I got involved with this game because for some reason it reminded me of a D&D-style game I played as a kid called Star Frontiers. It involved pencils, dice, and using your imagination if you can believe people actually did such things at one point in history.
You play the role of one of many contractors for hire aboard a space station / bar. You take on missions of various sorts that involve stealing things or killing certain people aboard certain ships. You fly your little pod towards that destination and then dock with it - your ship is small and has no weapons, it's only purpose is that it can break into other ships unnoticed.
All the levels are randomly generated, so there is no chance that you are going to already be familiar with a mission. You carry with you a bunch of weapons from wrenches to swords to grenade launchers. Certain scenarios call for stealth in which case leaving the grenade launcher at home might be the best idea.
One of the best aspects of the game is that you can pause it at any time in order to decide what to do next. This for me normally happens when I have entered a room with 4 guards and I need to incapacitate all of them. There is no time limit on how long you can pause the game and the game only unpauses when you take said action.
the game also helps out with the "things you can do here" section of the pause menu
Eventually you gather enough liberation points to liberate another space station and expand your empire or something. It unlocks certain upgrades once you do that too.
Here is the trailer because the still images don't do much for explaining the game.
Ok, i feel bad for saying this because the game was independently produced by one dude (for the most part) and it took 3.5 years to make it but.... I have a problem with perma-dying... you get attached to the character that you are using, they also have the gear you want and spent time gathering, you make one mistake and now that character dies and it wont respawn anywhere. More realistic? Sure. Lame? Definitely.
I also have to say that the missions become repetitive very quickly. I played for about an hour the other day and started to feel like i was grinding for gold or experience in some level-based online MMO.
I'm not going to uninstall it yet, but even after just 2 days playing it, I don't feel compelled to switch it back on. We'll see.