Thank you Behold Studios for sending us this game to review!

Having played a few table top RPGs with friends, I was thoroughly impressed by the funny and computer based versions in Knights of Pen and Paper 1 & 2. The latest creation from Behold Studios is just as silly as its predecessors and takes place in 1999 with the fear of the Y2K/millennial bug. You take control of the Galactic Master (GM) and get to customize their appearance along with the props in this sci-fi based game.

At first, you’ll start off with two players in your party but that will expand to four later on in the game. Occasionally, you’ll have a fifth AI party member that you will not be able to customize like the rest. When creating your party members, you can adjust their starting attributes and personality types. By having different personalities, you’ll get a variety of response options when dealing with hostile aliens.

As you battle enemies, your party will earn money and experience. When your party members level up, you can assign skill points to different abilities to unlock them. Healing, status removers, and attacks that bypass shields come in handy. Unfortunately, each party member can only equip a few skills and accessories.

In the beginning, your crew won’t have a ship, but it doesn’t take them too long to acquire one. When exploring planets you can talk to the locals, mine for minerals, or pick fights with hostile aliens. When traveling across the map you may get ambushed by enemies depending on how the twenty-sided dice lands. It should also come as no surprise that the number of enemies you fight determines the difficulty of the battle. The more enemies you fight, the more gold, experience, and loot you’ll get.

Many planets have shops for buying accessories as well as items to restore your health and special power (SP). Some shops also have ship-related accessories like battery charges and dice re-rolling. Be sure to stock up on those for ship-to-ship battles.

The ship battles are based on dice rolls and the higher your roll, the more damage you’ll do per turn. If you get a low roll, you may want to use the re-roll ability. You also only get to attack if you have enough battery power. If you have a really high roll, you may want to consider using a battery recharge for an extra attack on your turn.

Ground combat works a bit differently as dice rolling is not seen in them. The attack timeline is shown on top and the attack order may change if a slow status is applied to a character. Most combatants have a shield as well as their health bar. The health won’t be depleted until the shield is gone. At the beginning of each turn, the shield is regenerated slightly unless they have the "dead short" status that prevents that from happening. Other status aliments include burn (fire), poison, confusion, and stun. Make sure you have a party member or two who can remove status aliments or keep items on hand that can cure them. As long as they’re not stunned, during each turn a character can use one item and attack.

If a player gets knocked out in combat you can revive them with a Dragon Ball from the popular anime series. Another anime referenced in this game is Cowboy Bebop. Star Trek and Star Wars references are a given in this sci-fi adventure. I also caught some remarks from Rocky Horror Picture Show, Back to the Future, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If there were any from Guardians of the Galaxy, I missed them.

The humor in this game is pretty good and I enjoyed the gameplay just as much. It took me roughly ten hours to complete the main campaign which is broken down into five episodes. There is plenty more to do if you choose to take on side quests of your choosing. Besides progressing the story, you can accept side quests that involve escort, hunting, and mining missions. There are also character class missions that unlock new player types upon completion. For every mission completed, you’ll earn reputation points which will help you gain recognition throughout the galaxy. Prizes are awarded for reaching various reputation milestones.

Visually this game still has pixel artwork, but some of the planets and spaceships are higher detail. There’s a wide variety of enemies to fight and some of them are poop themed. Other than the potty humor and RPG combat, you’ll encounter some language.

There is no voice acting, but the background music is decent. I especially like the rock themed boss battle music. The other sound effects are good too.

Overall, Galaxy of Pen & Paper is a funny tribute to many popular sci-fi movies and anime out there. The PC version is three times the amount of its mobile counterparts. With plenty of gameplay in this title, any version is worth looking into.