Giveaway from #0

Let's start with the promised gift. Three users commented with their Steam usernames for a chance to win the key for games:

• Golden Axe,
• Gunstar Heroes,
• Streets of Rage 2,
• Renegade Ops,
• Viking: Battle for Asgard.

I decided to make a manual drawing. The result can be seen below:

@rouketas - please contact me on Steam.

Mansions of Madness (choosen by @playfulfoodie)

Silly me. How could I not see that? This game is only an app for a real board game. It means you can do stuff in in, but there will be no sense in it.

The Last Journey (choosen by @janmax)

Looking at the trailer of this game, you have the impression it’s going to be a good adventure in space, exploring the planets, upgrading the spaceship and in overall it will be an interesting gameplay. I was convinced about all above until I played this game. But let’s do not outrun the facts.

Story?

The story is not complicated, but it’s not most important in these kind of games. In short - in the future there was a war and humanity lost. In last minute, ten ships with human DNA were sent to space to recreate life on the new planets. We take control of one of them when it has lost contact with the others.

[game’s main menu]

Map and mechanics

After this brief introduction we have a spaceship ahead of us. Tutorial contains 3 sentences and that’s all. The whole game map is supposedly generated randomly and it’s made of squares, I have counted 1769 (61x29) of them. It takes over a minute to fly through one of them, so you can see how huge is this universe... and empty. Very empty. So empty that flying in it is simply boring.

A moment after the start, we find an empty ship wreckage, from which we can retrieve materials, journal and upgrade. There are 9 of those wreckages on the whole map and it’s the only story! Do you see these proportions? The materials refill our spaceship’s parameters, the journal adds a short note with coordinates, and the upgrade changes something in the spaceship.

Materials are: life, shield and fuel. Each of these elements decreases slowly and we die when one of them reaches zero. Relax, we still have 3 lives and we basically continue in the same spot! Materials can be also found on planets and finding them is not intuitive in any way. They are simply thrown into space without any order or composition (or logic).

The coordinates limits our search for another story point in limited number of squares on map. By limiting I mean like 1/4 of all squares, which is still way too much.

Upgrades add something new to the ship. These are not very useful things: better shield (without it you can still easily evade the asteroids), better engine (little more speed for spaceship) or turret to destroy the asteroids (as I wrote before, you can evade them).

There can be only one object in every square. It has a different color on the map. We don’t really know when we are already in another square. Every now and then we have to open the map (games pauses) to see our position in space. As if it was not boring enough.

[more than 99% of game looks like that]

End of the game

After 30 minutes of flying without any effect, I decided to use Cheat Engine and change the speed of the game to x10. Believe me - it didn’t help too much. In the end, however, I have finally finished the game and to be really honest, is not worth the price. Yes, I know it's free. It’s still not worth it’s price. I will not throw you spoilers, because I do not even recommend to sit down to this game.

Controls

Our spaceship has only two functions - start/stop and turning. This is enough for 3 keys. Seriously. But no, you need a mouse for it. And you can’t even turn if you don’t fly.

Audio

There is no music in the main menu. There is also no music during boring flying through the emptiness. Something only appears for a moment when we find an object. So really very rarely. It’s similar with the sounds, almost none of them. All short journal notes found in wreckages are read by a member of the crew.

Video

On the other hand graphics are not that bad. The planets are nicely drawn in pixel art (you can see them on trailer), shipwrecks too. Hard to say anything else because there is nothing more in this game.

Languages

It is worth to mention about 7 language versions that can be changed in the main menu. These are (except English): Polish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. In each of them we have translated only the text of the journals and some things from the interface.

Finally end

I'm really surprised that so much can be written about this game. If you are still with me in this text, you have wasted enough of your life on this game.

My propositions into #2

I decided to play one or two more free games from my propositions in CheapGames #0.

Giveaway

Since I will be writing again about the free games, I can’t give you the key. My proposal is any game from the Steam library up to 2.50€ or $2.50 in the form of a gift. The rules applies as before - simply upvote this post and leave your Steam username in comment.

Following

I'm publishing posts in English version (on @lukmarcus) and in Polish version (on @marszum) - in both you have possibility to win games.

English posts can be found under cheapgames tag and Polish posts under taniegranie tag. Both language posts are also available under steamit tag.

But it will be much easier simply to follow me!