Should I care about Captain Forever Remix? Absolutely. It's a hyper-addictive space ship game where you can snatch parts out of thin air and bolt them onto your ship. It's also a charming-as-heck story about childhood.
What's it about? Its Steam description actually does a pretty good job of explaining, so here's that:
"Can you create the raddest spaceship? Captain Forever Remix is the spaceship builder roguelike. Voyage across the Solar System and blast apart randomly-generated enemies for spare parts. This is an officially-licensed re-imagining of the indie classic Captain Forever."
And here's some video of me playing it for the first time:
Why is (or isn't) it so cool? Oh man, so many little things. For one, there's nothing quite like having your spaceship stripped down to nothing but an extremely vulnerable cockpit pod, hurriedly slapping space debris onto your hull in hopes of saving your skin while a ship five times your size barrages the crap out of you. The only reason I lived to fight another day (or, like, two minutes) was because I managed to get two enemy ships tangled up in each other. One decided it was hell-bent on frying my itsy bitsy running-for-my-life boat, even if that meant shooting through his friend. Why kill two birds with one stone if you can just make one bird kill the other?
And then, I guess, to complete the metaphor, afterward I got to haphazardly coat myself in their bones and bloody feathers, to make myself even cooler. Awesome, right?
Ummmm. OK, it's not super disgusting like that. It's actually really cute. Honest!
Is there anything else to it? Yeah, the story—though simple—is great fun. The idea is that everything you're doing is happening inside the imaginations of a kid brother and sister. They're just, like, hanging out in their living room and stuff. You play as the sister, Captain Forever, trying to thwart the evil King Kevin. Meanwhile, your enemies are actually their pets and things like that (example dialogue: "Ahhhh, Kevin, what did you do to the cat?"). It's a fun story framework for this kind of game, and it's just... nice. Kids having fun together. A brother and sister bonding, even while occasionally bickering. Precious childhood memories and all that. I love it.
Should I buy it (even though there are a million-billion other Steam games I could spend my money on)? I think so. It's still in Early Access, but there's already tons to do. Plus, it's pretty cheap ($14.99 normally, but it's on sale right now) and nicely replayable what with all there is to see, build, and unlock. You won't beat it on your first go. I guarantee that.
Steam Snapshot is a regular feature in which I post my brief impressions of a new Steam game in hopes of letting you know, as quickly and succinctly as possible, if it's worth your time/money. Steam's new release section is a screaming nightmare. Hope this helps.
To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.