What Is This Sorcery? New Game: Deep Space

Zach James

Dr. Eric Williams

MDIA 1020

4, April 2014

                This interactive storytelling game is called Deep Space. The story for this game begins much like another, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away… Seriously, that’s where it starts. You are a member of a highly advanced civilization in a galaxy that is light years away from our own. Your planet has been exhausted of all its resources, and is literally falling apart. Your character is a space explorer, sent out on the task to find Krotonium, a rare element found on certain meteors. This element is one that your people use for space travel and they have exhausted the rest of it on getting your ship to fly. With sufficient amounts of this material, your planet can be evacuated, and a new planet can be colonized. This is also one of your tasks, to find a suitable planet for your species to thrive on.

                The gameplay revolves around traveling from galaxy to galaxy, doing various missions to get Krotonium, and of course to find a massive source of this element. As you travel from solar system to solar system, there are various planets that you must scan. Certain planets have nothing, others contain Krotonium, but are dangerous planets, or inhabited by hostile creatures. As captain of the ship, you decide whether to send in crews to mine the Krotonium. Your ship has probes that can help analyze the planet and its potential dangers, but unexpected surprises can pop up anywhere. Each planet takes time to scan, probe and mine, so the user will have to wait often.

When something important happens, dialogue will arise and the captain must choose what decisions to make. Your ship has armor, a certain number of crew members and probes, as well as Krotonium levels. All of these can be affected by external forces and ones decisions. Krotonium depletes as travel, so finding it is necessary to stay flying. Your crew members can die on dangerous mining missions, or your ships armor can be damaged by space debris and other factors. Probes and armor will regenerate with time, but crew members will not. New crew members can be found on planets with intelligent life, but they will require certain things to get. For example, you may discover a planet with life on it, they are willing to help your cause, but first you must retrieve a lost artifact from another planet.

Obviously there are some decisions that can be made which will result in one’s destruction. Maybe the user flew too close to a black hole trying to save fuel on a shorter route, or the ship runs out of fuel with no potential Krotonium sources nearby. These choices result in the death of your crew and you. The player will respawn back at the last wormhole they visited. Wormholes act as save points because they can transcend time and allow you and your ship to respawn.

                This game will take place in on an obviously massive sized map, and add in the time it takes to travel, its clear players will not be finishing the game very quickly. That being said, it can be beaten by finding and taking over a new planet and finding the source of all Krotonium. The goal of the game is be challenging so new users are expected to die often for not choosing their options carefully.