Across The Stars: The Ralckor Incident

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An underrated gem, October 13, 2008
You know from the word go that it's going to be something special. The feelies follow the Infocom tradition (and format, and style - not a matter of innovation but simple hommage) - there's an ID badge, two letters, a map of the ship, a sample transcript (which serves as the intro), there's even an off-line blog.

In fact, my only gripe with this game is that the feelies opened up a LOT of doors and possibilities... and then the only thing I really needed, ingame, was the map, and it was a small map at that. The makers of this game went to a lot of trouble to give us background, even going so far as to involve a family disappearance, only to find it had no relation whatsoever to the plot (unless, of course, the victim fell prey to the same danger that faces our protagonist - but that is just speculation, as far as the game is concerned the feelies don't exist, and neither does their content).

This game has rubbed some people off the wrong way, and I believe it's because of the several different ways to approach a game. Most of the people this game exasperated seemed to come from "Ho-hum, another sci-fi spoof", and then don't really feel it's worth putting any effort. This approach always boggles me somewhat, and like in "Crystal and Stone, Beetle and Bone", this approach simply doesn't work here. If you do that, you'll skim the text; as a result, you'll miss clues (almost everything described is implemented, and you often NEED to explore everything in sight - not unreasonable given the game's first urgent and then explorative tone); as a result, your playing experience will be crippled. Some people have, for instance, said "What happened to the crew?". (Spoiler - click to show)I say, "You mean you didn't look at the viewport when you were in the bridge? Then you missed one of the most chilling images in the game."

Another mindset that works against this game is "Oh. I died. I totally didn't see this death coming, so I lost interest in the game, it wasn't much of anything yet anyway." There are possible deaths before the game really kicks in. If you let them discourage you (and the tight limits are fairly lax, considering the circumstances), you'll just miss out.

Now, let me make this very clear - I don't mean to say that everyone who disliked this game was wrong. I mean to say that a certain mindsets don't work with this game. Especially since there's a rather huge info-dump at the middle of the game (but shorter than it seems, well-paced, and pretty much a page-turner, so it's exciting and interesting and at times sorrowful to read).

To sum it all up, my advice is - go with it, not against it. This game is actually fair and polite. It even has a "hint" command which lets you know what your next goal should be (though of course you can do other things if you like). Keep several saved games, as usual, just in case, but if you give to this game, it will give back.

The game itself starts in your ship, and the whole ship is an interesting and curious puzzle all by itself. It's a vivid place, where the loneliness is palbaple. It's like waking up in the Mary Celeste.

My only real gripe with this section is that the authors often attribute emotions to you as the PC ("You feel such and such, you this, you that") in a very direct way, but it doesn't often work. Possibly because it's way too soon in the game to do this - we've just booted up, we're still getting to know the game, and we're already feeling this and that. Are we? I wasn't aware of that. In fact, the single most efffective image in this whole section is when you look out the window and realize what the asteroids around your ship are. In *that* one, the game doesn't tell you how you feel. As a result, you *do* respond to it, emotionally.

In the second part of the game, however, where the Sci-Fi dwindles a bit and gives way to exploration and knowledge of a past civilization (ok, so that's also Sci-Fi, but anyway), the game stops assigning you emotions, and concentrates on telling you about the place you're on. It works great. It's seldom been this easy to imagine the landscape, the rooms, the enemies, the objects.

There's an optional part of this game, which you can skip altogether - but if you do, you'll miss out on what makes this game rich and fun. There's a lot of backstory to this one, and a real sense of exploration. I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say, if Tomb Raider (the *exploration* part of Tomb Raider, which, as you may or may not remember, is what set the original game apart from all the other games at the time - well, that and the technology and the freedom of movement) were an IF, it would probably look pretty much like this. Not the action part, the discovering part.

On the whole, this game is a gem which has gotten less attention that it deserves. It's not perfect, but it's polished to a high degree. It's fair. It's fun. It's challenging. It's enthralling. It's engrossing. In case you can't tell, I loved it, and I think you might, too.

A game that really rubbed me up the wrong way, November 23, 2007
I gave this game three stars after I first played it, intending to come back to it after reading a few reviews and giving it a few more plays, to see if I thought it really deserved four or whether I should stick with three. Unfortunately, additional attempts at play made me so frustrated that I almost ended up dropping my rating down to two. Even though I knew exactly what I needed to do to complete the first part, I ran out of time and died four times trying to get the timing to work; doubly frustrating as I'd managed it straight away the first time around, when I'd spent a lot more time wandering around the ship then. Resorting to the walkthrough, I found that the problem was caused by my having a mistaken mental picture of certain items.

Throughout the game, I didn't think the puzzles were particularly well-signalled; what I mean by that is that while they weren't difficult in the sense of needing a great amount of intellect, they were difficult in the sense of the circumstances around them not being very clearly explained. I also felt that the huge info-dump of made-up creation myth in the second part of the game was very off-putting.

Basically, I'm still annoyed with this game, and I'd be unlikely to recommend it to anyone else, particularly someone new to IF. I did like the fact that there were multiple solutions to some of the puzzles though.

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