordnance by flying into them.
On the other hand, the production of replacement strike-craft has fixed speeds, so they will not help much if there is a tide of munitions coming the way of the player’s ships. Strike-craft also have no shields whatsoever, and they will not actively try to dodge enemy fire even if they have the mobility to do so.
DRONES:
Drones are the smallest strike-craft, and the quickest to be destroyed and replaced. Their squadrons can be upgraded to the point that there is a swarm of them – perfect for either shielding their parent ship or hounding an enemy. That said, the player should not expect them to be able to do much damage on their own; there have to be hordes of them in order to quickly eliminate targets.
FIGHTERS:
Fighters are larger versions of drones that also happen to be fewer in number. They are tougher and have higher damage output too, but they otherwise behave in the same manner. They are slower on the move, however, so they are not as useful for chasing after enemies.
Fighters are best used against other strike-craft; they have the damage output for this purpose. The same damage output also makes them useful for shooting incoming enemy ordnance, though they tend to do a better job of intercepting these by flying into them.
BOMBERS:
Among strike-craft, bombers are the best at taking down enemy ships. They have considerable damage output, range and toughness, thus serving the purposes of distracting and pummeling enemy ships at the same time. They are slow, but this will not hamper their intended purpose by much; after all, even the fastest ships are slower than the slowest of bombers.
The bombers’ main setback is that there are not a lot of them; even when upgraded to have the most members, bomber squadrons number only several. Thus, they are not very good for the purpose of “intercepting” incoming ordnance.
SUPPORT CRAFT:
Drones, fighters and bombers contribute to the firepower of the player’s fleet, whereas the support drones contribute to their durability. There are two types of support drones: repair drones and recharge drones.
Repair drones perform like the repair devices that were mentioned earlier: they repair their parent ships by spending scrap. Likewise, recharge drones perform like shield rechargers.
Unlike the mounted devices though, the drones do contribute indirectly to the defense of their parent ship by unwittingly blocking incoming ordnance and distracting enemy strike-craft, who tend to target them instead of their parent ships.
METAL SCRAP:
Whenever a ship is destroyed – including the player’s own – it leaves scrap metal behind; bigger ships generally leave behind more.
Scrap metal is collected by having the player’s ships go near them; they are automatically pulled in. Alternatively, after having won a battle, all scrap metal in the battlefield will be drawn into the player’s ship, which is convenient. (This is one of the better design decisions on the part of the developers.)
After being collected, the metal scrap becomes the player’s currency for purchasing new ships and weapons to fill empty slots, and for repairing ships. There are few other uses, however; the only notable one of these other uses is paying some scrap to a space station or another human ship to get the location of a weapon at a cost that is less than buying the weapon itself.
UPGRADE POINTS:
In addition to metal scrap, there are upgrade points among the loot that can be collected. As their name suggests, these are used to upgrade the things that go into the slots of ships. Different equipment consume different amounts of points, and each subsequent upgrade has higher costs. Therefore, the player will want to distribute the points around to minimize the setback of diminishing returns.
Upgrade points are not guaranteed to be loot from defeating enemies. Generally, enemy ships with more powerful equipment have greater likelihood of dropping these. Like scrap metal, upgrade points that are yielded as loot will be drawn into the player’s ships if they are close or when they have won a battle.
CHECK AND BALANCE UPGRADES:
Upgrades are not always straight improvements across the board. Some upgrade options, especially those for accuracy and “burst” (i.e. the number of projectiles that are released in each firing of a weapon) will reduce the other statistics. This can seem odd at first, at least until the player realizes that the improvements have benefits that outweigh the setbacks. For example, increasing “burst” increases the number of projectiles, meaning that there is a net increase in firepower anyway even if the damage per shot rating of the weapon is reduced due to the upgrade.
EQUIPMENT AS LOOT:
The rarest loot are entire pieces of equipment. These begin to appear at the second galaxy and onwards (more on galaxies later). The player can equip these on the player’s own ships, or sell them for significant amounts of metal and upgrade points. Indeed, some faction-specific equipment can only be obtained as loot.
Some of these pieces of equipment already come with upgrades; this is intended to make them somewhat competitive with whatever that the player’s ships already have. Alternatively, these already-applied upgrades increase the selling price of the pieces of equipment.
FACTION-SPECIFIC WEAPONS:
Speaking of faction-specific equipment, some ship-mounted weapons are associated with specific factions. The most notable of these are the humans’ own weapons; they are the only weapons that the player can purchase directly with scrap metal at any time outside of combat.
Unfortunately, most human weapons are lacking compared to those wielded by other factions. For example, human-made ballistic weapons are no match for those used by the brutish Trolgar.
There are only a few ways to get the gear of other factions; the player should seize these whenever the opportunity arises. For example, Unidentified-manufactured gear are the most powerful in the game, so the player will want to have these.
Perhaps the humans’ only saving grace is their propensity in using nukes; nukes are only available to humans and never seem to be used by enemies (perhaps for the better). The humans also have advanced particle cannons, which are the only ballistic weapons that happen to be hit-scan.
GAME MODES:
There are four game modes, two of which are similar to each other. The first of these is of course the tutorial; as always, the new player should play the tutorials first.
The Normal Difficulty mode is next. This is the game mode that the player will want to replay over and over if the player intends to unlock all possible ships. Otherwise, the player might want to attempt the Hard Difficulty mode after having become familiar with the gameplay. Hard Difficulty works like Normal Difficulty, but enemies become more powerful earlier and the loot that can be had is lesser in quantity and quality, among other disadvantages.
For both of these gameplay modes, the player’s run can end in definite success, which yields better reward than a failure.
Finally, there is Endless mode. The player continues with the run until the player is defeated; the reward that the player gets depends on how far that the player managed to get through before losing.
“GALAXIES” & MAIN MISSIONS:
The player’s progress in a run is determined by the number of “galaxies” that the player has successfully managed to get through. Each galaxy is a network of twenty or so nodes, with each node representing a star system of sorts.
Upon starting in each galaxy, the player is informed about the main mission in that galaxy. The player is also informed of the dominant faction in this galaxy, thus revealing which faction has the most ships and assets in the galaxy and therefore the most common enemy in this one.
One of the nodes contains the main objective of the player’s fleet in this galaxy. The type of objective is generally correlated with the dominant faction in the galaxy. For example, in Trolgar-dominated galaxies, the player has to wander about, looking for nodes that contain the Trolgar’s bases and destroying them.
After finishing the main objective and returning to the star-map screen, the player is queried about leaving the current galaxy for the next one. The star system with the main objective is the only one that allows the player to do this.
In the Normal and Hard modes, the final galaxy always pits the player’s fleet against the Unidentified, which are practically sentient space monsters (albeit their monsters appear as biomechanical space vessels).
“STAR SYSTEMS” & “LANES”:
Speaking of star systems, these are nodes in the galaxies. Due to some unspecified limitations about faster-than-light travel, space-ships and fleets can only travel between the nodes along specified travel lanes; there are no other readily available means of moving between the nodes.
The player’s fleet moves between the nodes along these lanes, and so will enemies over every “turn” (more on these later). Opposing ships and fleets can only fight each other at the star systems; they will never encounter each other along travel lanes, much less collide with each other if they are using the same lanes.
TURNS:
Although the gameplay appears to be in real-time most of the time, there is indeed turn-based gameplay. This part of the gameplay occurs whenever the player’s fleet moves from one node to another; when the player does this, the game also computes the movement of computer-controlled ships and fleets too.
OBSERVING OTHER FLEETS:
Prior to moving the player’s fleet, the player can examine the star-map to observe the movement of any other fleets and ships. In particular, those that appear to be transit will arrive at their destination after the player’s fleet has arrived at theirs. Those that appear to be staying in their current systems will stay there, but this is not a guarantee that they will be the only fleet that the player would encounter if the player’s fleet goes to those systems.
This is because the player can only observe the movement and position of fleets in in lanes within one system away from where it is. Movement in any lanes that are further away cannot be fully observed, so the player will not be able to perceive any incoming enemy fleets at the destination.
This is a major detriment to gameplay, especially if the incoming enemy fleets are overwhelmingly powerful. Runs can end in failure because the player could not have known in any way that a powerful enemy fleet is going to the player’s destination from a system that the player cannot observe.
NOTHING HAPPENS TO OTHER FLEETS:
Regardless of the movement of other fleets and ships, nothing happens to them until they actually appear in a system together with the player’s own fleet. For example, an enemy fleet may move into a system with an allied space station, but nothing happens; they do not even fight each other.
This can seem unbelievable, at least until the player realizes that this is due to the developers’ lack of skill or will at developing a method to simulate off-screen battles and implement their outcomes.
That said, the game does appear to remember what happened to these other fleets and ships, if they survived battles that involve the player’s own fleet. The player might encounter them again, and they might retain the damage that they have suffered earlier. Of course, there is no way to know which fleet is which.
RELATIVE POSITIONS OF SHIPS IN SYSTEM:
The player can check the map of an adjacent star system for any resident space vessels. Thin chevrons represent strike-craft, whereas thick chevrons represent ships. Hexagons represent space stations. The positions of these vessels will be important, if the player chooses to move into this system.
After every turn, the positions of the vessels change. The player might want to have this happen, especially if the system is populated with considerable amounts of enemies.
If the player chooses to jump into the system, the player can choose which segment of the system to jump into. This is where the aforementioned locations of vessels will be important. For example, the player might not want to jump into a segment that is filled with enemies unless the player is certain that they can be brought low in a short time.
WAITING:
Instead of making a jump to advance a turn, the player can choose to wait in the current star system. This is usually not necessary, but there are times when doing so is prudent.
For example, the star system with the main objective tends to have multiple hostile space stations; having them concentrated together would complicate the assault on the star system. Therefore, the player can choose to wait a turn, after which the space stations randomly change their positions, hopefully to positions that are more manageable.
ARRIVAL IN A SYSTEM:
If the destination of the player’s fleet happens to be that of other fleets or ships, the player’s fleet always arrive first. The arrival of other fleets is heralded by pin-pricks of blue light that shows approximately where they will appear. The player only has a few seconds to prepare before they come – not that this would matter much anyway, because the player has no way to know exactly what ships those are.
BATTLE COMMENCING:
As soon as there is an enemy ship in the same system as the player’s fleet, battle commences. Faster-than-light travel is temporarily disabled, though a meter shows the progress towards getting enough charge to leave the system.
Until then, the player’s fleet has to survive – preferably by eliminating whatever is opposing them. If not, the player needs to have the fleet move away from enemies as soon as possible; this is especially important if the system has a lot of enemy space stations.
If the faster-than-light charge has been completed, the player can have the fleet jump away, preferably to another system that is safer. However, this will not deter pursuit; there will be more on enemy behavior later.
BATTLEFIELDS:
Star systems are the battlefields in which the ships fight. However, if the player is expecting a complex battlefield that has large asteroids, celestial bodies and such other space objects and hazards, the player would be disappointed. Most of the battlefields would be empty, if not for the space vessels in them.
On the other hand, any mobile space vessel can move to anywhere without being obstructed by something. They also move across and through each other; there are no collisions between ships (and there are no ramming attacks either).
BATTLEFIELD CONDITIONS:
Although the battlefield is mostly devoid of anything other than space vessels, there are circumstances that can pose complications to any ship that is around. These circumstances are presented in the star-map as sprites that are different from the regular sprite for a star system. This is just as well, because the player is not otherwise forewarned about the conditions of these star systems.
Anyway, there are a few battlefield conditions. There are nebulae, which sap the shields of every ship, and which can prevent jumping for one turn. There are black holes, which directly damage the hulls of any space vessel over time.
Then, there are asteroid fields, which continuously populate the battlefield with drifting asteroids. The asteroids can collide with space vessels, inflicting damage on their hulls. In the case of strike-craft, the collisions often outright destroy them.
ENEMY BEHAVIOUR:
The enemies in the current galaxy are neither random idiots nor idle bums. They may seem this way, especially to players that have a lot of experience with run-based rogue-lites. However, observant players might notice that enemy ships and fleets do respond to the movements of the player’s fleet, especially after it has become quite powerful.
For example, enemy ships that are already in the system will jump away if they are outmatched. For another example, a large and powerful enemy fleet will hound the player’s fleet if they have caught up with the latter, even if the player’s fleet jumps away to other systems.
These behaviors are meant to make the game challenging, but they can also doom a run.
BATTLE-STATIONS:
Space stations that are on the player’s side are called “battle-stations”. Every galaxy only has a handful of friendly space stations; Hard mode has less of them around. The main benefit of these space stations is that the player can repair the fleet for free when the fleet is in the same system as the battle-stations.
Friendly battle-stations often tend to be well-armed and –protected. Indeed, it might be prudent to jump away from a losing battle towards a system with a friendly battle-station; some enemies are stupid enough to pursue, only to be crushed by the space station.
However, some battle-stations are so weak as to be barely able to hold back enemy ships; they remain this weak, no matter what the player would do for them.
MISSIONS:
Speaking of doing things for friendly space stations, there are the missions that the player can request from friendly space stations. Certain NPC friendly ships may also provide missions.
Some missions can be started simply by agreeing to perform it. Some others require an upfront payment; these are actually item retrieval missions. Specifically, the player is notified of the whereabouts of an item; the payment is usually proportional to the cost of the item in scrap metal, if it would be sold anywhere.
These missions are optional; failing them will not penalize the player. However, every mission-giver offers only one mission; they will not offer any more, regardless of whether the player succeeds in the mission or not.
The missions are quite simple, though they could have been better documented in-game. For example, one of the missions is the elimination of a specific enemy ship, which is spawned in to the galaxy upon acceptance of the mission. The player is shown the sprite for the ship and its expected location, but exactly which ship it is on the star-map is unclear.
Anyway, completing a mission grants the player its rewards, regardless of where the player’s fleet is. The rewards are usually some scrap metal and upgrade points, but they may be different depending on whoever the quest-giver is. For example, if the mission-giver is a friendly ship, the reward is often the service of that ship for several turns, not unlike what mercenaries can offer.
MERCENARIES:
Speaking of which, mercenaries are friendly ships that happen to offer their services as followers, if the player is willing to pay the cost of hiring them.
They are not very effective at what they do, however. They tag along with the player’s fleet, but they only arrive after the player’s fleet. More importantly, they cannot be directed in any way; they do their own thing during combat. Indeed, they are very likely to get themselves killed. If the player ever gets their services for whatever reason, they are at best only useful as meat-shields.
TRADE:
Perhaps the most disappointing and underdeveloped gameplay element is trading for things.
The player can trade with any friendly ship and space station. Ostensibly, the player can sell equipment that are in storage to them for a slightly better price than selling them outright, and the other party in the trade may have equipment that they would sell for a price that is lower than the cost of purchasing that equipment and upgrading them.
However, in practice, there are few trading opportunities that are worthwhile. Their selections are often limited to just one item, and it is rarely something that the player would want. Furthermore, hoarding items until the player comes across a friendly ship might be unwise; the player should be kitting out the fleet as soon as possible to increase its power.
GRINDING EXP FOR UNLOCKING SHIPS:
Unlocking things for later runs is an infamous trait of rogue-lites; this trait can have a rogue-lite praised for being innovative, or condemned as being grinding-focused. Unfortunately, Battlevoid: Harbinger is an example of the latter.
After every run – successful or otherwise – the player is graded according to his/her performance and granted “experience points”. These go into a meter with a threshold, which is of course the usual method for gaining level-ups. Every level-up raises the threshold.
Gaining levels unlocks ships for use in later runs. Ships that can be unlocked in this manner are increasingly heavier and bigger human-made models. The most powerful of them are very much needed for Endless runs and runs in Hard Mode.
Otherwise, accumulating experience points serves no other purpose.
SHIP FRAGMENTS:
Then, there are fragments of what are presumably schematics for ships. Certain enemies yield these, though not always; the only certainty is that vessels of the same type as the ships that are represented in the fragments are the only vessels that yield those.
Obtaining a full set of fragments unlocks the ships for use. This means of unlocking ships is the only way of working around the otherwise grinding-heavy accumulation of experience points.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
As a space sci-fi game with petri-dish 2D space, the sprites for the ships are represented with their top profiles. Being like the space-ships as portrayed by Star Trek and Star Wars, they are vessels that just slide through space; particle effects that represent their exhaust contrails are the only semblance of propulsion being used.
There are parts of their sprites that have other sprites, namely for the turrets, but as to be expected, these are just rotating sprites with particle effects coming out of them too.
Of course, Battlevoid: Harbinger is not the only game with such visual designs; older games like Space Ranger has been using such visuals for a long while. Yet, there have been such games that have better visuals than this game; one of the most prominent of these is Gratuitous Space Battles, the graphics of which would far outmatch those of Battlevoid: Harbinger.
Games that use visual designs like those in this one often depend on static artwork for the backgrounds. Players who have played a lot of space sci-fi games may find them all too familiar: planets and stars looming in the distance are typical examples. Perhaps the background that would impress jaded players is the animated one for star systems that have black holes; the ominous void at the center of the map is certainly intimidating.
As for the ship sprites, there is only so much that the artist could do with the top-down profile in the matter of differentiating ships of different factions. Although they have different contours to their silhouettes, colours and textures are the main methods of making them visually different.
Speaking of the different factions, there are different portraits that represent individual members of the other factions. However, there are not many of these – not that these would be important anyway because the overarching story is simplistic or inconsequential.
SOUND DESIGNS:
There are no voice-overs whatsoever. This is, of course, not much of a problem; voice-overs are the most expensive of sound designs, so it is understandable that a game with a tight budget does not have them.
The music is not unpleasant, though not particularly notable. Players that have played a lot of space sci-fi games would recognize the familiar blend of orchestral, operatic and electronic music that has been popular in this genre of fiction for a long time. The player should not expect a lot of variations in the stanzas though; many of the tracks are actually short tracks that are looped together almost seamlessly.
The sound effects of the game have been invested with the most effort. Every category of weapon has its own audio clip, such that an observant player can tell whether ion weapons or energy weapons are being fired. The sound effects are mostly for aesthetics of course; any gameplay-relevant information is conveyed visually.
SUMMARY:
Battlevoid: Harbinger is an under-baked title. The potential behind its gameplay features would have been realized, if the game had not been made as yet another me-too run-grinding rogue-lite.
There is not much sophistication in the designs of the ships, at least not any that have not been seen in other games. For one, games like Gratuitous Space Battles already do what this game does in terms of ship design and customization.
Furthermore, limitations and design gaps like lack of simulations for off-screen battles and three-way battles truncate the potential of the game. Moreover, although the game does not have the worst expressions of luck-based gameplay, there are still enough things that are out of the player’s control that can doom runs, such as the inability to monitor the movement of all enemies in a system.
If the player desires gameplay about commanding fleets, there are much better space sci-fi titles out there.