These 5 deep, absorbing unknown games will eat days of your life

Not to be confused with singing synthesizers, Volcanoids is survival and crafting sandbox in early access, and wait, no — where are you going? This one is different, I swear. Volcanoid Studio skips the boring ‘caveman’ parts and starts players out assembling a Jules Verne-esque tunneling land-ship. Once your vessel is ship (and drill) shaped, you’re off to battle an army of magma-fuelled steampunk robots that are trying to defeat humanity by causing volcanic eruptions. It’s still early days yet for the game, but this initial release has me unusually excited. Check out the launch trailer below.

I’ve only had a few minutes to play around with Volcanoids, but its tactile mechanical crafting systems reminded me a bit of Factorio at first. Gather metal ore, chuck it into the right machines, hit the buttons and out pops SCIENCE! Relaxing, right up until the first volcanic eruption. The game told me to hide in my initial home base — an armored submarine — but instead, I stayed above decks to see what would happen. Boom — the world shakes and an enormous cloud is blasted high into the air. And then a vast tsunami of super-heated dust starts rolling across the entire island. I slammed the door of my sub shut just as the wave was about to hit.

It is relatively safe to assume that most people are accustomed to the idiom ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, which of course is a metaphor for not prejudging the worth of something by its outward appearance alone. But what if the ‘cover’ of the book appears to be fabulous, so good in fact that you cannot wait to sit down and read the book from start to finish; only to find that the initial chapters leave you frustrated and disinterested? Many people would likely toss the book to one side and never pick it up again, never realizing that they had in fact been holding on to a magnificent piece of literature, albeit with a frustrating beginning. My experience with Frontier Pilot Simulator is much akin to this metaphor, except that I decided to ‘pick the book back up’.

Frontier Pilot Simulator features a skill-based flying system with a story-driven economic progression system, set in an open world with dynamic weather and a physics system that will take a while to get accustomed with. Upon beginning the game you start out with a very basic cargo ship (pictured above) that has a very limited range and can only transport the lightest of loads. In fact, I highly recommend — at least initially — just flying around a little bit at first; as piloting a craft that is reliant on directional thrust takes quite a bit of time to get accustomed to. During this initial experimentation, you will most likely delete your save and start from scratch. I can almost guarantee you will find your bank balance so far into in the negatives that any attempt to make money will be futile.

This early playtime is all about getting to grips with the thrust system, as well as learning to pay attention to environmental factors such as wind, geysers, and volcanoes. The physics in Frontier Pilot Simulator are excellent, albeit very challenging from the start. Through the use of thrust, you have to learn that movement will not necessarily be immediate, and that landing without damaging your cargo or your ship is an acquired skill. You also learn at this point that a heavy load of cargo will dramatically change the handling of your craft; in some cases resulting in your ship being unable to fully take off. During these early stages of the game, it would be very easy to become frustrated and just give up; and to be completely honest, that is exactly what I did.

Well, at least for a little while. I have never been one to back away from a challenge, so after a couple of small updates that the developers pushed out I jumped right back in.

I was initially a glorified taxi, merely transporting colonists between the different locations on the relatively small island where this adventure begins. The income was relatively meager, but performing these tasks allowed me to truly master piloting my ship. Whilst I keep threatening to purchase a decent HOTAS, it is still something I have not done yet. Assuming that Frontier Pilot Simulator will support them, I imagine that will be the preferred method of play. But using a controller works extremely well, as the triggers allow for varying degrees of thrust that precision flying relies upon. As I continued the grind, quests began to appear (signified by yellow text on-screen) instructing me to purchase various upgrades, and eventually a new ship.

We’re still waiting for Ace Combat 7 to fly onto our PSVR headsets, but the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows VR headsets are getting a promising contender this month.

Worlds at War from developer Muddy Pixel is releasing in Early Access later on in February, and it looks like a lot of fun. In the game, you pilot aircraft, helicopters and boats, leading them into battle against enormous alien spacecraft in horde-style gameplay. Set in the aftermath of the invasion of Earth, you’ll sit in the cockpit of each vehicle and weave through the gunfire and explosions as you fend off the enemy.

When it launches in pre-release this month the game will feature three scenarios and each vehicle type, though more are planned for launch throughout the Early Access phase which is expected to last for a few months. The game’s also due to a tune-up in the visuals department (though it looks pretty sharp as is).

Right now the experience is single-player-only and played with a controller or mouse and keyboard. It’s inspired by classic arcade games and reminds us just a bit of the Rage Software classic, Incoming, which is no bad thing.

Films like Pacific Rim prove that even when gigantic fighting robots don’t receive the best reviews, there’s still a market for hulking war machines scrapping it out. When it comes to virtual reality (VR), strapping yourself into a giant mechanized robot to fight others seems like a match made in heaven, and titles like Code51: Mecha Arena and Archangel: Hellfire have both brought their own unique take on the genre. The latest to try its hand is Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation’s Vox Machinae for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (previewed), which could be the best one yet.

Currently, in Early Access, Vox Machinae is a pure multiplayer combat title, where players face off against one another in three different modes, Deathmatch, Salvage, and Stockpile. There are five maps to play on with five different robots and ten selectable weapons. While there’s no single-player as such, offline there’s a training mode to learn the basics and AI bots fill in the gaps if you don’t go online or when online matches are a little bit light on players. This works well enough although the AI isn’t the most tactical, tending to barrage straight in rather than staying back or flanking like human players tend to do.

If you’ve been after a more hardcore style mech experience for VR then Vox Machinae already seems to be ticking most of the boxes. It’s comfortable to play, with a reasonable selection of customization options at this stage. The levels don’t quite live up to the impressive cockpit designs, but with the ability to have up to 16 players on one map there’s plenty of opportunities for some carnage. VRFocus will certainly be keeping an eye on Vox Machinae’s progress.

Reentry is a space flight simulator based on real-life spacecraft. You create a new astronaut, gain levels and experience for every move you make by completing missions in space. You will have access to missions similar to what happened in real life, or fictional missions designed to challenge you as an astronaut.

Spacecraft are highly complicated machines with the primary task of exploring and understanding what’s outside the atmosphere of Earth while keeping the astronauts alive for long periods. This is achieved by hundreds of individual systems and backup systems working together. With the help from the in-game Space Flight Academy, the provided flight manual for each spacecraft, and checklists, you will learn how to fly and operate these machines, and explore space in a high resolution and realistic environment.