Journey to the Planets

Name:Journey to the Planets
Number:134
Year:1982
Publisher:JV Software
Developer:JV Software
Genre:Side-Scroller
Difficulty:3/5
Time:1 hour 20 minutes
Won:Lost (44W/48L)

Journey to the Planets is the final 1982 release from JV Software, a small company ran by Jack Verson who surprised me with Action Quest, a fun little action puzzle game. This time we're lost from home in space and we have to travel across many planets finding treasures to get back to Earth. What this means in practice is that the game has your typical side-scrolling sections and parts like Lunar Lander.

The game doesn't start you off with any direction. Joystick controls, but the fire button doesn't do much until you get a gun. Then you can fire by pressing it or aim it by holding it down. Aiming is divided into up, diagonal, or straight ahead. Energy is a concern, each shot drains 10 points, but you can recharge at the Greek Temple on the starting planet. You won't discover this right away, but this drains your energy.

Because of this lack of direction its not obvious what one is supposed to do here. The description mentioned finding treasures but there are none here. At least, nothing that I can find. By pressing the fire button in front of this object that looks like an H the music returns to the title theme. Now you're flying. After escaping the atmosphere its off to find another planet, dodging comets along the way.

My first destination is Snake Plant (this is what treasure is here), and I quickly find some enemies to shoot. I'm glad Mr. Verson decided to go with a more puzzle-like approach than a straight action approach because this game is terrible in this regard. You and your enemies have the same length for shots. So gunfights are a matter of slowly creeping up to the edge of your enemy's range, firing off a shot, then running away. The issue is that the controls make this annoying, if you don't do things right, having the fire button held down and moving the joystick to the right and you shoot diagonally. You shoot straight ahead by pressing down.
However, shooting these guys does nothing. Okay, its a puzzle! So I go the other way, where I find a floating ball. I can shoot it down and carry it, upon which I can throw it like a bowling ball. That works against the back guy, but the front one still doesn't die. Turns out there are two balls, and I need to use one on each target.

After dealing with the other one, I can see this level's treasure, blocked off by one of those cycling laser things. After that, its a simple trip back to the spaceship for some points. I take this opportunity to return to the starting planet. I actually crash into the planet, because I went into it from the bottom area. This game forces you to approach planets from the top to land on it. Not that the spaceship section was great to begin with, since it feels like an awkward attempt at realism, not quite reaching that and instead feels like its precision stems from programming necessity.
This is pretty much how Journey to the Planets is supposed to go. Ideally, it would have been like Action Quest, but in space, but on my second planet the joys of puzzle solving are removed from the game. Instead we get busywork in the form of two blocks, which you shoot to create items in a different area. Its a simpler puzzle than it sounds, but it still feels more like busywork than an actual attempt at a puzzle.

The addition of finding planets to the formula doesn't really help things. Wandering around aimlessly hoping to find a planet is boring. There are limits to the game area, but whenever you try to go out of them, you just reappear on the same screen from where you would have been popped out. So that means you have to systematically examine each area in hopes of finding whichever planet is left. I never thought I'd find space to be boring, but there you go.
 

It doesn't really help that the actual planets feel fairly bland. The stronger focus on one puzzle at a time hasn't really changed the puzzles into being better. It doesn't feel like its going for quality over quantity as much as some more puzzles. It feels completely lackluster here.

Once you've found all the treasures on the planets, you still have something left to do. Return to the starting planet, and then the final part begins. You now have a treasure here, which you have to take to the recharge station. Then its back off into space, to find home. After all, who doesn't enjoy having another section of wandering around space hoping to find a planet? Oh, and there's a new song, some sea shanty I can't remember.

Its at this point that I discover the game has a map function. Making the game not quite so crap on the space sections. You can see every square around the screen you're currently in, with planets getting a different symbol than empty space. Navigation and figuring out where you are is still somewhat tricky. At the end its not much help, since it doesn't show you where the new planet is until you're a square aware. All the regular squares are discovered, so you don't get any hint where the planet is beyond it generally not moving around much.
What I assume you're supposed to do at the end is track down a blue planet, multiple times. Each time you approach the planet, it disappears. There is nothing else to be interacted with. I guess what you're supposed to do is track it down dozens of times, until you win. Thing is, I don't feel like doing that. Doing that crap the first time through was troublesome enough, I'm not doing this crap again.

Weapons:
A standard laser with one-shot on-screen and limited range. 1/10

Enemies:
Very simple enemies, often feeling more like pieces of a puzzle than proper ones. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
A series of 3-4 screen puzzles with one or two being interesting. 2/10

Player Agency:
Workable, but very slow and clunky. 2/10

Interactivity:
You can only work with things you're allowed to work with, in ways they're supposed to work with. It doesn't feel that clever as a puzzle. 1/10

Atmosphere:
Nothing pleasant. 0/10

Graphics:
You can distinguish everything, but nothing more. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
The most horrendous, ear-splitting noise I have ever heard emitted from my current computer. 0/10

That's 8, slightly below average.

Basically, only play this if you liked Action Quest and wanted to play more of something like that. Of interest, apparently there are two variations of this game, I have no idea which one I played, but one is supposedly easier than the other.

Action Quest

Name:Action Quest
Number:116
Year:1982
Publisher:JV Software
Developer:Jack Verson
Genre:Top-Down
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour

I don't know who this Jack Verson is, but he's got four titles on my list from here to 1983. All but one seem to be inspired by Venture. Today's title is Action Quest, which just reminds me that in Russian, they call adventure games quests. Its one of those titles that while not technically used by a lot of games, is very generic sounding. You don't really see many games with genres in the title, well, outside of tabletop game adaptations and early adventure games. Lot of text adventures slapped adventure somewhere in the title during the early years.

Something the developer probably calls music plays over the title screen, and then the game begins. The room draws in and I can move after considerable time. Move very slowly, I should add. To shoot you hold down the fire button, aim around something that looks like a safety pin and then release. Just imagine it like Resident Evil in a top-down game and you've got how this game allows you to shoot. Funny thing is, there's a reason for that in RE. Not sure why I have to do it here. The only range you get still corresponds to eight directions. You only get one bullet on-screen at a time. Further complicating things are that each level is timed, you can't spend more than 15 time units on one level, which varies depending on the level.

The basic gist of the game is indeed Venture, but its not a big world collecting items. Instead you have a hub level, where there are four rooms with a treasure inside. You have to get in, get out, while surviving and taking the treasure. You have to figure out how to get the treasure or deal with whatever challenge the game is throwing at you. In short, what I've been missing from 1982.

For instance, early on there's a taco in-between two blocked off areas with a block in them. If you grab the treasure, you get crushed. No matter what direction you travel in, that happens. You can't shoot the walls or the crushers. The way to get it is to shoot it out of the way, the crushers go by harmlessly. And of course there are the rooms where you have to deal with enemies or dodging bullets. The latter is something I find annoying, but I'll give him an out on that last one, its 1982.

As with most games with this sort of level design, the question is, are they interesting challenges? Its hardly unforgettable, but I was entertained. The bad or forgettable levels were usually short enough that they didn't make much of an impact. A lot of challenges involved tricking enemies into the path of your bullets, because enemies are just smart enough to stay out of the path of your gun, but not enough to stay away from bullets.

The game is advertised as having 30 rooms, but its more accurate to say its 5 sets of 4 levels. It was just about the right length. You only have 10 lives and no saves so its not really an endurance slog either. By the final set the game is introducing some mechanics and enemies that aren't very fun to deal with. For instance, there's a lever puzzle where walking into the lever a certain direction moves it a certain way, and I could not figure out what that way was. I did of course solve it, but a bit more time than necessary was used because of it.

Weapons:
A generic blaster. 1/10

Enemies:
The typical array of enemies. 1/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Short, sweet, and rarely overstay their welcome. 3/10

Player Agency:
The player's movement speed and aiming speed are on the low end and just feel unwieldly to play as. 2/10

Interactivity:
You can do a small amount of things to the environment, but mostly in service of a puzzle. Its not always smooth either. 3/10

Atmosphere:
None.

Graphics:
Simple stuff. Weirdly, characters have animation, but it doesn't really correspond to anything. The main character just swings back and forth for some reason. 1/10

Story:
None.

Sound/Music:
A selection of bizarre music stings, plus your usual bloops and blips. 1/10

That's 12. Better than what we've been seeing for 1982 so far.