3030 Deathwar
Released: September 13, 2017
Game Length: 12 Hours
Grade: B
Forgotten Games
The Forgotten City: Before I talk about the game this review covers, I wanted to at least mention a couple of games I checked out first. Zero Punctuation recently covered The Forgotten City in one of his videos. The reviews were kind of mixed with some finding it interesting while others calling it a mess. It is very hard to simply watch someone play it since there are so many different branches of the story. There's also a few different endings. But I discovered a bunch of nuisances when trying to make the decision to buy this game. The "game" is actually a mod for Skyrm that came out several years ago. They decided to separate it, reform it, and package it as a new 25GB game with a $25 price tag. The sad part is that even though the story might have been redesigned and properly polished, the game still retains all of Skyrim's original mechanics. In the end, I found it to be a hard sell for me to digest.
Factorio: Factorio is a game where the people that play it find it to be a great game. These people can pour hundreds of hours building, reforming, and establishing the most optimized supply line anyone has ever seen. There is a demo you can download to try out the game ahead of time. Unfortunately, the $30 price tag can be pretty steep if you don't find yourself enjoying its content. I recalled a moment while trying the game where I built multiple supply lines and realized it still wasn't enough. "When does the game kick in?" I asked myself. That's when I realized that building better and faster things is the whole game. "What am I doing with my life?" was the question I posed before I chose to uninstall the game.
3030 Deathwar
Introduction: A really long time ago, a company - and when I say that I mean two people - by the name of Bird in Sky developed a space sim in 2007. Seven years later, they decided to update the game with more features and some major adjustments. Over a period of three years, they added an entirely new adventure with side quests and new ships. The game is priced at $15 and it isn't uncommon to see it marked 50% off about once a month. One review stated that it reminded them of Star-control. So I figured I would give it a shot. My experience was mixed.
Old Game: Considering the age of this indie game, I expected a few problems. There was no problem downloading a 500 MB game. However, the game did crash if I tried to increase the resolution higher than 1280p. The music is a shotgun in the dark with all different kinds of genres (though this isn't exactly a bad thing). They added a "Safe for Youtube" feature so you wouldn't get flagged streaming things like Kyoto Connection that can be seen in its trailer. Unfortunately, this doesn't exactly stop the game from showing the cover of a bunch of naughty magazines you might pick-up (PG-13 at least) during salvage operations. Although there is support for a controller, the game still requires you to move a cursor across the screen when selecting jobs.
Jobs: The one thing it does do right is it let's you play your way. There is a ton of different things you can do: fly around in a suit salvaging items in broken down ships, picking up people and carrying them to their destination, taking pictures of various planets, destroying debris floating too close to the space stations, hunting down pirates, mining different kinds of ores in asteroid fields, stealing cargo from salvage ships, participating in space races, delivering messages or packages to people on different stations, buying material cheap in a solar system and selling them for more in another, reporting in a distress call, and picking up cargo with a tractor beam to carry it to its destination. All of these jobs reward roughly the same and is highly dependent on the type of ship you use. The good news is you can easily trade in your ship for another type with very little lost in the exchange rate and while you earn more upgrades catered to the jobs you are doing, all ship upgrades are kept in transfers.
Little Details: Although the game doesn't have much when it comes to content, there are a ton of little things that can keep you entertained. Although each space station uses the same template, there is always something new to see that makes each one unique. When you are at the space station, you can watch the television for current events, entertain yourself with conversations at the bar, or squish little bugs at the control panel. Considering there are 38 solar systems, I'd say customizing each one to be slightly different than all the others is an accomplishment. You will receive non-essential newsletters that will expand on the universe and various captain logs that touch on the main story. Ships are well displayed with all their stats and relevant information. An orange line will appear under a person's name if they have something other than a generic response. There's a bunch of different color codes and ship utilities that helps you while flying around. The solar system maps has a crude, yet effective waypoint system where you can identify where each mission takes you. There is an outside achievement system that tells you some miscellaneous information like how many times you docked or how much money you made. You can choose to manually save as much as you want (as long as you are outside a mission) and personally name the file. The game automatically compiles three save files for the three most recent stations you visited.
Module Programming: Unfortunately, the biggest detriment to the game is how each sub-system doesn't provide any sort of checks to other sub-systems. What do I mean by that? There are way too many examples to list. You are able to change your outfit, but the cosmetic isn't shown outside moving around on the station. People will still refer to your hat when you are no longer wearing it and cutscenes will still display the same generic loading screen. It's possible to find yourself talking to your robot friend and standing next to him in some of the introductory areas before he officially joins up with you. Hailing the ship that decided to follow you around and protect you as a "wingman" will sometimes net you with a paranoid pilot threatening your very existence. A space station will always respond to you the same way regardless if it is under quarantine, in a pirate zone, shut down, under attack, or if you are a wanted man. You can casually converse with people at the bar, but the responses are from a standard pool of one-liners that sometimes repeat over-and-over. You'll eventually gain the ability to scan people, but their bios are full of random information that doesn't match their physicality.
Story: What I found most interesting about the game is how large of an impact the story had to things around you. It is hard to talk about without spoiling some of the more key elements of the chapters, but there are some grand changes between each of the chapters. At one point, you'd lose your ship and be given a choice between three others to use (which will be a massive upgrade to the one you were using). There are some very brief moments where you visit unique locations or use items that you don't use anywhere else in the game. Although some of these chapters are merely a tutorial in teaching you how to perform a certain task, there are at least some enjoyable moments that help break up the monotony of your daily routes.
Summary
Review: I had hoped I would find a vast universe of different alien factions full of interesting stories to explore. What I found was carbon copies of the same solar system with some alterations to make them stand apart. Still, the amount of things you can do and the vast number of ships to try out made this cheap game quite an interesting experience. Although the story elements didn't quite match up with whatever you are doing, there were enough meta jokes and references to keep you entertained. The added bonuses of advancing the story and exploring each of the solar systems also helped you buy and expand into more diversified ships. This game is definitely one I recommend if you are willing to try something a little different than the norm.
10-23-2021