Jumpdrive allows players to explore a vast universe. Travel through space and land on various planets each with their own atmosphere and designs. Search for various missions and places to explore and hopefully one day increase the size of your starship. Jumpdrive aims to be a unique twist on the usual sandbox type space simulators. With a feel of an 80’s movie and the music to go along with it, Jumpdrive aims to be the indie title with big ambitions.

Jumpdrive lets players go wherever they want and do whatever they please. Take your small spacecraft and feel the freedom of an open universe as you trailblaze your path in the stars. Encounter different galaxies and planets alike and choose to explore them for things to do. With amazing 80’s inspired tracks, you’ll never want to have your sound muted as you feel like you’re on a trip in Jumpdrive. Rather than be guided along on what to do, Jumpdrive lets you free from the normal gameplay mechanics of sandbox titles and that is truly an interesting idea.

Jumpdrive has players set in a far-off future. As a space pilot you are free to explore the universe and accomplish whatever tasks you find. Will you become an expert trader who sells wares all across the galaxies? Maybe become a pirate who attacks other ships for their loot? The choice is yours in Jumpdrive. Now, launch your ship and ascend into the stars!

A few years ago, No Man’s Sky was released to the world with a lot of mixed reviews and opinions. The ability to go anywhere in a huge randomized galaxy and explore various planets on and off a ship were intriguing ideas. However, the execution left gamers feeling bored and until several major updates most didn’t particularly care for No Man’s Sky. That’s why Jumpdrive made us look at it with a double take. With a heavier emphasis on simulation gameplay but similar ideas seen in No Man’s Sky, is Jumpdrive the game you want to pick up for your PC? Let us see in our review of Jumpdrive from developer Meteoric Games.

Jumpdrive, upon starting up, scared us quite quickly. Despite Jumpdrive being a full release product, the initial first screen says its in Alpha and still uses the original name of Jumpdrive—Paragon—which means it has really hasn’t had many updates if this screen still shows up. However, we looked past it and after looking up how to play we launched our tiny ship towards the skies. Our first step was to sail around the planet and then head up into space. Here, Jumpdrive began taking a nosedive for us.

Despite seeming complicated with the various buttons on screen and the amount of actions you can take—if you look at the controls menu—Jumpdrive is quite simple. You have several main actions you can take with your ship such as check the map which shows all the areas of the galaxy you can venture to, change the view of your ship, and several buttons that allow for various driving maneuvers. Some of these maneuvers are things like auto-pilot or increase speed and others are meant to allow for warp drive. These buttons will be your main means of navigating Jumpdrive’s large world but in terms of anything else there isn’t much more to Jumpdrive. You can manually control your ship with a mouse and keyboard and look all around your ship via the cockpit or the exterior of the ship but unlike No Man’s Sky you can’t leave your craft. For the entirety of the game, you will be stuck to whatever ship you’re piloting and that kind of is a shame to be honest. Though the problems with Jumpdrive don’t stop here.

While we applaud indie developer/publisher Meteoric Games for their valiant efforts with Jumpdrive’s gameplay, the amount of what you can do is actually pretty shallow in execution. As you explore the solar system, you will find other ships—though rarely—and various planets to enter. In terms of interaction, most ships allow you to communicate with them if you port near them or within and this is where you take on missions, quests or just buy and sell items. Honestly though, all of this comes off as boring because you never really feel like Jumpdrive is leading you anywhere. Sure, it’s an open game akin to Minecraft where there is no wrong or right way to play but in games like Minecraft or even No Man’s Sky, you have a purpose and feel like things are being accomplished. In Jumpdrive you will feel just boredom as you sail around the stars finding barely anything to do.

Luckily, sailing around in Jumpdrive is made a bit more enjoyable thanks to two elements. The graphic and music for Jumpdrive are actually quite solid. While Jumpdrive won’t be pushing your PC to the max with its visuals it reminded us of an early 80’s-like movie and the music matches with some quite stunning tracks. We never grew bored of listening to the several tracks that played as they are almost too epic for what Jumpdrive offers. The ships and the various planets you enter also feel stylish with an original tone and that makes seeing them up close enjoyable even if it’s for a brief moment or two. Jumpdrive offers a sizeable amount to see when you go across the galaxy but again just don’t expect to do much.

Our final major gripe with Jumpdrive is the actual way the game runs. Not once but a good couple dozen times, we here at Honey’s Anime had Jumpdrive crash on us. Even with settings at a supreme low to test if it was our computers, Jumpdrive would crash in the same way almost every time. Typically, it occurred when you would initiate warp drive to specific sectors and try to move too much after. We lost a lot of progress the first two times it happened since we didn’t save the game—which you should do all the time in any simulator game—but after the first few times we just started Jumpdrive up to see if we could reproduce the effect. 9 times out of 10, we could so that goes to show you Jumpdrive needs some serious updates.

Jumpdrive is at heart a truly ambitious simulation title but unfortunately it comes up short in more ways than one. The ability to fly in space and find random ships or planets to explore is a neat idea but Jumpdrive doesn’t offer enough to truly enjoy the experience. Often, there would be times where we would fly for nearly 30-40 minutes before finding a spaceship to dock with or a ship to communicate with. Add to that where you are essentially stuck to your ship and Jumpdrive feels claustrophobic and slow. In titles like No Man Sky—despite all the issues it had—you could leave your ship and explore planets in greater detail or even the inside of other ships, Jumpdrive doesn’t offer any of this and you will have to get use to that if you plan on exploring the various galaxies within. Jumpdrive’s greatest strengths is in its amazing music and visual looks but that isn’t enough to recommend Jumpdrive even for the low price.

Jumpdrive’s development team Meteoric Games had some amazing ideas in their heads but just didn’t deliver on a lot of those ideas. We love the theme and music of Jumpdrive but more often than not Jumpdrive just comes across as boring. The ability to encounter random ships and explore planets is fun but with nothing to do but minor text based options or the occasional cities to land at. Have you tried Jumpdrive or planned on trying it out? Let us know in the comment sections down below and for all your gaming review needs keep stuck to our hive here at Honey’s Anime.