Somewhere, on the far fringes of the Charon system, your frigate drops out of warp. All seems quiet, and it looks like you should be able to make it to the Leisure station unmolested with your fully loaded cargo bay of Greel whisky. These people never get enough of the tasty Greel goodness, and they always pay top dollar.
As you approach the station, your radar suddenly breaks out in a most disturbing rash of red spots all around you. It's the system militia, led by a suspiciously-star-destroyer-ish Arcturus-class capital ship, swarming with a cloud of fighter escorts. You could try to talk or bribe your way out of this orbital traffic stop, but you've tried working with these vaguely Russian-accented types before, and it never ends without loss of cargo or profit.
Now would be a great time to have one of those scanner-proof smuggler's hold upgrades you saw back at the Merchant's Guild station. Unfortunately for you, this hold full of liquid credits took everything you could scrape together, and now the Militia knows exactly what's in there. Militia takes their embargos very seriously, and this woman is not happy.
Ignoring their hails, you kick in your boosters and bank hard left, hoping to punch through their embargo line before their slow ships can react. For reasons you don't understand, the Beastie Boys begin blaring over your ship's PA….
Lookin down the barrel of a gun
Son of a gun
Son of a BITCH
Gettin PAID gettin RICH
Been playing this one rather a lot recently, and thought it might be a great fit for my TGL gaming brethren and sistren. Great indie capital ship arcade space sim (if that's even a thing). Only 2 devs worked on this, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. It's on PC, Xbox, and PS4, so the hardware base is good. It's not new, but its both cheap, and PC version will run on potato, so it's got that going for it. Furthermore, it's on sale thru Steam for literally $2 until tomorrow.
You start out with a stereotypically wimpy ship, and proceed to get bigger/stronger/faster pew-pewier stuff as you play. By the end, you're basically a flying planet killer. Several star systems are procedurally generated for each save, giving some variety/replayability/uniqueness. Despite being a space sim, combat is on a 2D plane, but somehow this works. If you've played World of Warships, the naval style combat will seem pretty familiar.
There is a story line, but you're largely free to do whatever you want in a sandbox of several solar systems, each populated with planets, stations, and pirates. Join a guild, become a smuggler, pirate, asteroid miner…you name it! Wanna make money hopping from station to station buying and selling? There a Dope Wars-clone market system to buy low and sell high…if you can! Several species of aliens and factions to interact with. Do missions to gain one faction's favor, and piss off their enemies. Again, dynamic development ensures no two playthroughs are alike.
Soundtrack is a Western-ish mix that could just as well be from Firefly, which is an obvious influence. Better yet tho, the devs made it so that you can set your own soundtrack using your own mp3s. Bruuuuuuuh! This is awesome. Music is triggered in game by what's happening. Idle music plays while you're cruising through deep space (super mellow stuff), combat (anything aggressive), and so on. It's random, but riffs on in-game content. No kidding, it brings the gameplay to another level when you're diving in on an unsuspecting target with mining lasers blazing and GWAR raging in the background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0VapSqo2mQ
DEATH POD COMES FROM THE SKY!!! :abduct: :bakedmonkey:
And don't think you get left out of the mp3 goodness, console players! You can plug in a USB stick loaded with your soundtrack, and RG will use that. For PC, it's as easy as pointing directories to your music, literally a few clicks.
Just the thing you need to go iive out your very best Star Wars knockoff fantasy of choice.
Here's some gameplay footage – imagine this, only with your own custom soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJqyk7N83g
There's also a sequel/prequel that just released recently (why can we not just make movies or games in order anymore?!), Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw. Focuses more on a fighter-class perspective in the same 'verse, whereas the original RG is capital-ship-sized.
Obligatory Steam link FYI: https://store.steampowered.com/app/290300/Rebel_Galaxy/