I was an early backer of Elite: Dangerous, although I couldn’t afford the steep price demanded to play the alpha or beta versions during development.

I did get access to the gamma version though, a few days prior to release, and now I’m playing the final release.

The team at Frontier Developments have done an outstanding job of balancing everything I loved about Frontier: Elite II on my Amiga with the demands of modern gamers. It all just fits together so well (although playing on my aging work laptop means I don’t get all of the visual effects).

I’ve only been playing for a few days, but I love the game so far and I’m looking forward to exploring the galaxy further over the coming days, weeks, months and (if Frontier was anything to go by) probably years.

So far, I’ve mostly been following the path of a trader. I can’t afford a big shiny new ship with lots of weaponry yet, and my cargo space is decidedly limited, but I’ll get there. This largely means running away from pirates instead of taking them on, but someone is going to get a surprise one of these days when I turn around and incinerate them :)

I’m planning to make a journey to the outer edges of the galaxy, just to see how far I can possibly go - but it’s a bloody long way, and there’s no way of knowing what I might find…