Little Known Galaxy Review (In Progress)
SPAAAAAAAAACE!
(Steam code provided for review by Carbon & Key. Thank you!)
Space is great, guys. Honestly, I spent most of my younger years wanting to be as badass as Captain Katheryn Janeway or as smart as Colonel Samantha Carter. I just wanted to explore. Expand my horizons, even though I know I’m never becoming an astronaut in real life.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never felt at home playing something like Stardew Valley, where I would always end up feeling like I had to try and charm the whole town, that I had to settle down and find a partner, that I had to be the most popular person in Pelican Town. Maybe it’s the decade-plus I’ve been in retail, but after a few days in-game, it was just exhausting.
Enter Little Known Galaxy, from husband and wife team Carbon & Kay. While I haven’t been able to explore every planet yet (there are four), my many hours with it so far have been nothing but a great time that I can’t stop going back to, and I love how committed it is to the sci-fi genre. Starting the game, you’re tasked with picking a name for your ship and while I’m terrible at picking names for things, I looked no further than the default:
Shippy McShipface.
Marvelous, right? Your ship isn’t so marvelous to start with, as once you walk out of your quarters the sight is enough to send you right back in. This is an obligatory tutorial section, but it was fun (and easy) to use your space-vac to suck up the smaller miscellaneous things on the floor. And it started you off with resources you’ll need to get out there and find the coffee in the nebula. (Sorry, it’s my inner Janeway coming out)
There’s no shortage of things to do. You still plant crops, talk to your crew, do chores, buy things, etc. You can gather resources from the planets below, clean up your deck or the outer hull, or even hunt for microbes and earn money. The microbe hunting is delightful, especially with Dale North’s soundtrack.
There’s no shortage of quality-of-life items either, all of which are fitting for the setting you’re in. If you need to find someone, no need to try and hunt them down on every deck; click on their profile and you know where they are. Ready to upgrade your tools? Just drop them off with the materials required to upgrade, and once they’re done they’ll be sent right to your quarters. (You can do more than one tool at a time!)
Perhaps my favorite quality-of-life update is a storage crate attached to the crafting computer; once I found it, I may have actually jumped for joy.
Overall, it’s a tighter, smoother experience than a traditional farming sim. You still plant crops, talk to your neighbors, do chores, buy things, etc, but it’s much easier on your ship than in a sprawling rural town.
I do have a few qualms with what I’ve played so far. The forges, at least to me, feel extremely slow, while time passes almost too quickly. On one hand, it’s great because I can go down to the planet and explore or stay on my ship and hunt microbes, come back, and switch things out. On the other hand, when you need 12 ingots of something, it takes a looong time to get what you need. Finally, I’m not sure if missed it, but I haven’t been able to switch between the trays for my backpack.
The game has full controller support, runs great remote-played to my Logitech G Cloud, and works on Steam Deck. Carbon & Kay have said the game will take approximately 40-60 hours for the main story, and roughly 60-100 for completionists.
(While I’m not scoring this review-in-progress, know that I’m highly, HIGHLY recommending the game, and can’t wait to revisit with a score and my final thoughts soon.)