You awake in a seemingly deserted spaceship. What happened to the crew, and what will happen to you, explore the ship and find out.
The secret story of spacetravel
2022 game jame entry
2022 game jame entry
You awake in a seemingly deserted spaceship. What happened to the crew, and what will happen to you, explore the ship and find out.
Eat a brownie out of captain celeron55's filing cabinet
A lot of the time spent on this game, SSS for short, definitely went on the development of original assets. Those are good and at times you somewhat forget you are playing a block game. The game's story is a solid middle score, not bad, not great. Its puzzles are not satisfying and the game leans too heavily into its randomisation features. Nathan (game's author) probably also should have cut some content rather than leaving it in the submission, because a half-baked feature is often worse than not having it.
The game has persistence issues. In SSS, the items you find around the ship are decided randomly and also do not persist permanently. The ship's power status can also be reset by logging in. This leads to a very poor sense of direction and guidance, as if you are never quite sure how to follow a chain of logic to complete the game. It is also possible to accidentally skip loads of content, such as speedrunning the route to the end after (game event that is a spoiler) instead of waiting; or by getting lucky and collecting many ID cards at once, then proceeding to an area with a 2-3 security level gap from your last important door.
The game leans too heavily into randomisation. The loot randomisation has many nonsense results, such as finding officer ID cards in the Cadets' quarters or my personal favourite, a brownie in one of the captain's filing cabinets. I know the game development had limited time, but I think statically placing the objects would have worked better in the Jam Time; that way they could be placed logically.
(continued in comment)
Unfortunately feels to incomplete, the lack of sounds is disturbing
Overall rating
No recommendation, because the gameplay experience is still bland due to incompleteness. A lot more work is needed, but it's a start. To players I advice to just wait until the complete game gets released. Currently, this is mostly feels like an early demo version. I think the size of the map was ultimately this game's downfall, the author made the map WAY too big and then was unable to create a complete (or even semi-complete) experience within the time frame. I still appreciate the work that has been put into this MASSIVE map already, I think I should check out this game again if a post-jam version is planned. Although the game got no recommendation, I do NOT say it's worthless. I would love to see an actual polished adventure/mystery-style game in MT.
Gameplay
First of all, this game might be the first attempt to create a non-trivial adventure/mystery-style game in Minetest ever (together with Piranesi, I guess). The attempt alone is cool, it's high time that Minetesters explore new genres. :-)
Sadly, the result ultimately falls flat IMO. You explore the various rooms and collect items and clues, except the only item that actually matters are the keycards that unlock new rooms. Oddly, the key cards just magically increase your security clearance by using them in mid air (not at a terminal)??? There are working computers which their own GUI, which is nice, but you can't do much with them yet. A minimal game functionality is available: You can open doors and close them and the security clearance is checked properly.
(the review continues in the comments)
Experience reminiscent of the Scott Adams ATARI Adventures
This game truly has a story-feel to it, and I think the textures are pretty much consistent; gives it a very sci-fi feel. The storyline is fairly well-done and has the potential of the best game submitted for the Jam, but it lacks a proper ending, in my opinion. I've put the following critique inside of a imgur image so that people who want to solve the game on their own won't be upset at my review ;)
[Potential spoilers, do not read ahead if you want to find things on your own]
https://i.imgur.com/780kBln.png
In short, this is an great story game and has a bright future, but it needs a finished storyline that feels fulfilling and doesn't leave too many questions.
Fun exploration and problem solving!
I played this game to the end, and I enjoyed it!
Pros
Cons
Author seems to have paid more attention to the lore than to the actual gameplay
If you click around, you'll mostly find books giving you the idea of what was happening on the ship (which some players appreciate, it gives depth to the story). Yet, gameplay wise it looks very dispersive, there is no sound, and graphics are a bit too brutal/dull (e.g. red text on azure/grey/white background, almost unreadable for someone who doesn't suffer from any heavy eye condition). I appreciate the irony of the drawn map, but.. seriously, considering the complexity and the length of hallways, an actual map would have helped (and shorter hallways). It felt almost like a clicker mixed with a stroll simulator
My Review [JAM VERSION]
Nice work! I'd love to see this fully fleshed out with a finished story, music, and general sound effects.
Review:
You are in a ship... Now what?
Let me start by saying this game is amazing in many ways and the attention to details show. But it is also lacking in many others and for that reason, as it is now I wouldn't recommend it but also wouldn't not recommend it.
My main gripes with the game is the lack of clarity with the players goals. By exploring the ship and collecting the many books the player figure out the main goal, leave the ship. The problem arises from the smaller steps required to do so, for example (SPOILER AHEAD : after restoring the power I didn't found anything telling what I need to do to place the transformers back online.)
Another problem I had was with the clearance system, after getting the captain ID I got a message saying that I couldn't used because it would reduce my clearence however I still couldn't enter any of the pods because my clearence was't high enough. I guess that was a bug, because surely I should have, otherwise if not even the captain could use the pods who could leave the ship then?
These were my main gripes with the game. I still had plenty of fun exploring the ship and seeing the multiple rooms the crew had. As others have mentioned the models and the textures were very well done. As for me, I didn't experience any type of lag despite using a computer from 2014, so I guess the code was also very slick, which is always a plus.
The secret story of spacetravel has a lot of potential and hopefully in the future that potential will be realized, I have fun exploring but unfortunately there isn't much else to do where I think it should have that is why my review is neutral.
Intrigue on the spaceship
A neat little adventure with an open ending. The texturing work is really realistic and detailed. The story is engaging, and the overwhelming silence gives an ominous feeling throughout: the choice to exclude most sounds and music works. I had fun solving the puzzles for the electricity.
The ending is not very rewarding, and repetition of the same journal entry in many different instances felt strange. The story felt unfinished, as well. Some text in the bridge terminals is cut off.
Generally, it's an immersive experience with impressive world-building. I recommend checking it out!
Lack of gameplay, but good storyline
OVERVIEW - The secret story of spacetravel The gameplay in this game was a bit repetitive, and the lack of sounds didn't help. This game was for me, was right between a thumbs up or thumbs down, but in the end, I'm giving it a thumbs up. What really was this game's saving grace, was how well Nathan used all of this year's game jam themes. The storyline was pretty good, the game was obviously a space game, and there was a hint on secrets in the game. The ending was a bit forced, and pretty easy to get too. I think really one of the biggest things this game needs, is some sounds. But besides that, good job.
RATING SYSTEM:
1 - Not a fan 2 - Meh 3 - Okay 4 - Good 5 - Love it!
GAMEPLAY - 3
GRAPHICS - 3
PLAYER-FRIENDLY - 3
PERFORMANCE - 5
SOUNDS & MUSIC - 1
THEME - 5
TOTAL - 20/30(Good)
Nice game but needs some more interesting gameplay
Pretty cool design and GUI!!