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Extreme arcade space combat game "Space Mercs" has officially released

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Designed and developed by Bearded Giant Games, Space Mercs is an extreme arcade space combat game like some of the classics and it's out now with Linux support.

As a reminder, Bearded Giant Games have been developing Space Mercs entirely on Linux with the Unity game engine. Working from a low-powered Notebook, they've put a special amount of attention into the optimizations so it should work great across a huge variety of systems. It certainly does look good, with an impressive atmosphere to it!

Feature Highlight:

  • Huge, real-time, space ship battles, with up to hundreds of spaceships on screen at the same time
  • Mission battles range from small (3-10 ships) and scale up into the gigantic sector wide battles (400-500 ships)
  • Single-player campaign where the stakes increase with every mission
  • Thousands of projectiles on screen at every time
  • Consistent graphics and performance even on really low hardware specs
  • Shooter-style control and flight system optimized for Keyboard and Gamepad use
  • Instant battle mode where you are thrown in a procedural generated battle of epic scales
  • Loadout system for ship weaponry and internal systems
  • Coffee-break design where you can pickup and play in short 3 to 10 minute sessions
  • Functional cockpit display

As a surprise feature announced along with the release, Space Mercs includes a Battle Designer. Once you complete the main missions, it will allow you to make custom battles to participate in with up to 4000 ships. The developer provided some interesting screenshots taken from that mode (click to enlarge):

If you enjoy classic arcade space action, Space Mercs should be on your radar. It would be worth reading their release info post, which contains a few extra important bits of info (especially for owners of an AMD Vega GPU). Also, do check out our previous interview with Bearded Giant Games here.

You can find Space Mercs on Steam. With an itch.io release due later.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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scaine Aug 2, 2019
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  • Contributing Editor
  • Mega Supporter
This dev has knocked it out of the park in terms of engagement, approach and results. It's been a pleasure following his progress on Twitter. Insta-buy.
libgradev Aug 2, 2019
Dev out celebrating release. Takes time to respond personally on discord to Q.

Legend.

Purchased ^_^
dpanter Aug 2, 2019
Sweet af game, make sure to leave a review on Steam if you pick it up! ^_^
Para-Gliding Aug 2, 2019
Quoting: dpanterSweet af game, make sure to leave a review on Steam if you pick it up! ^_^
and to us ;)
iiari Aug 2, 2019
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  • Supporter Plus
Instant purchase! Going to play now...
johndoe Aug 2, 2019
Quoting: iiariInstant purchase! Going to play now...

Hope you have more luck than me - does not work for me.
I still use a 5:4 screen and game starts in windowed mode - no native resolution support:(
Game hangs on start.

Currently I have no time to look deeper into that.


Last edited by johndoe on 2 August 2019 at 9:07 pm UTC
iiari Aug 2, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: johndoe
Quoting: iiariInstant purchase! Going to play now...

Hope you have more luck than me - does not work for me.
I still use a 5:4 screen and game starts in windowed mode - no native resolution support:(
Game hangs on start.

Currently I have no time to look deeper into that.
Runs for me, but won't let me use my full resolution and won't let me use mouse... Oddly, both of those were fine in the beta. Will let them know...
Arten Aug 2, 2019
I Insta-buy it. I have some bugs, which all are listed in "Bugs and Issues - report them here" topic in discussions on steam, but it is first day and it's excellent game.
New game and my GPU is "slightly" overkill :-D Good to see.

Liam, can you please try new interview with him after month or two? I'd like to know linux/windows sales ratio and there can be more interesting info, thanks.
linuxfiend Aug 2, 2019
Looks cool but can I use a joystick? KB and mouse just aren't the same.
dpanter Aug 2, 2019
Joystick and gamepad should work fine.
Mouse is disabled at the moment as Zapa had some problems getting it working properly in-game, even though it works in the editor. Just Unity things...

Owners of Vega cards may have issues with volumetric fog not rendering correctly, if you can't see any asteroids or ships, disable Foggle for now. (or use Proton, that runs perfectly too) Expect a fog fix coming soon.

Bearded Giant Discord, if you want in: https://discord.gg/UyVJKY4
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