This is the one hundred eighty-third entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our one hundred eighty-third random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has built up a space fleet and is closing in on our position. It’s RogueCraft Squadron, by josefnpat (AKA Missing Sentinel Games), and its tagline in the bundle reads:

A Real-Time Strategy space adventure with Rougelike elements

Reader, it is time to strategize in real time.

I feel unqualified to judge any game in the real-time strategy genre. Other than playing some Command and Conquer and Warcraft II at a friend’s house as a kid (mostly it was him playing, and me watching), I’ve never really tried real-time strategy games. Even those early games, which were relatively slow-paced, felt like too much to keep track of all at once. You had to harvest resources, build a base, navigate a tech tree to unlock better buildings and units (the buildings often prerequisites for the better units), and command your armies to explore the map and assault the enemy’s base. There’s no stopping the clock to get time to think; players must manage all of this in real time, while the enemy is doing the same. Later genre staples like Starcraft and Age of Empires doubled down on the time pressure, encouraging players to efficiently perform “actions” as fast as possible in fiercely competitive (but incredibly popular) multiplayer matches. I was intimidated by these games, and merely admired them from afar.

Unfortunately for me, RogueCraft Squadron is a game that assumes its players have some familiarity with real-time strategy games, and seems just as focused on multiplayer bouts as the bigger genre names are. There is a tutorial, but it only really covers the basics: how to select and move one’s ships, how to collect resources (here, these are crew and material) and a bit about unlocking new ship types. But most of the roster of ships remain unexplained. There are some descriptions on the research menu, but they’re not too detailed. I gathered that I could build some long-range artillery ships and armored tank ships, as well as light fighters and heavier Battlestars, but I had little idea of what made for a good fleet. The tutorial just had me send a few Battlestars against a smattering of enemy ships in some fast and confusing combat. Then I was let loose to play the game from scratch.

The multiplayer-focused skirmish mode and (presumably) single-player survival mode take prominent positions in RogueCraft Squadron’s main menu, but there is also a Campaign mode, as well as a legacy “LoveJam” mode that’s more faithful to the original RogueCraft Squadron prototype developed for the 2017 LoveJam. I chose to tackle the campaign, with the hope that it would ease me into things a bit. And it does, sort of. A big difference between the campaign and the other modes — which is not explained in-game, I had to learn it from the itch.io page comments — is that players cannot build research ships to unlock better units. Instead, research points are granted at the start of each mission, so new units come gradually as the campaign progresses. In the first mission, in fact, I found myself without any research points at all, so the only offensive units I could build were scout ships. I simply built a ton of those from my command ship and sent the scout fleet at the enemy. When my scouts were eventually shot down, I scrolled the map back to my command ship, built some more, and then sent them out again. It wasn’t long before I’d destroyed the enemy and won the mission.

So far, so good, but I soon found myself stymied by the very next mission. Some commenters on the itch.io page had issues here too, but josefnpat replied and explained how research works in the campaign, recommending unlocking Battlestars to help complete the mission. So I did, and tried to amass a swarm of Battlestars to send at the enemy. But the enemy ships were too numerous, and too well defended. I destroyed several command ships, but my alien foes seemed to always have more, and I felt I was on the back foot, frantically building more Battlestars that would charge forward to their deaths.

I knew I was being horribly inefficient, focusing entirely on building and then entirely on attacking, when I should be doing both at once. But it wasn’t clear how to control things better; the help screens list shortcuts like the number keys for selecting different groups of ships, but I didn’t know how to assign ships to groups in order to use this feature. I didn’t want to fly my precious command ship too close to the fighting (losing it means starting the campaign over, you see, hence the “Rogue” part of the title) but it was too hard to keep tabs on two parts of the map at once. Especially since my Battlestars seemed to need babysitting in order to properly prioritize targets.

This mission didn’t seem impossible so much as incredibly tedious. With only scouts and Battlestars available at this stage, I didn’t feel like I had much in the way of meaningful tactical decisions yet. Instead, it was a battle of attrition, collecting resources and building ship after ship until I could overwhelm the enemy. Perhaps worst of all is that I had a computer-controlled ally in this mission, with their own command ship and fleet, who seemed to have the entire tech tree open to them, buildilng all sorts of cool ships I couldn’t muster yet. But I was unable to directly control any of their units, and they weren’t nearly aggressive enough to be any help with the enemy. Add in the visual confusion when ships engage in combat explosions start obscuring everything, and I ultimately decided that RogueCraft Squadron isn’t for me, and stopped my campaign there.

Which is a shame, because there’s a lot I like about it. I like that one builds a fleet, rather than a base, which means everything can move if needed. I like that resources are collected from the debris strewn through space, harvesting material from wrecked ships and rescuing crew from abandoned space stations. Evidence of the ongoing conflict is everywhere, setting the stage wonderfully. Scavenge what you can from wrecks and keep fighting. There are even fully voiced visual novel style story scenes introducing each mission in the campaign. The voice acting is clearly amateur work, but it isn’t terrible, and I liked the simple audio effect (and accented speech) of the computer voice, making it feel distinct from the human characters.

These scenes also betray the developers’ passion for the game, which is also evident in the presentation during missions. The dynamic musical score conjures a lonely feeling during calm moments, when it’s just a player’s command ship and drydocks building new fighers while scavenger ships slowly extract material from the space debris. The music then kicks into more exciting fare once enemies are spotted and engaged. The computer voice from the story scenes appears during missions as well to acknowledge commands. Everything scales up to high resolutions too, although this makes ships and interface icons small and hard to distinguish, and thus even harder to track during the thick of battle.

Someone with more real-time strategy experience might get more enjoyment from this one. I suspect it uses certain design elements that are genre staples, forgetting to explain them to new players because it assumes they already know. And the multiplayer component is clearly a big focus, so if you have friends who also like real-time strategy games and who also got the bundle, it might be worth checking out. Those who didn’t get the bundle can pick up RogueCraft Squadron for a minimum price of $14.99, which includes versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

That’s 183 down, and only 1558 to go!