In a new trailer that premiered during the PC Gaming Show 2023, we got our first glimpse of Jumplight Odyssey’s combat. The upcoming roguelite spaceship colony sim was revealed last year in a fittingly rambunctious story trailer, but, as the new trailer reveals, it’s not just buck-toothed pigs and accidental fire hazards you’ll be dealing with as you lead a crew on a voyage through the stars.
It looks like you’ll spend a lot of time fending off invading Zutopan fleets (led by the wonderfully and theatrically named Admiral Voltan) and preparing various defenses. Blast doors must be initiated, gangways locked, and crew members ordered to (literally) spin into their combat uniforms before operating defensive turrets. Starfighters need to be scrambled to intercept incoming enemy ships, and combat divisions rallied to handle boarding enemy units.
Ultimately, though, you’ll want to charge up your jumplight engines as soon as possible to zoom out of the fray in a rainbow-fuelled faster-than-light burst. Unsurprisingly, the swashbuckling sci-fi anime adventure series of the 1970s (like Space Battleship Yamato) heavily influence Jumplight Odyssey.
The Zapp Brannigan-esque narration, giving the game a Futurama flavor, is a nice touch, and I can dig the gung-ho soundtrack. But while the game’s interior spaceship-building portion looks inspired by management and colony sims, combat takes a different direction.
"Essentially, it's a roguelite colony sim," developer and League of Geeks co-founder Trent Kusters told PC Gamer last year. "It's like FTL meets Two Point Hospital, with a little RimWorld thrown in there with story generation stuff. You're jumping from system to system, and in between, you're repairing your ship, retooling it for that particular system, extracting resources so you can make the next jump quickly enough to evade the Zutopans and make your way to the Forever Star."
Fancy yourself a bit of a deft hand at interstellar survival? You can prove it when Jumplight Odyssey’s free demo drops on June 19 as part of the upcoming Steam Next Fest. Maybe then we’ll also be able to find out what those toothy pigs are all about.
