Star Conflict: Burrownauts Playtest Impressions

As a long-time fan of Star Conflict, hearing the news about the official servers being sunset was a bit of a gut punch. That game offered a specific flavour of space combat that kept me hooked for the first couple of years. Learning that the original online infrastructure is coming to a close feels like the end of an era. Thankfully, Targem Games has softened the blow by dropping an unexpected olive branch in Star Conflict: Burrownauts. They have also vowed to support player-run local server for the original Star Conflict which is a relief that ensures the original dogfighting playground won’t disappear completely into digital ether.

Star Conflict: Burrownauts takes the universe into action-roguelite territory, so jumping into the current playtest was an absolute no-brainer for me. In reimagining the lore, ships, and weapons of the original universe through a fresh gameplay loop centred on deep-space mining, resource gathering, and base defence, a new level of one-more-round addiction is on the horizon.

The visual design and familiar ship aesthetics immediately trigger nostalgia, but the gameplay loop draws a fun hybrid inspiration from titles like Dome Keeper and bullet-heaven shooters. The structure of a run boils down to a constant, tense balance between two main activities:

1. Drilling & Planetoid Exploration: You land your expedition rig on an ancient planet, tunnelling deep into the terrain to harvest rare ores. It’s a strangely therapeutic experience at first by breaking through rock layers, finding ore veins, and hauling loot back to the ship.
2. Bullet-Heaven Base Defence: The quiet mining phases don’t last long. Hostile space bandits and alien waves continuously zero in on your surface base and drilling rig. When the threat alarm sounds, you must drop what you’re doing, get back to your base ship, launch a fighter ship and unleash hell.

This constant push-and-pull creates a fantastic rhythmic tension. Do you push deeper into a rich ore vein for to unlock crucial upgrades for your mining rig or fighter ship, or do you head back early to fortify your ship’s systems before the incoming swarm hits? As the threat meter blinks to red, ships will start firing on your base ship.

The roguelite elements fit the space-miner theme really well. Unlocking new upgrade modules and trying to find that precious iridium may mean you need to find another mining base. However the further you explore in your fighter ship, the more enemy fighters spawn in. Perseverance in finding the next base location, calling your main base over and defending it as it traverses the plane is a great in-between the two main gameplay loops.

For an early playtest build, Star Conflict: Burrownauts is already surprisingly addicting. Combining the zen-like focus of subterranean mining with the frantic, screen-filling chaos of defending your base creates a loop that’s hard to put down. It certainly won’t replace the 16v16 multiplayer dogfights of classic Star Conflict, nor is it trying to. The playtest is limited to a single complete run but you can repeat it to unlock more skills for future runs.

Instead, Star Conflict: Burrownauts offers an exciting and well executed reinvention of the universe in roguelite form. Knowing the classic game will live on via local servers gives me peace of mind, and Burrownauts makes me genuinely excited for the future of the franchise. I’m eager to see how Targem expands on ship variety, meta-progression, and enemy types in future updates as we head toward the full release.

These first impressions utilised a key provided by the developers and Star Conflict: Burrownauts currently has a playtest on Steam though with no firm release date yet for the full game.

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