Pegasus Crew

In Pegasus Crew you play the captain of a starship on a mission to recover her stolen memories from a pleasure moon.

Despite the space opera setting, this game is all about found family, and nearly all of your choices affect your relationships with your two crew members. That's not a complaint—in fact, quite the opposite! Space opera setting with found family themes is one of my favourite combinations.

The writing is smooth and polished, and each of the three main characters are unique and interesting. All that, an interesting setting, and an engaging backstory make this an enjoyable read, and it's well worth checking out on the strength of that alone.

Where the game falls down a little (but not much!) is on the Twine side of things.

In most cases, play proceeds in a straight line. You make a choice and move to a new scene, and those other choices go away. A few scenes, though, were optional, giving you another chance to talk to or interact with your crew or the people on the pleasure moon.

These scenes, unfortunately, would send you back to the previous scene when you were finished, with no changes or acknowledgment of what you had just done. You could even replay the optional side scenes word-for-word the same, which broke the immersion of the writing in a big way.

I also was not sure if the choices affecting your relationships were just for show, since there is no visible way to track character relationships that I could see, and I could not really tell if having better relationships with the characters did anything in particular. However, downloading the Twine file and looking through it, I see that these variables do play a key role in the end-game.

All in all, very minor flaws for what is otherwise a lovely and memorable experience!

I'll admit, I really wasn't sure what to expect with this one from the description, but I actually really enjoyed it. It kind of gave me a vaguely Farscape setting feel, a small crew, including alien species, on the run and working together out of necessity that can evolve into friendship under the right circumstances. I actually liked the flashbacks revealing the background information in a bit of a drip feed rather than one big info dump somewhere, and felt for me at least, it helped rather than hindered the story progression.

Minor spoilers below:

I didn't have high hopes for this one but the writing and presentation really drew me in. You arrive at a pleasure moon with your loyal crew with the self-imposed mission to recover your memories. Along the way you will get to know your crew through flashbacks and conversations while navigating alien environments. The presentation is appropriate and the background music is a nice touch, although some of the transitions can be jarring.

My one problem with Pegasus Crew is it is one of those games where the protagonist should know more than the player. As captain, Astrid knows her crew well and should have a good grasp of what she is doing, but the first-time player is just thrown in there. There are flashbacks that explain the relationships throughout, which is a device that works in a short story but seems odd in an interactive game.

The story is intriguing and well-written enough that it didn't impact my enjoyment but it did take me out of the game slightly. Otherwise Pegasus Crew makes for a fun experience.

THE GOOD:
Nicely presented with good color choices and background music.
Interesting and diverse characters in a cool sci-fi setting
The writing is good in the cosy sci-fi vein. The contrast between you two crew members is well done.

NOT SO GOOD:
It's only a small annoyance, but having the player only slowly learn things that the protagonist would know makes the story harder to take.
There are a couple of places where you can loop through the same conversations multiple times.
If you are going to make a big deal about the orgy room, then force the player to go into the orgy room, at least have some orgy. Otherwise maybe leave out the orgy room and make the game more suitable for a wider audience.