Spacebourne is space-faring Indie Game game released for the PC on Steam in 2018.
In a dystopian science fiction setting in which humanity has been devastated by a plague inflicted from alien invaders, the player's character emerges from cryogenic sleep and set off among the stars to search for a cure. Along the way, he must earn his fortune through a wide range of missions from government factions, private citizens, and pirates among dozens of systems, star bases, and planets, taking on assignments such as trading, convoy protection, mining, and bounty hunting.
The game features many different mission types and other methods for earning money, as well as a huge galaxy and numerous ship types and upgrades. It's also notable for the genre that the player can personally level up and gain new skills in addition to upgrading his ship. and there are other unique features such as a crafting system. Furthermore, unlike most space-based Wide-Open Sandbox games of its kind, Spacebourne includes a central plotline with a story and ending.
A sequel, Spacebourne 2, was released in early access in 2023.
Tropes used include:
- Alliance Meter: The game features three different factions: The Xziax, Arbuq, and Duons. Your reputation with them can be increased by completing missions for them, aiding in fleet battles, and responding to distress calls. Higher standing will give you access to faction-specific crafting blueprints.
- Arms Dealer: Some stations feature arms dealer vendors who will sell high quality weapons.
- Boring, but Practical: Mining asteroid and debris fields can be quite profitable, particularly with a lot of cargo space and the right skill upgrades, but it can be quite tedious and time consuming to carry out, since most of the process is automated.
- Bounty Hunter: Bounty missions can be quite profitable but they are complex, requiring the player to first pay a station informant to find the target location and then go to the system to track them down. In the encounter, the player must quickly disable to the target's engines or else it can jump away, which will then require the player to pay an informant again for their new location. And until the bounty target is killed, they will sent enemy ships after the player so long as the contract is active.
- Casual Interstellar Travel: Traveling between systems is quite simple and has no restrictions. All you need to do is fly to a jump game and use it. Any jumpgate will allow you to reach any system controlled by the faction running the system you are currently in.
- Cool Ship: The game features several different ships, most of them designed for a specific role like trading or combat. The player can actually have multiple ships, enabling him to use the one best suited for whatever job he plans to carry out. There are also rarer upgraded versions of each ship, though these are very expensive and hard to find since they appear randomly when a player visits a station.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Some ships are only good for limited roles. Trade ships have loads of cargo room for mining and trading, but most are awful at combat. Some combat ships also have very limited cargo holds, which can be a problem even when it comes to battles, since you might not be able to collect all the loot that drops once the fighting is over.
- Easy Logistics: More like non-existent logistics. Weapons don't consume ammo, not even missiles, and your ship does not consume fuel, so you don't really have to worry out replenishing anything other than consumable items you can use to give yourself a boost in combat. You don't even have to worry about paying for ship repairs, since you can use a drone to repair your ship up to perfect condition after every battle for free.
- Global Currency: All factions used the same generic credits as currency.
- Midair Repair: Ship damage can be repaired in combat by using player skills or consumable items. After combat is over, you can use a drone to repair yourself back to perfect condition. The ease of repair enables the player to carry out numerous missions and tasks in a single flight without having to land at a station.
- Protection Mission: Several missions and distress beacon response calls involve defending capitol ships from attack, which are for the most part stationary.
- Space Pirates: As it typical for games of its kind, Space Pirates make of a significant enemy threat in Spacebourne. However, they are actually a full fledged faction in this game, with control of numerous star systems and space stations. Pirate stations are a good place to sell and buy contraband. They are also the only stations where you can sell captured enemy pilots into slavery, and have bartenders who will give you the locations of bounty targets.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Sometimes when you destroy an enemy ship, crew members will evacuate in escape pods. With the right equipment, you can capture the pods and sell the crew into slavery. The pods have propulsion and will escape if you don't intercept them, so you can't rationalize this on grounds that selling them into slavery is the only alternative to a horrible death in space. It's every bit as evil as it sounds. There's also a notable mission very early in the game where an alien doctor tasks you with brining him four slaves he can use for medical experiments.
- We Buy Anything: Partially applied. All merchants will accept ship parts such as weapons and salvage from destroyed enemy ships. However, trade goods are another story. You can only sell them to traders, and traders will only accept certain types of goods. Even if you find a trader willing to accept the goods you have, you still might not be able to sell them if he has a surplus it, so making large-scale trades actually requires a good bit of effort to find someone to accept them.
