It is the future. You are Keith T Maxwell. You fly a mean ship. A lot of stuff looks teal.
As you travel around the galaxy, you shoot other ships and pick up their loot. It's not entirely sure where these other ships buy their wares because I've traversed half the galaxy so far and no sign of anything other than ships, weapons and shield generators for sale. You don't even have to scoop it up; you just get a screen when performing a mission saying "loot scooped: a ton of this, three tons of that".
The beginning of the game takes you by the hand and gently introduces you to what you have to do using cut-scenes and missions.
Here's one of the missions. Escort the freighters to their destination. Freighters carrying things everyone else in the galaxy is apparently able to buy, but you can't. You have to shoot the bad guys and pick up their loot.
Here's the ship you start with. Not a bad scout ship, 10 ton cargo hold, and two specific weapon slots. With all the ships, you don't have the maneuverability of an Oolite ship. You can fly straight up and down, and pivot left and right (both by either the thumb icon or tilting the iPhone / iPod). No barrel rolling to see your screen rotate.
As with Oolite, there's a method for selling the goods you find. But it's ass-backwards. High tech stuff fetches a high price on high tech worlds and stations, low tech things like medicine fetch more on low tech worlds. So supply and demand is a bit skewed.
With your cash, you upgrade. The Wraith is a nice fighter, but lacks fire and forget missiles.
The galaxy is split into four quadrants...
...each quadrant is made up of 25 systems...
...and each of the systems has five places to visit of various tech levels. Only one in three places (or so) allows trade.
At the beginning, the Vossk are your enemy. But it's not entirely clear if they're making overtures to be friendly because the pirates are really the bad guys for one of the other races, or if they are just The Bad Guys. You do get to visit their planets and bases. Some allow trade. And there's the choice to buy Vossk ships or weaponry.
Some of the levels are against the clock, and your game is saved at the end of every mission. You may not be able to trade at every station or planet, but there are always missions. This is a 'clear the space debris, we're too lazy and slobs, it will take you two minutes ...tops' mission.
Here's a good old fashioned dogfight. Bad guys are always highlighted in red, the guys you're working for are green. And it is IMPOSSIBLE to kill a green. Your weapons won't lock on, and target weapons just seem to bounce off the friendy's hull.
When you complete a selected mission, you're awarded cash (and if you can sell cargo, even more cash).
There are three basic mission types. Escort (either other ships, or a passenger in your ship). Clear an area (of asteroids, junk, mines). Or shoot stuff (clear all pirates from the sector, disable an enemy's battleship turrets, a good old-fashioned hit job).
And sometimes you get a helping hand.
Some upgrades are better than others. This one's not the strongest weapon ...but it homes in, and has a wicked rate of fire. If your ship can take a Thermo weapon, this is your friend.
As with Elite / Oolite, you have a ranking. Level 10 is heroic, and your loyalty depends on how much you're willing to do work for the Vossk.
As each level is a quick five minutes, it's great for those on-the-train-or-bus moments where you want to play space polit but don;t have a laptop computer with you. And for free, I can't grumble.
