Noctis

The Good
Noctis features an excellent, mysterious and highly flexible plot, tough it is not really much present in the game itself, but rather displayed mostly in the manual, and its original homepage.

The atmosphere is excellent, quite simply perfect. The graphics are also good for being DOS. Most of all, I liked the impressive and by far revolutionary use of technology, with an almost unlimited gaming-scope. You never really get tired or bored of Noctis, for there's always something new to see. Another great plus with Noctis, is its incredibly small download size; currently slightly 1 MB large! That's a galaxy with 70 billion stars, and about a thousand comments and names from other stardrifters, yet a new example that great games don't have to have a massive download size.

Most of all tough, Noctis is an unique simulator which uses not only an impressive engine, but also our own fantasy.

The Bad
The controls may seem a little difficult at first, but you should get used to it after some time.

The Bottom Line
Noctis – The Latin word for night, when the Earth is turned away from the sun, and everything becomes dark; only lighten by the moon and the beautiful, twinkling, mysterious, and beckoning light from the stars far up in the infinite heavens.

There exists an eternal night between the stars in interstellar space, and by such, Noctis is also the name of this free, and extremely unique, space-exploration simulator series, created by Italian programmer Alessandro Ghignola in his free time.

The development of Noctis began somewhere in the year 1996, and from this time, Noctis has been under constant development. Now, at the very end of the year 2002, Noctis has become one of, if not the best, space exploration simulators ever created, and the series is still developing with the development of the revolutionery Noctis V.

The story-line of Noctis is very mysterious and engaging, tough there is no plot-development in the game itself. The story is mostly described in the games manual and official homepage, since the game itself concentrates mostly on the exploration, and needs no ingame plot-development.

When you start Noctis, you will find yourself inside a StarDrifter-ship, located in interstellar space. The galaxy in Noctis, named Feltyrion, has over 70 billion stars, all of which you can visit, many of which having planets; which you can actually land on and explore from the surface level.

Tough the controls for the SD might seem a little difficult to use at first, you will very soon get the hang of it (I advice reading the excellent manual before starting the simulator, since it covers all controls and aspects of the game).

You can also name your own stars and planets, write short comments about them in the galactic guide (by using a special console called G.O.E.S), and send these names and comments in to be included in the frequent release of starmaps. By these maps and the guide, the galaxy constantly grows with new discoveries by other drifters. It's quite fun to download these maps from time to time, to see how the galaxy has developed.

The galaxy is almost endless with several trillion worlds, and many billion stars.

With good graphics, great atmosphere, good plot, and an seemingly limitless potential, Noctis can awaken a sense of wonder, awe and inspiration in all of us.

Quite simply breathtaking, I loved it.

Two thumbs way up!

The Good
Noctis is the greatest fictional exploration simulation to date. It is a 3D space simulator that has an immense variety of fully randomized planetary systems to explore. Even multiple star systems and systems with as many as 80 planets and moons can be found throughout Noctis' immense universe. The planets themselves are even more varied, and can feature ice rings and multiple moons in orbit. The surfaces of planets can range anywhere from desolate wastelands, to forested islands complete with unintelligent animals and plant life. You can also take as many thumbnail-sized screenshots as you like, and post your favorites weekly for other players to see on the website.

The Bad
The only thing really holding Noctis IV back is that it features old DOS graphics. The imagery is still very nice looking, although the low-resolution leaves something to be desired. This will be fixed soon though, as the upcoming release of Noctis V is currently being completely rewritten in the 32 bit L.IN.O.L.E.U.M. programming language. Controls can sometimes be a bit awkward as well, although those too are to be updated in the new version, being released soon.

The Bottom Line
Overall, if you are looking for an in depth exploration game, I recommend Noctis. It allows for exploration of a huge universe, and has a great fan base as well.

The Good
Noctis is a bit of a departure from most games in that it is quite literally a space exploration simulator - much moreso than the excellent Orbiter space simulator series. Noctis is the only game that I am immediately aware of that allows you to map out an entire galaxy.

This is very fun to do for a period of time, inserting your entries into the game's database and then flinging it off to the developer so that he integrate your discoveries into the next "universe update" every-so-often. It's not real elegant in the big scheme of things, but it does have a certain charm to it.

Noctis is very addicting as well. When I first stumbled onto the game a few years ago, I spent at least three months flying around in my craft, naming and exploring whole star systems. Noctis really has a certain atmosphere to it that you usually don't find in many "sandbox" games, and it manages to suck you in when you least expect it to.

The graphics engine, while quite outdated by the time the game was released (see complaint below), still manages to generate stunning imagery if you can get a good angle on things - as evidenced by the screenshots accessible elsewhere in MobyGames entry on the game.

The amazing thing about it all is the fact the author of the product has managed to create a persistent universe of millions of star systems while still being able to fit on two or three floppy disks. The game is almost worth downloading to observe the tight coding done by the author.

The Bad
The main problem with Noctis is that there isn't really much you can do in the game save for wandering around planets, naming them and heading on to the next subject. It's fine for awhile, but soon you sort of wish you were doing something else. If the fifth version of Noctis is ever released, I would hope that there is something to do in the game beyond being a glorified stellar cartographer.

The graphics are a bit of bother as well. It appears that they weren't updated much since Noctis III, and as such they are a few years behind the times. They can still produce very good visuals under the right circumstances, but consider what would be in the screenshots right now if they had been somewhat more up-to-spec for 2001? As of the current product, polygon clipping and fuzzy visuals are quite common in Noctis.

I also have to complain about the lack of any sound. While its not a big detriment to Noctis, it would have been nice to have a few simple FM effects - like when the Vimana Drive is active or having some wind blow about when you are wandering around the plains of a habitable world. Its little things like that that makes a game memorable.

The Bottom Line
The game is free, so it can't really hurt to try it out. You might like it, you might find it incredibly boring. But as a 2MB download it can't really do much harm, can it?

I do, however, recommend that you download the latest version of the "Noctis CE" package. While it's updated terrain engine produces visuals that do not gel with the original version of the product (making the "send stuff off to the developer so that the rest of the world sees it" a bit impossible presently), it has more options, better graphics and is on the whole a much more realistic product.