Sure has been a long time, huh?
I had made my way through several drafts of thoughts on this thing but kept holding off, thinking I might eventually get to capturing some screenshots from a second go round. Then I had some technical problems with dosbox’s video capture feature and, well… my feelings on the game also started to curdle a bit upon re-examination… Maybe the whole thing shares a bit too much in common with James Cameron’s Avatar, maybe parts of it get a bit too stupid and racist, maybe it just didn’t feel so great to discover that one of the co-creators has since gone on to spend the last few years working at various LLM startups. Whatever the reason, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I guess, in the end, the title of this thread proved to be a bit too on the nose…
Then there was a brief period where I considered surprising you all with a quasi-fangame about going on a date with my favourite character, I coulda even released it on April Fools as if it were just a big joke (it wasn’t!) but that idea also eventually fell by the wayside (for now, at least…)
And well, gosh, it feels like a shame to leave my first ever thread blowing in the wind like this… unloved… forgotten about…
The thought did occur that maybe some of you might enjoy directing me towards some other games that share just enough in common with the parts I liked most about this thing: bumping into non-human characters and having awkward exchanges while trying and mostly failing to make sense of an alien world’s culture and politics, that sorta thing… I guess you could argue that’s most RPGs but I swear I try my best to stick with those suckers only to have my heart broken again and again by endless filler. If you’re going to make me grind for hours on end at least let it be against an interesting looking guy from another planet while we also struggle to make small talk…
Anyway, I have a bit of a shortlist going already. Probably ought to finally play Captain Blood for myself rather than just stare at clips of it on youtube. Spaceship Warlock seems like a pretty obvious choice as well. Maybe Star Control 2?
Feed me aliens… PLEASE!!