Posted on: April 9, 2025
Planescaper
Games: 461 Reviews: 12
Sweet Solitude for the Reckless
Play this game if you like to peacefully explore space in atmospheric rouge-like sessions while unrevealing the story behind a fictional fate of the galaxy. Everything from the intro, over the music to the lore in the regular text-based events excels in creating an immersive experience. One that is likely very short lived because you will have to ruthlessly manage your resources or get stranded in an empty star system all too soon. I strongly recommend to start the game on "easy" until you have a firm understanding of the game mechanics and wish for a serious challenge. The "normal" setting may be the intended mode of play but is very unforgiving to a degree that even micro-decisions on the level of inventory placement can spoil your run. At least, there is an option to reclaim your ship from lost runs to allow some level of progression. Game Play Loop: I appreciate that it is a game without combat. But it all boils down to expend resources to fly to the next system, cope with a random event, spend more resources to visit one of three types of planets to refill said resources. Once the story events start to repeat it gets rather dull (and thanks to the interface click intensive) - besides the constant thrill of running out of fuel. Risk-Reward-Balance: basically there are only risks and your desire to protect yourself against them. While the random nature of events gets in your favor at equal measure you often cannot capitalize on a streak of good luck because your spaceship lacks the capacity so the next stroke of bad luck hits as hard as ever. Replayability: there are five mission objectives to complete the game, all giving you a different piece of the story puzzle. Yet they make little to no difference in gameplay before you engage the endgame or bring extensive meta knowledge. Likewise, there is a good range of different spaceships all made obsolete by the bigger is better rule leaving but one to spice things up by actually changing your survival strategy.
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