You're a captain of a freelance spaceship and you do whatever the heck you want. Want to get involved in galactic politics and be a part of reshaping the political landscape for aeons to come? Go for it. Or not. Want to be a pirate who gets rich by preying on the weak and defenseless? Well, good luck. Just want to set up some sweet trade routes and make a quick buck? That's fine, too. Or you can explore, spy, salvage ancient space stations, etc.

As the captain, you've got some responsibilities, though. You need to keep your crew paid and happy. You need to make sure your ship stays in good condition and doesn't run out of fuel. Fail to do these things and you can find yourself with a mutiny, or worse-- dead (assuming you want to play on permadeath mode, which is totally optional).

In a sense, the game is largely about management. Whether you're trading, running missions for your contacts, engaging in person to person or ship to ship combat, or carrying out one of the many luck-manipulation based minigames (patrolling or blockading planets, spying, exploration of uncivilized planets, etc.) your biggest task is to weigh the risk vs. the reward. Star Traders was designed with a somewhat roguelike mentality, so save scumming for optimal results is discouraged or even disabled depending on the difficulty you choose. Deciding whether you can take the risk to finish salvaging a bountiful ancient space station (which will soon be picked apart by other industrious scavenger crews) or whether you really need to return to port and fuel your spice-addicted crews semi-charmed kind of life is really the core of the game. You need to decide whether your crew should have more exploration specialists to maximize your hauls from a xeno planet or whether you really do need to use that bunk for another pilot so you don't get demolished in an unfortunate pirate encounter.

With all of that said, the game is very fun and engaging at a high level. There are so many things to do that at times it's almost overwhelming. However, the minute to minute play can be a little dull at times. Person to person combat is essentially a slightly less engaging version of Darkest Dungeon, and can get a little repetitive. Ship to ship combat is even more basic. All of the luck manipulation style games are essentially the same. At about 40 hours of gameplay (not a bad amount of enjoyment to get out of a 15 dollar game, though!), these issues became frustrating enough that I've taken a couple long month break.

However, this a Trese Brothers game. It's had nearly weekly updates in the 3 months I've been involved with the game, and there is already a lot of effort to shore up these complaints. I'll definitely be returning to the game sometime in the future, and could easily see myself spending another 40 hours or more.