Via Galactica (2007)

by Orange Tree Software

Via Galactica is the single-player space trading game. You start as the simple pilot with underequipped ship and small amount of money and your goal is to become the powerful space trader, achieving the highest score possible. Final result is calculated as the net worth you amassed, divided by the number of days you spent travelling, and multiplied by the difficulty level you chose to play (1-3). You are also given additional money for fulfilling various "tasks" like surviving for a certain number of days or destroying a certain number of pirate ships.

Gameplay is divided between travelling from planet to planet, trading, equipping your ship and fighting pirates. When you're currently on one of the planets you can either choose to fly your ship to another planet or decide to perform various actions. The latter ones include trading goods, repairing, refuelling or upgrading your ship, hiring ship's crew or warehouse for your cargo, depositing your savings in bank etc. When you travel between planets you must expect various encounters, both friendly and hostile.

For a donation of at least $5 (or equivalent) you can get extras file, which expands your game. It contains more systems to visit, extra equipment and objects and enhanced options.

Screenshots

Ratings

Downloads

• viagalactica.exe (1.66 MB)
  (Windows Installer)

Reviews

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Discussion on our forums on Via Galactica

• Drasir-Vel on 22.03.2011:
  You could sell one of your fuel tanks, but then you can only travel half the distance.

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• Pater Alf on 22.03.2011:
  

  This is not my particular cup of tea either after seeing the toolbar, but I decided that there had to be some appeal to it, and have decided to try out a game of it. I get a weird error though. I buy stuff at one planet and when I fly to the next planet and press sell then it says I have nothing to sell... And I placed the goods I bought in my spaceship and it is also from the ship I am trying to sell stuff - meaning that I did not accidentally set it to "warehouse" instead of "ship"...

  
  
  Cargo is automatically sold once you land on a planet...
  
  Played this for a while today and I'm not sure if I like it yet. It's good old "Elite" but without the possibility to fight pirates in real-time/arcade mode. You have to trade for a very long time before you can do something else, because the space in your ship is very limited and so you can only trade small ammounts of goods. So there is nearly no way to upgrade your ship as it will minor the space in a quite dramatically way. Is there really no way to enlarge the space without buying a new ship?

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• Drasir-Vel on 22.03.2011:
  I found this game somewhat good. It doesn't take much to get started. I played for some time and was actually quite profitable. I was up at 60000 credits at some but then at some point it was like there were a high amount of pirates almost no matter where you went, so it was almost always that you got your shield completely depleted. When traveling from system to system

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• Chroelle on 08.07.2010:
  This is not my particular cup of tea either after seeing the toolbar, but I decided that there had to be some appeal to it, and have decided to try out a game of it. I get a weird error though. I buy stuff at one planet and when I fly to the next planet and press sell then it says I have nothing to sell... And I placed the goods I bought in my spaceship and it is also from the ship I am trying to sell stuff - meaning that I did not accidentally set it to "warehouse" instead of "ship"...

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• Chroelle on 04.07.2010:
  Here is a new link
  http://www.freewarefiles.com/downloads_ ... amid=32098

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• Scythe on 14.11.2007:
  Only two things to detract from this awesome game:
  
  1) You can randomly (fairly often as it turns out) get "off course", and when that happens, you may run out of fuel before reaching a system, which is instant game over. If not for that, this would be a great game to play without saving, to really see how far you can get.
  
  2) High scores are entered every time you quit, so in just a single game, you fill out the high score table if you have to quit a few times.
  
  I think this game might have been better if it overwrote (or gave you the option to) your save once you died. That is, if issue 1) was dealt with, otherwise it would be too punishing.
  
  Since I now have a max kitted out ship, have completed all non-generic tasks (and most of those) and own >€5M in credit vouchers, I think I'm done with the game...

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• Scythe on 12.11.2007:
  Ok, I played this about four hours straight - it's pure gold. I don't think I'll want to play it again after this game though. Think I've seen it all by now. While not as funny (or as crazy random) as Gazillionaire, it's a freeware game that comes close. That's worth a lot in my book.

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• Scythe on 12.11.2007:
  Well, you know, it kinda looks like Elite, so maybe that was just a "base" screen you put there...

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• eMTe on 11.11.2007:
  Yeah, turn-based shooter.

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• Scythe on 11.11.2007:
  Is it a "strategy" game though, or a shooter? If it's anything like Gazillionaire...

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