Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
I've been enjoying this one a ton!
The game is concentrated on exploration, much like Subnautica, but there's no base building or crafting. There is some platform-jumping mechanics but nothing really hard.
What you'll be doing is travelling around in a little solar-system, trying to figure out what happened to the Nomai - an ancient alien race. You start out in a little village, getting some much needed tutorial work on how to control the game (I swear that model ship is harder to control than the real one!) and background on what's going on. Eventually, you get your lift off codes and up you go!
22 minutes later, the entire solar system is destroyed.
Luckily for you, you've got that whole Groundhog Day thing going. You find yourself right back at the start of the game but with all your previous memories intact. So, if you found something interesting on the moon, you'll still remember it and it will even be in your ship's logs. (You remember those launch codes, too, so there's no need to do the tutorial again.) When you loop back again, you're free to act on what you found last time… or not. There's nothing stopping you from going to any planet you like. You're handy ship's log will keep track of all your clues and even how they connect together.
What it doesn't have is a save game system. It auto-saves (I presume) every time you learn something for the ship's log. Oddly, given the way the game is set up, this really doesn't hurt nearly as much as in most games. You aren't advancing a story-line that you'll need to repeat, you're advancing your own knowledge which saves instantly. The only problem can be if you've gotten to a tricky area and have to quit - you'll have to get to that tricky area again. Like I said at the start, though, the jumping puzzle stuff isn't too challenging and it's even less difficult the second time through. The solar system is quite tiny so I think you can get to most interesting places in about 5-10 minutes. You're just never going to be out that much time even if you have to quit suddenly or if the game crashes! (Still, would it have hurt them to put in a quick save?)
Something that does cause real problems, IMHO, are the controls. Ship control isn't really as easy as it should be - I think because, in order to roll the ship, you have to hold down the R key and use the mouse. Hmmm… maybe if I re-map that to a mouse thumb button…. Oh, and the game says at the start that it's best played with controller. Don't believe it.
There's some bugs running around, too. I haven't hit them but the dev outlines them here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/753640/discussions/1/2568689796946065157/
(Interesting that they are patching them. This game was out on Epic for a year before showing up on Steam.)
The game is concentrated on exploration, much like Subnautica, but there's no base building or crafting. There is some platform-jumping mechanics but nothing really hard.
What you'll be doing is travelling around in a little solar-system, trying to figure out what happened to the Nomai - an ancient alien race. You start out in a little village, getting some much needed tutorial work on how to control the game (I swear that model ship is harder to control than the real one!) and background on what's going on. Eventually, you get your lift off codes and up you go!
22 minutes later, the entire solar system is destroyed.
Luckily for you, you've got that whole Groundhog Day thing going. You find yourself right back at the start of the game but with all your previous memories intact. So, if you found something interesting on the moon, you'll still remember it and it will even be in your ship's logs. (You remember those launch codes, too, so there's no need to do the tutorial again.) When you loop back again, you're free to act on what you found last time… or not. There's nothing stopping you from going to any planet you like. You're handy ship's log will keep track of all your clues and even how they connect together.
What it doesn't have is a save game system. It auto-saves (I presume) every time you learn something for the ship's log. Oddly, given the way the game is set up, this really doesn't hurt nearly as much as in most games. You aren't advancing a story-line that you'll need to repeat, you're advancing your own knowledge which saves instantly. The only problem can be if you've gotten to a tricky area and have to quit - you'll have to get to that tricky area again. Like I said at the start, though, the jumping puzzle stuff isn't too challenging and it's even less difficult the second time through. The solar system is quite tiny so I think you can get to most interesting places in about 5-10 minutes. You're just never going to be out that much time even if you have to quit suddenly or if the game crashes! (Still, would it have hurt them to put in a quick save?)
Something that does cause real problems, IMHO, are the controls. Ship control isn't really as easy as it should be - I think because, in order to roll the ship, you have to hold down the R key and use the mouse. Hmmm… maybe if I re-map that to a mouse thumb button…. Oh, and the game says at the start that it's best played with controller. Don't believe it.
There's some bugs running around, too. I haven't hit them but the dev outlines them here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/753640/discussions/1/2568689796946065157/
(Interesting that they are patching them. This game was out on Epic for a year before showing up on Steam.)
