Superluminal Vagrant Twinby C.E.J. Pacian profile2016 Science Fiction Inform 7
|
| Average Rating: based on 125 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 15 Write a review |
As a preface, I have a terrible habit of getting really frustrated with parser games, taking a break, then forgetting to come back. But this game? Absolutely addictive.
As other reviews have mentioned, it's stripped down and very easy to navigate, which gives the little details in the writing room to shine. The gameplay is simple and hypnotic, which worked for me since I was primarily interested in the little characters we meet as we make our way through the galaxy.
It's fun, the writing is charming, and it brought me back to the sense of exploration and wonder that only good sci-fi and screenshots of the early Internet can invoke in me.
- wisprabbit (Sheffield, UK), August 17, 2024
- Max Fog, August 1, 2024
- Axedohu, July 21, 2024
- EJ, July 14, 2024
Easily one of the most engaging beginnings to an IF piece. It gets you right onto the journey of planetary exploration/hopping from the get-go and dispenses with some of the typical parser commands, to keep things moving and feeling streamlined. I.e., 'Look' is still a very important action, but it is done away with for quite a few elements within the game. The descriptions are brief but poetic and often haunting - the planets (or remnants of them) are captivating to visit and some are quite tricky to find, but you have plenty of clues and help, and there's more than one way to get somewhere. There's a sense of danger and humor throughout. I wound up completing all possible quests (which you probably don't have to, but it was doable and led to a more satisfying finish for me.) Some of these quests involved bounty hunting and I questioned the morality of a few of them, whereas others were more clear-cut in being 'bad guys'. I got stuck on one puzzle and then felt a little silly when I realized I was overlooking a very....obvious....familiar....set of clues I could follow. I'll avoid spoilers.
Overall, I definitely recommend!
- Hellzon (Sweden), July 7, 2024
- Tabitha, July 7, 2024
- xkia, June 23, 2024
- GaryW, June 20, 2024
- itschloe, November 25, 2023
- Arioch, October 7, 2023
- airylef, October 6, 2023
- bloodzeed, September 19, 2023
- Aletheia, September 5, 2023
- aluminumoxynitride, August 13, 2023
- Ms. Woods, July 8, 2023
- IndustrialRobot, June 18, 2023
- querent, June 4, 2023
- Sad and Wet Horse, May 2, 2023
- elysee, April 25, 2023
- goffstown, April 19, 2023
The main narrative tension driving this game is a quest to free your titular vagrant twin from cryo sleep after they've been abducted by some unsavory types. The task is simple but the road is arduous as you then proceed to earn enough credits to free your twin, exploring a vast and varied intergalactic environment in the process. It's both the elemental story -- rescue your family from malevolent forces -- and the enormous scope of the world in which this story is set that give this game the feel of a sci-fi epic poem.
As is the case for many epic poems, the structure of Superluminal is episodic and the rhythm is that of a melodious and mnemonic repetition. The player character traverses numerous worlds (several dozen in my case and likely more left unexplored!), interacting with a diverse cast of characters coming from a wide range of socioeconomic situations and cultural backgrounds to buy, sell, and trade your way up to the requisite 500k credits. Each world to visit is evocatively described in just a scant few words and, similarly, every character is brought to life with a terse, smartly composed description. Truly, reading the description of each new planet brought me such great joy -- to take one example, at random, "slender megastructures rise gleaming from the silvery continents below, arcing over oceans" -- and I was heartened to re-encounter familiar descriptions as I revisited planets, akin to a Homeric bard repeating "wine-dark sea" for the umpteenth time.
The game itself is also very compelling. There's a bit of a puzzle trying to match the odds and ends that you're able to buy off inhabitants on one planet to the needs and wants of inhabitants on other scattered planets. Each of these matches is something of a hyper-episode in the larger story. The pared down mechanics (certain verbs common to IF games are stripped out, and there were no instances that I ran into of needing to play 'guess the verb' to advance) make the game easy to jump into, even for a newcomer to the genre, while the variety of ways to earn credits keeps the game interesting. The main quest can be completed relatively quickly (Spoiler - click to show)as there's a large but fairly easy job that will earn the player character sufficient credits to free their twin, but this is only a small portion of the joy of this game. As with many epics, the pleasure is not in summarizing the main story line but luxuriating in the encyclopedic details of a fully-realized world. This is a poetically charged reference book -- the highest compliment coming from someone who adores reference works!
Superluminal achieves one of the finest balancing acts between the literary and game elements that make the best interactive fiction so compelling. This is an epic poem that you are play as well as read.
- Kastel, April 10, 2023
- cheetahspotts, April 6, 2023
Previous | << 1 2 3 4 5 >> | Next | Show All | Return to game's main page