Star Shipping Inc.

Corbomite Games's Star Shipping Inc. is a space trading game (apparently). You play a pilot transporting cargo back and forth between different planets for fun and profit.

Well, profit, at least.

Never mind the poorly rendered still graphics, the awkward interface, or all the minor bugs and glitches, there's an even better example of how lazy, tedious, and downright joyless Star Shipping Inc. is.

Every time you start playing, the names of your destinations and the commodities you're trading in are generated at random. Make that 'very random'.

The point at which I decided I'd had enough was after I noticed I was taking off from Azeroth with a cargo hold full of Sarcasm.

You begin by choosing a ship from a list, with only the smallest and weakest available within your budget.

Annoyingly, this isn't because you're penniless as such, but because Star Shipping Inc. uses two types of virtual cash - for reasons we'll go into later on.

Regardless, you're dropped into the game's tiny solar system, with its three planets and three commodities, and left to get on with it. You fly between points A, B, and C, buying articles of commerce low and selling high.

Travelling drains your fuel, which you can only replenish at home base, for some reason. Run out of fuel and it's game over.

It's hard to know where to begin picking Star Shipping Inc. apart. But not that hard.

The in-game map is little more than four coloured dots, where a blurry icon representing your ship crawls from one to the next while crudely drawn stars whip towards the screen.

Combat and random encounters boil down to a simple card game at best. Travel to planet B? There are asteroids in the way. Turn around and go back to planet A, please, sir.

Beyond that, Star Shipping Inc. just isn't particularly well thought out.

The font is so small it feels painful to read; tutorial messages seem to come up at random whether or not you've started a new game; the random events are ridiculously unfair, like losing half your cash by simply landing at a planet.

Yes, you can safeguard funds by stockpiling money in the bank at HQ, but flying home expends yet more fuel, and you can't stop your cargo from spontaneously vanishing this way.

Earning more money, meanwhile, is a slow, painstaking grind.

You can only pay for upgrades or new ships with Space Chips. Star Shipping Inc. doles out a meagre amount of this currency for finishing a game, so after five completions, for example, you'll only have enough to purchase one more refuel at your home base store.

Even one game feels like a chore, though. And with a range of infinitely better titles on the Android Market, including Galapagos's similarly structured Age of Wind, Star Shipping Inc. is one to steer your ship clear of.