Space bullet heaven roguelike Sublight is full of chaotic battles

Sublight is a new Early Access release from CODEBREW SOFTWARE LTD, bringing survivor-likes into the space age. I took a look to see what I thought. Disclosure: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

Combining two of my favourite things - outer-space and survivor-likes - this is pretty much the sort of thing I want to see. You pick a ship, starting weapons and a captain, all with different bonuses, and then jump from node to node across a star map filled with deadly sectors and lots of enemy ships looking to ruin your day.

It has all the usual survivor-like bits you would expect, with waves of enemies constantly coming after you while you collect resource orbs to level up and gradually power up your ship.

Where it gets a bit more interesting is how it handles your weapons. You can't just slap anything anywhere and forget about it, as different weapons have different firing arcs. Some only fire in a particular direction, so where you place them on your ship can be quite important to your survival.

It means you actually have to put a little thought into how you're building things up during a run. A weapon might sound great, but if you've stuck it somewhere that barely gives it a clear shot, it's not going to be much use. I quite like that side of it, as it gives the ship customization a bit more purpose than simply picking whatever has the biggest number attached to it. Being able to tweak the focus of each weapon is a nice touch too between the likes of nearest, highest health, lowest health, missiles and more.

It also makes positioning during combat matter a bit more. Depending on your setup, you might want to keep enemies to one side, turn the ship around to bring certain weapons into range, or make sure something particularly powerful is pointed towards a bigger target. It gets pretty hectic once the screen starts filling up.

As you go through each node you'll also earn credits for taking down the swarms of enemy ships. This part felt a little like Risk of Rain 2, where you fly over to boxes floating around to purchase them and see what's inside.

I quite like that too, as sometimes you're tempted to go chasing after another box even though you're already surrounded and probably shouldn't. Naturally, I usually go for it anyway - and usually end up getting annihilated while making a run for some rare loot to power up my weapons some more.

See the trailer below:

YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

I really do love getting a few rounds into it when you've managed to level up some decent weapons and you have squadrons of fighters flying around to help. Once a run properly gets going there's just so much happening that it gets really intense.

You'll have streams of projectiles going everywhere, enemy fighters swarming around you, big missiles coming in that you need to individually destroy, and rockets exploding across an area while you're trying to weave your way through all of it.

Then it throws bigger boss battles at you where you're facing off against other capital ships, and these can actually be quite challenging. They're a nice break from simply mowing through endless smaller ships too, especially when one of them turns up while you're already dealing with everything else on-screen.

This is probably where Sublight is at its best for me. You can start out feeling a bit weak, but once you've picked up enough upgrades your ship starts turning into an absolutely ridiculous floating weapons platform with fighters buzzing around it and projectiles flying off in every direction. That's exactly the sort of power curve I want from a survivor-like. Watching a build slowly come together and then suddenly realising you're melting through everything is always satisfying.

It has plenty going for it and does a lot right, but there's also various areas where it falls a bit too short right now.

Flight controls are the first big issue I have with it. It doesn't really feel anything like you're controlling a big capital ship. It feels more like you're pushing around a cart on ice. There's just not much sense of weight to it, and while I certainly don't want it turning into some hardcore space simulator, I do think it needs to sell the feeling of moving a big ship a little better. Right now it can feel a bit too floaty and arcade-like. A bit more weight to the turning and movement could go a long way here without making it annoying to control. If they can tune that up while keeping it responsive, I think it would make quite a difference.

The second issue is that the weapons need a bit more oomph to them. When you've built up a ship covered in increasingly ridiculous firepower, I want to really feel it.

This bit may be contentious because, yes, I know, there's no sound in space. But we're also flying around in giant spaceships while hundreds of enemies explode around us, so I'm happy to bend the rules a little. Apart from the weapon sounds, battles can sometimes feel a bit empty compared to how much is actually happening on-screen. Some stronger impact sounds, bigger hits and a bit more feedback from everything exploding would help sell the chaos a lot better.

There are moments where the screen is absolutely packed with ships, missiles and explosions, but it doesn't always quite feel as dramatic as it looks. For a game that can get this busy, I think that side of it could really use some extra love during Early Access.

There's also naturally room for a lot more variety. Survivor-likes tend to live or die on how many different builds, combinations and stupidly overpowered setups they let you mess around with, and while there's already enough here to have fun with, I definitely want to see more of it.

Since it's in Early Access there's no review score here, as these are just some starting thoughts on it. As a big fan of the genre and where they're taking it here, I'll be keeping a close eye on how it evolves during the development it has left, which will be at least 6 months according to the developer.

There's already a pretty solid base here, and it feels like there's plenty of room for it to grow. More ships, more weapons and more ways to put together silly builds should only make the core loop better, while some of the planned campaign changes sound like they could give everything a bit more structure too.

The developer did provide a small roadmap:

2026 Q4: New enemy faction, new ships and weapons, more builds, and balance changes.

2027 Q1: More unique boss drop weapons, enemy flagship hunts, and new mission types.

2027 Q2: A Refreshed Campaign built around an XCOM-style threat map with longer, connected narrative missions, alongside expanded enemy factions and more research options.

2027 Q3: Community-voted content, players choosing new ships, weapons, and builds via Discord polls, plus mod support and achievements.

I am extremely keen to see what this threat map will look like. Giving the campaign a bigger strategic layer sounds like it could make moving around the star map feel much more meaningful, instead of it simply being a chain of battles. The enemy flagship hunts sound interesting too, and naturally I'm always going to be happy about more ships and weapons to mess around with. The updates sound quite delicious.

For now, I still think it is quite a good game, with some spectacular battles and genuinely fun ship customization giving each run plenty of appeal. When a build starts coming together and the screen fills up with fighters, missiles and enemy capital ships, it's a lot of fun.

It just needs a fair bit more time in space-dock to tighten the bolts, give the ships and weapons a bit more weight, polish up the rough edges, and bring out the full potential of what is already here.

Tested on Fedora KDE 44 with the Native Linux version, it has been running great. I haven't had any notable technical problems with it so far, which is always good to see from a fresh Early Access release.