Reviews

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  AdmiralNeko

  Feb 15, 2017

  Hell yeah this game is actually so fun. I've been looking forward to it and so far it doesn't disappoint. The game feels like a cute and comedic version of FTL and barrages you with puns left and right. Loving the story and references! Art style and music are top notch and gameplay is smooth and stirs the crafting autist within me. Great game 10/10 imo!
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  TheFriendlyInsomniac

  Feb 15, 2017

  Simply put, it's a turn-based strategy and simulation game set in space and starring sentient vegetables. Oh, and the two main heroines are both sassy space spuds on the run from a galactic armada while they search for their long-lost grandfather. Now [i]that[/i] is a premise for a game! For the curious, take a look at the first 25 minutes or so of gameplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CWZPH2qS_s Having playing [i]Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?![/i] and thoroughly enjoyed myself, I suppose it's no surprise that [i]We're in Space?![/i] also grabbed me right away. The graphics are heart-achingly adorable at some point, and the cartoony style really fits well with the overall lighthearted feel of the game. That said, though, beneath this game's exterior is a deep and engaging turn-based simulation game that comes complete with resource management, fail-timer, ships subsystem-based combat (think FTL), and crew management. You'll need to make sure that you have enough money and resources to procefed, that your crew aren't upset and/or restless, that your fuel will last long enough to get back to a station, and that you don't delay too long and get attaked by the pursuing "big bad" armada. Basically, if you like keeping track of a lot of different things all at once while having a laugh (and an occasional groan) at the jokes and references in a game, then give this a go!
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  Petrothian

  Feb 15, 2017

  Edit: They have added casual mode with unlimited Sols, major bugbear fixed. keeping the review the way it was to avoid confusion. Old Review below: Summary: A nice start, but need work (yes, I had higher expectations given how it looks polished, and I stress that I really want to like this game.) Pros: -funny and corny (ha) dialog, cutsy written. <-can't stress this enough, it pops my kernel. -reminds me of FTL. -much better UI than FTL. these guy got their style and functionality down. very polished.. and crisp. -something about the way they chose the aesthetics comes off so awsome, appeals to my inner child. makes me really want to like it. buuut.... Cons: -Felt like they spent more time writing than designing the game mechanics (it feels like early access/cell phone game after a few hours) -FTL: Captain's edition does everything better, after 3 hours it felt grindy (some events repeats several time for me) and all thats left are the dialog. at which point well, you go write a review. And this is what breaks the game for me: -like FTL, you are limited a set of turns in each galaxy, but the problem in this game is: you need those turns to craft parts for your ship/train/HEAL (mentally) your crew. there are not enough time for everything if you lose a weapon or 2. this last point can be remedied if they decide to: a) remove cost of therapy for crew (is on your own ship anyways, right now it just stetches your money sink. money you need to grind for the other things), or tone down the weapons that hit ALL your parts at once (a blown part = lost part + crew needing therapy). seriously, you got 1 shield and have to use it to protect 1 object/hull. and maybe I got unlucky that I ran into several exploration runs with enemies that LOVE to spam multi hit attacks. b) increase the number of turns optionally for people who dont want to be limited by this multiple teir of punishment for losing a part. c) don't make parts takes so long to replace/up the HP of your parts/make them damage your hull 1st before damaging weapons. Again, this last point makes the game punishes you on multiple levels, if you lose a weapon that felt like a play to lose game (but with a story where the main character is wreckless? come on, it breaks immersion.) when you lose a part, you lose starch from: 1) therapy 2) materials to replace the part 3) Time (also money if you have to sit out due to NPC spamming multi target weapons). 4) oppertunity cost to deal with 1 to 3. hence yeah... really have to play conservative (which is meh) when your main character is... well, yah.... won't spoil. but there is some strong ludonarrative dissonance there between the writing and optimal game play. Edit: while exploration is a thing, the best thing to do is stick to 1 planet to get repairs using crews with repair x per turn. meh. so, ya. take that for what you will. Wait till later when they (if they) decide to refine the game mechanics/forced pacing to buy. if you came from their earlier games, it would be fine, but as someone who came from FTL. well. is a tad disappointing. Again, I really want to like this game due to its humor,
• 

  Garbage Bin

  Feb 16, 2017

  Where to begin.. Holy Potatoes is a cute, cartoony turn-based space ship combat game. The game is broken down into 3 areas - combat, exploration and shipbuilding. First off, I don't play indie games. Any that I've tried I don't play for more than 30 minutes. Extra stuff in my humble bundles just go unused. This is the first indie production that I have genuinely enjoyed and kept playing. Second, I don't play turn based games. I accidentally purchased Invisible Inc, played it for 30 min and never looked at it again. Turn based games just aren't interesting for me With those 2 points in mind, I've already sunk hours into this the moment I launched it! Very unexpected, and I can't even tell you why. The usual things that bother me about indie games still apply - backgrounds are low res, assets are re-used, tutorial was woefully inadequate.. BUT I just keep going back for more!! Graphics are clean and the art is cute; I still get a kick out of seeing the little potatos' eyeballs pop out when they're mortified. The art seemlessly blends classic 90s cartoons (Ed, Edd n Eddie, Courage etc) with Japanese style animation (Stereotypical anime facial expressions, sweat drops amongst others). The assets could use a bit of work. Higher level weapons just look the same but give you more damage. However, what's already there is simple and works perfect for the aesthetic the devs were going for. They had a clear target, and much like the first game, hit a bullseye. This game more than satisfies visually. The sound is adequate, with cute effects to accompany the potatoes when they get surprised or excited. Battle effects are serviceable. I won't comment much about gameplay as I rarely play turn based games, let alone ship based ones. 5 hours in, mechanics are enough to give me pause and think about how I should best outfit my ship and manage my crew. I would say it's not easy (bordering on frustrating for some boss battles) but not terribly difficult The story is consistent at least, and fits with the theme. Rag-tag sister duo sets off to find their grandfather while being pursued by angry alien fleet I can't end this review without mentioning the writing - this is what really makes the game stand out. It's CHOCK FULL of puns and clever dialogue. The number of pop culture references are insane, and while some fall flat on their face, most would at least get a chuckle out of you. The writing is magic wraps together the visuals, sound and gameplay into a complete package. Individually nothing stands out, but together is when the magic happens. Carrot pirates yell "I don't carrot all!" while your Pumpkin crew member named "Smashin'"is manning the railguns.. unless you live in a cave and have no sense of humour there's just no way you're not at least amused by this. The writing is the real standout here. Good job! The devs have a proven track record in the first game, and while I feel this was not as original a concept as the first, Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?! provides a very solid experience overall. The dialogue, clean graphics and sound really come together. This was made by people who love what they do. In the end.. come on, this thing barely costs more than a movie. Buy this instead of watching the next braindead hollywood drivel
• 

  MonsterTM

  Feb 24, 2017

  Holy Potatoes! The second game strikes back and makes another amazing game! So many refferences, from sci-fi, to fantasy, to movies, games, popular people in real life. By the time i was almost done with the game, i barely even explored everything in the game. You can research, upgrade, craft, train, anc coordinate all of your crew members! Some things in this game is silly, for exemple. a Unicorn Rainbow Planet , or a laser pointer gun that dosnt fire itself, but several dozen cats jump on your enemy! You will have alot of endless fun with this game, and you will probly play the game a second time around to find everything that youv missed. Go buy this game, go buy the previous game. In potatoes we trust! 9/10 eNjoy ^-^
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  kon

  Feb 25, 2017

  Having had ~7 hours in the game now, I think I can finally write a review. The game reminds me of FTL a lot while not really being anything like FTL. It has the same base principle of "running away from the bad guys in a spaceship" with the added "this is our overarching quest" which – lacking in FTL – always motivates me to get going through the game. Combat is moderately complex. You have weapons you can fire at the enemy (they need charge), you have shields that can either protect one weapon or your hull (so choose wisely). And you have pilot abilities which can turn around the fight quite quickly if you use them at the right times (they also don't need energy). There are a few strategies in combat that work really well, try to experiment around with weapon types, it might surprise you. But the thing that gripped me the most is exploration and quests. In each zone you encounter someone will need your help and thus, you embark on a quest. It sort of gives you a guiding path through a sector, where to go, what to do. You are always running so there is only so much time before you need to make another galaxy jump. With upgrades to your ship, crafting weapons and more it makes you feel like part of the crew in a way that few games do. And it motivates you to keep going and kinda expand your abilities. You can also train your crew with new skills, research new upgrades and when a turret gets destroyed, the crewmember who used it at the time gets traumatised and afterwards needs therapy. Not sure if that's cute or scarring :P The game also features the most adorable two sisters and banter in the universe :D The negative list is pretty short. - Random encounters aren't as random as they could be but imo it's only a minor thing and hasn't stopped me from enjoying the game any less - I wish there was a way to travel multiple planet hops at once which can make for very tedious jump-wait-jump-wait, scenarios All in all I would call this game an 8.5/10. It's fun, it's surprisingly tactically deep, it's full of vegetable puns and pretty funny dialog between the two main characters.
• 

  Giant Space Hamster

  Mar 21, 2017

  TLDR: If you like FTL, and like the idea of a similar game that has much more flavor but is quite a bit more casual (read: easier), then buy this! Excellent game! It is very similar to FTL. You fly around from galaxy to galaxy avoiding the bad guys, salvaging and crafting weapons, exploring, and fighting your way through the story. The story is much more evolved than FTL's, which adds a lot of flavor, but it's otherwise just as linear as FTL. Each galaxy has a number of planets to explore and you may or may not have time to explore them all (but usually you do unless you really muck things up). There's a lot of potential room for expansion content so hopefully we'll see some DLC. Pros: 1) Very nice graphics, audio, and music. Pretty pictures and sounds, ooohhh, ahhhhh. 2) Good interface (not perfect, but works well and no real problems...just a bit inefficient in terms of number of clicks at times) 3) Interesting story to keep your brain engaged while traipsing around the universe 4) Cool weapon variations and entertaining combat...to a point (see cons) 5) Boss battles that mix up the fighting a bit 6) Unlike FTL, you salvage a lot more weapons and can craft them from blueprints. Plus there's research. 7) The game length is longer than I expected, which was mostly positive, but combat got boring at the end (see cons) Cons: 1) Too easy, with no difficulty level to change. Early to mid game was fine but late game got repetitive. 2) Ship customization with respect to combat involves weapons only. The four other ship systems you can add are for non-combat only. Only a con since I liked how FTL had various systems to choose from that were involved in combat. On the other hand, your pilots do get special abilities that can be used in combat, somewhat making up for this. 3) This is a minor nitpick. They give you a fun ship name when the game starts but then one of the characters says "no i don't like that, change it" which prompts the user to name the ship, but you cannot enter the name they suggested because it's too long. I was super disappointed that I could not use the name they suggested because it was absolutely fantastic.
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  ipapotihus

  Apr 17, 2017

  This is a good game. Better than Weapon store. You will totally get the FTL vibe. I got one point that I don't like about that game. Its about the Animation, VFX. In Strategy game, you don't want to have long animation. The combat get repetive fast and that ok, in FTL, its the same thing also. But in this game, you got lonnnng animation sequence for each round of combat. Its suck. Each combat will break your pace and you cannot finish them under something like 3-4minutes. Well, it could be 1min for real, but It's feel like a long time. It's an eternity between each phase. So except for that, it's a great casual game.
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  adgo

  Apr 20, 2017

  Although the FTL comparisons are inevitable, combat in FTL is realtime; it's turn-based in HP:WiS. Which is my preference, personally. The lower learning curve makes it easier to reach the end of the game in the first walkthough, though "end" doesn't mean you actually saw all the content or the implications of all the choices. (I get the sense that some of what seemed to be loose ends were just options I turned away from unknowingly?) The one caveat I'd have is that if you don't like replaying games from the start over and over, then starting fresh after a ten-hour clear might be annoying. (Sure, there's the casual mode, but turning off achievements isn't much fun, either.) The end was well-foreshadowed, but still left me wanting more, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I feel like I got my money's worth and I'm hoping there's DLC to continue the story.
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  poetgriot

  Jun 1, 2017

  A fun romp through nerd space. Filled with witty references and a great variety of characters. I had a blast playing this and am going back for more.
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  GeneticEngineer

  Jul 2, 2017

  This game is amazingly quirky and surprisingly well balanced. None of the battles were too easy or hard!
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  Timrod

  Jul 4, 2017

  Holy Potatoes! We're in Space is basically FTL: Faster Than Light without all of the elements that make FTL a bad game. Like FTL, HP! WIS is a rogue-lite about managing a single spaceship and its crew while escaping from an evil empire that is always just a few steps behind you while you chase after the long-lost grandfather of your ship's captain. Unlike FTL, you don't need a wiki open so you know which events are going to give you game-ending RNG. Just like FTL, you start out in a randomly-generated galaxy with planets to explore. The difference is that rather than starting out in a random spot, you always start in a central shopping hub, which automatically repairs and refuels your ship whenever you visit it. While this makes the game significantly easier than FTL, it also makes it so that it's much harder to be perma-screwed when you pick the "wrong" option in a random event and your ship takes a ton of damage. Each galaxy has a storyline that eventually unlocks the ability to warp to the next galaxy. You are given a limited, but very generous amount of time (movement between planets and exploring planets take time) to accomplish it, and then have to return to the shopping hub to advance. The time limit never really felt like it got in the way for me - on the game's "normal" difficulty I was able to finish the objective with plenty of time to explore the rest of the galaxy and rack up money and weapon materials. The other differences from FTL become apparent as soon as you start upgrading your ship. HP! WIS has a nice balance of guaranteed upgrades and RNG-dependent items - basically, upgrades to the ship itself are guaranteed and can be purchased from the shopping hub, while weapons are given as "blueprints" and can be crafted on your ship - resulting in massive stat variations that can make or break a weapon's viability. I never really felt screwed over by the weapon RNG, because for every crap weapon I got out of the crafting system, I got at least one worthwhile one. I think the only thing I could improve about this game is making it easier to manage your ship's weapons. You can have up to four, and generally you want to first attack the enemy's more annoying guns (such as anything that causes debuffs or buffs the enemy ship) and then destroy its hull for maximum rewards. In most situations, you want all of your weapons concentrated on one target - but there's no button (as far as I'm aware) to make all of your weapons target the same thing. This is really a nitpick at best, since it's only a few extra clicks to cycle through all of your weapons - but it's kind of an obvious feature that the devs seem to have missed. If you've played FTL: Faster than Light and hate the seemingly random screw-overs and needing a wiki up 24/7 to determine the probability that your game becomes unwinnable, HP! WIS is the game for you... even if it's a little easy overall.
• 

  Cakelet

  Sep 23, 2017

  Bought this game for the giant blue space cat, stayed because it's a genuine delight. Roguelike space exploration and crafting game. There are three primary storylines plus a ton of randomly-generated quests and events. If you don't like doofy pop culture puns, you won't like this. If you don't like choose-your-own-adventure events interspersed with objectively repetitive (but still super fun) turn-based battles, you won't like this. And if you're so incredibly fragile that exactly one throwaway line about gender being a social construct gets your nuts in a wad, you won't like this. You will love it if you loved devoting yourself to games like Final Fantasy 8 as a kid, if a good grind session never scared you off, if gambling battle outcomes on your limit breaks was exciting rather than infuriating and if stubbornly reloading your saves when Triple Triad battles went way south is how you ended up with all those one-shot-only super rare cards. (Back before "save scumming" was a cardinal sin.) It doesn't walk or talk like Final Fantasy 8, but it has that [i]feeling[/i], you know? It's just a good time. The scenery is incredibly beautiful, it's pretty quick to get an handle on the gameplay, and for being actual, literal potatoes, the characters are endearing as heck. Also, it's the only game that's ever made me string together the words "mermaid carrot boobs." And that counts for something. I'm not sure what that something is, but it counts for it. P.S. Getting the rarer achievements for making weapons, by the way, entail doing what it asks in a [i]single[/i] playthrough, not cumulatively. So if you're having issues with those achievements, especially the 20 SS-rank weapons one, that's why.
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  Senders

  Oct 15, 2017

  It started off as fun, but I never felt like I was actually progressing. Every time I go back to the hub I look at the 20 upgrades I don't have the money for. Every second battle you're left reparing all the weapons. It gets a bit tedious, and the lack of feeling of progression became a game stopping hinderence for me. It was still fun in it's own right, but I wish I'd refunded it before I went over the two hour mark.
• 

  Rer

  Oct 25, 2017

  I really am surprised, but Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?! is rapidly becoming one of my favorite 2017 releases. It borrows a lot from FTL (Faster Than Light), while adding on a thick layer of silly pop culture references, charm, and cats! Combat is turn-based rather than in real-time, and while RNG does play a factor into some things, it's not enough to override smart decision making and investment in the right researches. Honestly I'm intrigued enough to both go buy their older game "Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!" and their brand new cooking in the underworld game "Holy Potatoes! What The Hell?!" Plus this game has an *actual Demo* how crazy is that! :O
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  TygerTaco

  Nov 1, 2017

  Looked like a light fun game, but it's a little too light, not much variation in play and whats there is only so so fun. The jokes aren't that funny as they are mostly pop/internet culture references. The one thing that made me realy dislike this game though is the combat music is a single short song on loop, it gets old fast... I picked it up for $8 which is maybe a fair price, maybe...
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  TheirOwnHubris

  Nov 24, 2017

  This is what happens when you take elements of games like FTL and add more humor, characterization, and plot elements while reducing some of the potential difficulty/frustration that most Roguelikes are built around. You can save-scum, you can retry things/escape things, etc. The humor's hardly high-brow, and a significant amount is referential, but it's accessible for most anybody and lots of fun.
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  Shylock

  Feb 21, 2018

  What a game! So filled with great references to under and not so under pop culture. Raging from Doctor Who, GoT, Gintama and Evangelion. Just about something for everyone. The combat and some mechanics are heavily inspired by FTL though there are many new things to make them completely different games. The weapon system allows many synergies and set ups. The crafting system doesn't lag behind, either. The story is colorful and very fun. It's shallow most of the time, but what can you expect from vegetable people? The characters are still great and hilarious on every occasion. I would recommend this game to any FTL fan, strategy fan or sci-fi fan. Even to vegetarians. The endings and no NG+ leave something to be desired. That's the only thing I would point to these amazing devs. 8.5/10, would def play again with new content.
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  francis_crawford

  Jun 20, 2018

  The company included spyware (RedShell) in the game to track people's internet activity outside of the game and, presumably, sell it. I heard they removed it once they got caught, but why support a company that secretly installed spyware on unsuspecting gamer's computers?
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  Ich Weiß Nichts

  Mar 1, 2021

  It seems like this "game" was written by a child. It borrows heavily in actual gameplay, what little there is, from FTL, but the majority of the content is clicking through endless, monotonous, unintelligent, drivel, over, and over, again. It feels like a simulator for scrolling through a facebook account with a lot of kids on it, instead of any type of space exploration game. I get it, it's an attempt at being cute, but it just ends up becoming the most grating gameplay element I've encountered yet.