Strange Adventures in Infinite Space

From: Cheapass Games Designers: Rich Carlson & Likka Keranen List Price: $15 Players: 1 Playing Time: 5-15 minutes  Type of game: Computer strategy Skill level: 2 Complexity: 4 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 27, Summer 2002

Cheapass software.  Now this is a surprise.  And not a computer version of Kill Doctor Lucky (Cheapass’ best seller), but an original space adventure.  In fact, Cheapass is just the publisher on this— the game was designed and created by Digital Eel.  And it’s not half bad.

Strange Adventures in Infinite Space is like a pocket-sized version of Star Control, the delightful 1990 exploration game, but without the meaty plot.  In fact, there’s virtually no plot at all.  Each game drops you into a randomly created galaxy, giving you ten years to explore and return with your booty.  The more discoveries you make and loot you bring back, the more you score.

Gameplay is simple— perhaps too much so.  Clicking on a planet shows you how long it will take to get there.  Time being your most precious resource, you need to choose your destinations wisely.  The arrangement of the galaxy usually makes this an obvious decision.

When you arrive, something happens.  You could discover new life forms or artifacts to bring back with you, or technology to improve your ship’s performance.  Your ship might encounter a celestial hazard like a star going nova or a black hole, damaging your ship or blocking the way.  You might meet aliens, who could offer to trade, ally, or fight.  If this were a board game, each star system would have a face-down event tile to be revealed when it’s first explored.

Combat takes the form of an extremely simple arcade sequence which will bring Star Control fans an eerie sense of déjà vu.  The fight unfolds in real time, and all the player does is select an allied ship, then a target.  Everything else— weapons fire, system repair, helm control— is automated.  A good variety of weapons, shields, engines, and other devices provide some tactical variety, but often it just boils down to crossing your fingers and hoping your tech’s better than theirs.  As you learn what the different alien ships are like, making fight-or-flight decisions becomes easier.

The game ends when you get destroyed or return to home base, at which point you’re scored with an inexplicably cryptic system.  A series of bar graphs show your relative performance in categories like alien encounters, planetary exploration and salable booty, but they’re just bars— there are no values whatsoever.  In fact, there’s no good indicator of whether item x is worth more than item y.  This makes trading decisions confusing and arbitrary for no good reason, and is a baffling design choice.  You are given an overall numeric score as well as a suggestion for your future career, which is meant to provide an approximate rating of your performance.

Your success is almost entirely dependent on whether or not you discover a faster way to move around the galaxy, through a better engine or an allied pilot who can fold space.  Finding one is completely random, and if you don’t get lucky you’ll never be able to hit more than a few planets.  Hit the jackpot and you’ll be able to visit everything, with plenty of time to spare.

Not a deep game, then, but a short and diverting one which makes it a perfect fit for the Cheapass catalogue.  It’s very nicely done technically, with good sound and graphic effects, but it has a tendency to shut down unexpectedly on my XP system when a ship is destroyed in combat.  This is a professional production, and only its scale separates it from similar games that have come before.  In fact, it feels like a proof of concept for a larger, deeper game.

Still, even at $15 it feels a bit overpriced.  I became enchanted with the game in the first few minutes, but within two hours I felt like I’d seen everything the game had to offer and my interest plummeted.  Its brevity works against it.  A dozen games can fit into an hour, and despite offering about 90 different goodies to discover, the game doesn’t hold up to that much play.  Its shallowness soon eclipses its other qualities.

Strange Adventures in Infinite Space holds a lot of promise.  It’s slickly produced, technically solid, and initially engaging.  Ultimately, however, it fails to deliver where it counts— gameplay.   A