But not tillNoctis, somehow, have I flown a spaceship made of glass.

But any feeling of absurdity evaporates when you hit the Depolarise button.

The game’s crunchy 320x200 display resolution only adds to the lustre of the refraction effects.

A panoramic screenshot of a grey-green planet’s harshly angled surface in space exploration game Noctis.

And what’s this?

The Stardrifter is also a screen.

This interface proves very unwieldy, though there are a few keyboard shortcuts to ease the pain.

A screenshot from DOS-based space exploration game Noctis, showing celestial objects named “Lighthouse” and “Morning Haze” by the game’s community.

So you must start at one end, move, right-click, and move again.

All this, and I’m still getting to the business of landing on planets.

You take note of any landmarks on the horizon, picking out something to investigate.

A screenshot from DOS-based space exploration game Noctis, showing the depolarised inside of the player’s crystal spaceship.

Often, you’ll linger only to grab a few screenshots and settle on a name.

The majority of Noctis planetary maps are devoid of structure.

Time has been similarly unkind to Noctis.

The surface of Venus, as photographed by the Soviet probe Venera 10.

I mean in terms of compatibility.

The Windows 10-compatible version, meanwhile, crashes whenever I spend too long on a planet’s surface.

I think that the Stardrifter is another “honest kind of liar”.