I love games that contemplate existence, famously the Crimson hue and colored backgrounds. As if there's a tangible connection between shifting realities, and the instinctive need to survive in them. What would you do to survive, despite going against your better judgment?
Think of Sam Rockwell or Robert Pattinson, the concept is super familiar regarding cloning in space. But, now I'm glad the guys who made Frostpunk got around to releasing this. A survival game that is intertwined with a character study. Where you basically talk to your clones, whom are created based on possible alternative routes of your life, created by a quantum computer.
You talk to them while struggling to get your ship moving on a foreign planet so far away, each of you needs to depend on one another while dealing with each other's personal anxieties.
Jan Dolski crash lands and survives on an alien planet for the sake of hunting a rare resource called Rapidium. But soon finds out his crewmates have all died during the landing due to suspicious causes. He's all alone in the space station, and with a magnetic storm brewing.
His only option given to him through communication was to duplicate himself, hesitant at first, after mining some Rapidium and testing it out through duplicating a sheep, he creates a version of himself that is based on a branching path. A technician who can fix the ship, though, his personality makes it difficult to get along with him. Since he is created out of the blue.
You'd be remiss if you thought this was a management game in space, no it's about surviving against the radiation brought by the sun, and continuously drilling for resources while managing your clone staff and inner workings of the ship that is just past prototype stage.
The technician isn't enough, I had to clone a miner and a scientist to offload mining work while the other guy did the research for a lot of crafty devices that saved our asses. Problem is, the miner had a mental condition dealing with phantom pain from his lost limb, while the scientist is a bit of a sociopath who puts progress on top of people's lives and well-being.
Going outside the station, you have to scan for resources, this takes time, in fact going outside, doing anything, even mining eats up time quick for the daily cycle, and you have to return in order to not deal with the radiation and deal with exhaustion. It's both micro and macro management done simultaneously. Resources are used to produce numerous things.
Your abode needs radiation shielding, so you have to build canisters that need metal and organics, repair kits to fix the modules, organics to make food, and before you head out looking to mine stuff, you need to build those facilities in the workshop.
Pick your days, where you explore the areas, cover as much possible before the sun rises, and you move everything to the next spot on the planet. Maintain morale by talking to your duplicates, essentially as if they're actual human beings, and you will deal with all kinds of outcomes, both the positive and negative. This also affects their productivity.
I have a soft spot for hard Sci-Fi, especially in games that deal with the human condition. You stop assuming they're clones the moment they start to grow on you. Sure, biologically and from a relative upbringing, they're the same people, but adulthood seems to have really shifted them.
Same time, it feels like a weird coming of age journey in space, the ship will get more crowded. More mysteries will get uncovered. It gives this Tartakovsky vibe, like I'm a lost cosmonaut exploring the deeper, nebulous areas of space, opening a giant hole to my psyche. Though, I'm forced into this situation because a big corporation looking for something super rare to use for their own reasons.
Most of the crewmembers have no one but themselves, so they'll contemplate about their lives, ask you questions, and sometimes that leads us to finding more stuff about Jan we didn't know. Heck, his personal items are even scattered across the planet to find too.
Being the one in charge, it's up to you to make the final decisions. Should they work overtime? Get a day off? Build a new filtration system to deal with a radioactive particle getting into our water system? Helping them does get easier, despite their personality traits.
Make no mistake, there are going to be a lot of tough challenges, you have to be prepared for anything that happens out there. Including crew members cutting their limbs off, because of their phantom pain complex. Probable Mutiny. The anomalies on the planet. Counteracting this means putting your scientist to research a lot while doing everything with the time left.
I'm also shocked to see how visually appealing this game can be. It even runs smoothly, and that from a UE5 engine. The acid tripping vignettes even have sold me on the experience. It takes something spectacular to get me this hooked to the screen, and I can say without a doubt, this one really pulled me in. Multi-faceted and uniquely marvelous.
Above screenshots and GIFs are from personal recordings only
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