Spacewrecked: Star Cannibal

The shiny new game.

Since I needed to start over anyway, I decided to explore some of the Amiga rips I could find online. One had to work sooner or later. I managed to do it with a European copy, albeit two different rips. One from a set which only had the first disk and the second from a set with a first disk that only hanged.

Some of the changes are things like a static heartbeat in the background, proving that the Japanese aren't the only crazy ones, sound effects when you bump into things, and a player portrait that doesn't look like it's of a serial killer. There's no music, and you have to wait for rooms to load...while the timer is running. Or when disks are being changed for some reason. I'm going to hope that the game is balanced around this. It does add an element of trouble to combat encounters, since the game pauses to load your inventory. The content of the game itself is the same. At least as far as I know.

My final map of the opening level, there's more, but there wasn't much point in exploring it further.

Gameplay is really not that good so far. I'm just trying to make it across the ship. The ships is divided into three floors of 7x20. The dorsal deck seems to be half, until you notice that the level is divided in two. There's one elevator, from the main floor, which goes to the other half, I didn't notice if any of the ladders go there. This is about all the game is trying to do, don't mistake this for clever DM-style, massive three floor puzzle, this is just a FPS map with three floors and you can probably run away from most enemies.

Gotta do this somewhere from 3 to 15 times, depending on how big your bottles are.

The objective is to get the four main controls of the ship at 80% or more by pouring coolant into them and then hoping you fix them. Basically, busy work if you've killed the enemies between these places, dangerous busy work if you haven't. You also have to take a flux decoupler to the power room and an inhibit lock to the bridge once you're done. You need to find bottles or make them at a manufacturing room, go to a lab to fill them, then go to the place that needs to be repaired at this moment.

Karate guy again, since he pops up on all the ships, his name is pointless.

Crew members don't appear as cyrogenics fail, rather, they're just always around. Between them and the monsters it seems like we have roughly 30 enemy types. I suppose type is a bit strong considering that enemies only have three consistent behaviors so far, charge, random and stay a respectful distance away. I saw this in a Ugruskor, which actually has only moderate hostility. So the enemy descriptions are more like wishlists than actual traits.

That's not a key, that's a rope, not that it's helpful.

Combat has revealed itself to be quite terrible. Against most enemies, you're flailing around trying to kill it before it can hurt you. Combining the worst aspects of real-time and turn-based combat, but at least there's some control over my actions and the time for a "reload" isn't too long. You can't really escape from combat and there's little point. Against the tougher enemies, I found myself fighting a mini T-Rex called Lyacodrak, which requires a little more strategy. Which is just backing up whenever he's close to attacking.

From what I've read, real T-Rexes were about the size of an elephant, so this guy is quite small compared to what he should be.

It doesn't help that I don't know how useful items are or what I actually need right now. You have a weight limit, not just a space limit. It's one of those little numbers on the lower right. The big problem is that the robots that come along with you, which have the only big item storage, have small numbers for their size. Twenty when two big items are easily half that. And they need power.

The game even makes fun of you for expecting otherwise.

Other items uses are quite mysterious. I got a rope and crowbar, but I didn't actually need them. There are various injectors which heal the player, and a door opener which I guess does what it says, but never had the need to try it. I had more than enough charges for my keycards, especially once I figured out the charging stations. Flares function as light, ironically, better than flashlights which never seemed to work in dark rooms. At least on this one.

Food stations give you health, though the effect isn't too obvious on this level, when I got armor pretty early on and it was quite difficult to lose health after that.

Level 1 is doing an okay job of being a training level, but man, it's not much more than that. It feels like rooms are randomly placed, outside of key places being somewhat close together. It's all just sort of there. From a design perspective, it relies on luck with you finding what you need to find to win, even if I got most of it early on. Well, outside of weapons, anyway, that the game ensures is plentiful enough that there will be no problem.

I didn't realize that this game could have some real "soyjak vs. chad" energy, until I noticed the never changing protagonist's face compared to the often expanding heads of the enemies.

I beat level 1, and play a little of level 2, but then decide to go to level 20. Because from the first one, there's a whole lot of, do I really need to play TWENTY levels of this? I prepare for a massive jump in difficulty and get it. You're just given a cross and a knife. You're basically forced to use a knife against either the T-Rex enemy or a Telerak, which I could actually win against simply using the typical method of going in, attacking, then backtracking when attacked. This is one time when the room loading sequence works in your favor, they can't change rooms while you change rooms, so unless you get really unlucky with the timing, it's easier than usual. This really helped me when a Balrik found me in a charging room just after finishing off the Telerak, and thus in a weakened state. I'm just not that good, possibly just yet.

By now I was nearly dead, so I was basically spamming reload whenever I spotted another enemy. Checking the ship's systems showed that the cyrogenics and stasis units were failing, meaning that enemies were guaranteed to be wandering around. I guess this is what the game is doing to make this level difficult. There's about three more enemies roaming around, another karate dude, a caveman and some plant thing. I have access to two weapons, a knife and an electrostunner.

I previously dismissed the electrostunner as useless, because I have twenty guns, I don't need to stun anything, but it's pretty effective at stunning enemies so you can move around. If you hit an enemy, they'll be stunned for a while. They're only stunned so long as you don't hurt them. Attack, and they come to. Not enough charge to make that worthwhile, I need armor and weapons.

My examination of the main deck keeps getting stopped by ending up in rooms with the lights out. Doors can be locked on one side and rather than try to fumble with the key in the dark, I just reload. I really hope there wasn't some trick I needed to do with the flare to get a flashlight in one room, because if so, I'm probably going to have to take the long way around. Since I have a stunner now, I will explore the dorsal deck.

It isn't one T-Rex, it's at least three T-Rexes. I wasn't always ending up in the same places and enemies don't stay still, and in one case, I was taking the elevator there. And the electrostunner doesn't work as long on them. One shot lasts maybe a few seconds. If I rush past the dinos, I can find communications and a fix it robot...which doesn't help me right now. One injector with some sort of healing drug in it, as well as a laboratory behind a locked door near the ladder. That is useful to know, all I need to find is the manufacturing room and I can at least fix life support...communications would have to wait.

Level 20's main deck. Notice anything familiar?

So the main deck, which I haven't yet explained in detail, is shaping up quite nicely. There's a central area next to the ladder which has a recharge station, life support is in the same general area, albeit in the dark. There's a corridor away with a whole bunch of rooms, but two of the enemies wander around there and the third isn't far away. It's worth it, because then I get a laser sword, a flashlight and an injector, didn't get the one above. I'm now in pretty good shape to take out these guys, but I want to see how long it's going to take to find the manufacturing room. The flash light works, too, no more wondering about a room's light factor.

My flesh might have been torn from my bones, but so long as I have an eye, I'm okay!

This turns out to be a wise move, because I had the repair kit for so long I forgot that was an integral part of the process. Fortunately, there's a ladder to the lower deck which has it there. Which of course, comes with the caveat that there are a lot more enemies there. Joy. Including a leprechaun that's only visible when attacking called a Gendren-Taz. There's even a charger next to the ladder back on the main deck if I need to explore further.

While that is going to be necessary at some point, it may be necessary sooner rather than later, as I'm running out of map space on the main deck for there to be much of anything there. What's worse is that the recharge room connects into communications, something I wrongly assumed would be the least important system but is turning out to be the second-most important system after life support, and right now it IS the most important system. Reloading usually delays the change, all bad things seem to happen randomly, you can reload a save state and a gun which breaks won't. That's a risky thing to rely on, and I don't want to for long. I may try to speed through this without ending up killing the purple guy at first, even if he stuns poorly like the T-Rex.

I end about here, in a bad place, but seeming hopeful and with the knowledge that if I need to, I can restart and do it right. I know where three of the systems are and have the most important item in their repair. Bio Control was the third, it's not important right now since it's already failed. The bridge, I think, should be on the main or dorsal deck. I need to find a flux capacitor for the power room and that should be it outside of my enemy troubles.

Like I said, twenty levels is a lot and I don't think they had enough to fill it up. In fact, they don't, while looking at my screenshots for this entry, I noticed that the design of the ship is the same, what changes is what's in each room and often what each room is. Which is a shame, because I thought this level showed promise in the design, but alas, it seems that there isn't going to be much to it. Some of it felt fun, but the tedium and especially the controls are getting on my nerves. Seriously, you have no idea how annoying it is to click on one of the arrows, only for it to either not register or register as the wrong direction. At least combat is intentionally screwing with the player! Combat is at least kind of working, so there is a skill factor to it, even if it's one that's so subtle I can't even think of it beyond, you just sort of get used to the twitching of the cursor.

This Session: 5 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 7 hours 40 minutes