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I like the concept and the look of the game. I'd love to try it. But I'm very afraid of getting trapped into the Noctis V waiting game with Love. Noctis IV is a great open ended space simulation "game" where you simply explore stars, planets and moons in a galaxy. it was released over 10 years ago and people are still charting and naming celestial bodies today. it run in DOS and fits on a floppy. and it was all done by one brilliant person: Alessandro Ghignola.

and so, when he showed some screen shots of the next release, Noctis V, we all flipped and waited eagerly for a beta or anything playable. that was 8 years ago.

Love looks really good, but my heart has already been broken in the past by another. so i'm not going to get my hopes up right now.

You will love a game called Noctis. (SCII is one of my favourite games and agree with you there)

A SCII/Noctis hybrid would be awesome although I prefer a fixed sized universe.

http://anywherebb.com/bb/posts.php?t=409

Seeing as it has a cupola, perhaps it should be named after the StarDrifter from Noctis.

If you're like me and just curious about alternative OS's, here's an interesting one from the boonies of Italy: Hactar If he'd get some help, he might even port Noctis over to linux. (If ya asked real nice...) };-)

If you're like me and just curious about alternative OS's, here's an interesting one from the boonies of Italy: Hactar If he'd get some help, he might even port Noctis over to linux. (If ya asked real nice...) };-)

One of those universe/solar system simulations - I forget the name.
Possibly because there's more than one name to forget... (=

Let's see, for general touring around the Solar system and neighborhood, there's nothing quite like Celestia. Hours of fun, and very pretty to look at.
Noctis is also similar, but set in a fictional universe.
For more pretty pictures, but less interactivity, see The Solar Journey homepage or the Solar System Simulator. Also The Nine Planets for Kids.
Naturally, kids aren't that interested in just flying around. Well, Orbit lets them blow each other up in space, but with realistic physics and visuals. Once that gets boring, you can let them fly a space shuttle to the ISS with Orbiter. Beware, though. Orbiter is no simple game - you actually need to know how space flight works. There's also the Microsoft Space Simulator, which Orbiter has more or less superseded.

If you're not looking to get that far off the ground, FlightGear's an excellent flight simulator in which you can fly everything from the original Wright Brothers' craft right up to concept superplanes.

More links, mainly astronomy related, here, here, here, here, and here.

Finally, you might wish to try browsing the Tucows Games site and Freshmeat's game section (you'll need to login to make full use of Freshmeat).

Good luck, have fun searching.

There's no denying that games can invoke an emotional response from the player, but they're typically limited to a very small set. Games are fantastic at fear, excitement and victory, but there's very little else.

There are exceptions, obviously. The article hypothesises about a failed military mission in which you fail to save your teammates and feel sad for them in your defeat. I'd say Operation Flashpoint achieved this a long time ago, and along with Halo and several other games, managed to create a very convincing sense of cameraderie.

Online competitive games are another area where genuine emotion can run high, but again the range is limited to a small set of extremes - a notable exception being PSO, which (if you played with the right people) offered a huge amount of kindness and cooperation. The kind of thing Facade seems to be aiming for is a lot more interesting, though it could very easily go horribly wrong. The only similar game I know of is Galatea.

I've just remembered what my favourite gaming-invoked emotion is, actually: wonder. Set a game in the right kind of world, pull it off well, and simple exploration can be astonishing. A good example is Noctis, where exploration and discovery is the entire point of the game. It pulls it off marvellously, and is a refreshing antithesis to conventional gaming wisdom on almost every front.