'Endless Sky' is one of the better games I've played in a while. And considering it's completely free (no microtransactions, even), it's well worth the price of hard-drive space.
Have you ever heard of a video game series from over a decade ago called Escape Velocity? The last in that series, Escape Velocity: Nova, came out back in 2002. Now in the same style is Endless Sky (even the tutorial mission feels like it was straight from EV: Nova). And actually, Endless Sky does a few things better than it's spiritual predecessor.
For one, fleets are vastly improved. You can have your own massive fleet. I was flying around with about 15 ships in my fleet at one point, each of which had been customized.
The graphics are fairly simple and straight forward. Top down, 2-D graphics set in space. There's not a huge variety of skins for ships, usually the different factions just have different colors on the same models of flying things. There are maybe 20-30 different ships to choose from, and each ship has a few dozen different upgrades that can be chosen from, whether it's increasing your cargo space, getting better weapons, or even arming your crew so you can pirate other ships.
There's a lot to do in the game, although "the main story line takes 8-16 hours to play through." I wonder if that's straight through, because I've only done part of it, and it has taken me ten hours. That's a lot of flying and trading.
Best yet, the game offers a lot of mod support. Escape Velocity: Nova had some pretty good mods for it back in the day, and I know I'm not the only one who's hoping some of those people decide to get their hands on Endless Sky.
On the less good side, the game does get a little repetitive. I enjoy these types of games, but after running the same trade routes for several hours, trying to damage and capture pirates (it's not as easy as you think), I grew tired. The other major downside is that only 1 of the 3 planned story-lines has been implemented so far.
But, since I didn't pay a dime for the game, I think it's a good buy. It certainly hasn't been a waste of time for me, and if you liked EV: Nova, you should definitely give Endless Sky a chance. You can find it on Steam, or check out the GitHub website.
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