Engagement: no "+8% damage" cards, just guns bolted onto the hull

Engagement's Steam page has a line I would love to see on many more games: no "+8% damage" cards.

In this roguelite, every level adds something concrete and visible to your ship. A flak battery, a railgun, a module. Your flagship visibly grows over a run, and you literally see what you have earned. It is a simple idea, and it changes the pleasure of progression.

The premise: one or two capital ships hold the Belt of Ashes against the Hollow, who arrive in swarms, then in capital ships, before other factions join the fight. You play alone or as a pair, each with your own flagship, side by side and then back to back. More friends can come aboard and man the guns and stations.

The content is impressive for a solo project: fifteen flagships with 105 refits, fifty modules, twenty officers who each change how a bridge station works, ten sectors and fifteen bosses.

My two favourite ideas concern the escorts. You recruit them, give them orders, and promote the ones who survive. Two veterans with compatible hulls can merge into a new ship class. And a downed escort ejects its pilot in a pod you can still bring back aboard. If nobody picks them up, they end up on the memorial wall, with their rank, callsign and kills. It is a tiny system, and it gives a soul to units that usually have none.

The game is as readable as a chaotic space game can be: every charging beam and incoming torpedo is flagged on screen and by sound before impact.

Its limits are those of a solo developer: a presentation that can feel austere, and menus that take some getting used to. At 6.95 euros with the launch discount, 87% positive across the first 32 reviews, it is not a risky bet.

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