criticalmass
Beta Tester 
Posts: 5 
Home Planet: Snowball
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1988
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Post by criticalmass on Jul 14, 2018 11:54:33 GMT
A small team of developers called Flat Earth has been working on a so-called modempunk game named "Objects in Space" since 2011; a couple of days ago the Early Access version was released via steam and made quite a splash.
From the gaming aspect, it's a space trader - start from humble beginnings, find routs, contracts, connections, make money, upgrade, and so on. It does not have an in-your-face story, but rather a gradually developing plot that the player is drawn into: A human colony separated from Earth, decades without contact, making the same mistakes humandkind seems prone to make. It all doesn't sound really that innovative, does it?
And yet it is. You interact via almost static scene screens with a strong 80s-aesthetic and choppily animated talking heads, look at text based ship and station interfaces with some blocky pixels strewn in, navigate space on a 2D map, read mail and news on ASCII-interfaces, swap and repair modules and components, and - wait, what? Yeah, there's quite a lot of similarities, especially in ship management. All your onboard systems can be opened, the components they consist of get damaged, can be cannibalized for other systems, replacements can be cheap and shoddy parts or higher-quality/longer-lasting ones... It's fun, if you've been around Sundog a while. It's fun too where it's different - navigation and combat remind a lot of old submarine sims like Silent Service: Balancing energy emissions ("noise") to become invisible to pirates, dodging torpedoes, firing countermeasures or going completely dark (and blind!) while sheltering in nebulae. NPCs too are great, a lot more chatty and some outright unnerving, but carefully developed and memorable.
It's not done yet - some features work, but not quite (like bounty hunting or pirating yourself), some missions are buggy, some details need rework. But it already is a fun experience, and promises to become even better. It makes me a bit jealous to see them out there making money with it, releasing patches almost every day, and getting lots and lots of feedback. I'll see if I can steer some of them this way, to learn about a game that does things differently but has a lot more to offer (currently).
Anyway, if anyone is interested now, here's the link to their site: objectsgame.com/ |
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER 
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 427
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Jul 15, 2018 15:32:32 GMT
That's pretty interesting. I'm going to take a look.
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Post by DVT7125 on Jan 12, 2023 22:57:44 GMT
A small team of developers called Flat Earth has been working on a so-called modempunk game named "Objects in Space" since 2011; a couple of days ago the Early Access version was released via steam and made quite a splash.
From the gaming aspect, it's a space trader - start from humble beginnings, find routs, contracts, connections, make money, upgrade, and so on. It does not have an in-your-face story, but rather a gradually developing plot that the player is drawn into: A human colony separated from Earth, decades without contact, making the same mistakes humandkind seems prone to make. It all doesn't sound really that innovative, does it?
And yet it is. You interact via almost static scene screens with a strong 80s-aesthetic and choppily animated talking heads, look at text based ship and station interfaces with some blocky pixels strewn in, navigate space on a 2D map, read mail and news on ASCII-interfaces, swap and repair modules and components, and - wait, what? Yeah, there's quite a lot of similarities, especially in ship management. All your onboard systems can be opened, the components they consist of get damaged, can be cannibalized for other systems, replacements can be cheap and shoddy parts or higher-quality/longer-lasting ones... It's fun, if you've been around Sundog a while. It's fun too where it's different - navigation and combat remind a lot of old submarine sims like Silent Service: Balancing energy emissions ("noise") to become invisible to pirates, dodging torpedoes, firing countermeasures or going completely dark (and blind!) while sheltering in nebulae. NPCs too are great, a lot more chatty and some outright unnerving, but carefully developed and memorable.
It's not done yet - some features work, but not quite (like bounty hunting or pirating yourself), some missions are buggy, some details need rework. But it already is a fun experience, and promises to become even better. It makes me a bit jealous to see them out there making money with it, releasing patches almost every day, and getting lots and lots of feedback. I'll see if I can steer some of them this way, to learn about a game that does things differently but has a lot more to offer (currently).
Anyway, if anyone is interested now, here's the link to their site: objectsgame.com/Interesting, as I bought the game 3 months ago and I love it. Although its dead now, with people saying its buggy, I disagree I have had 4 crashes after 35 hours of game play. SunDog: Resurrected Legacy I've have that crash more than 20 times in the 50 hours of game play. Yes I know its in "Beta" but still, its odd. Objects in space is Very fun, and even I play it today! I would, pick it up on sale, because its not maintained anymore. Its such a shame since its such a great game! |
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