Space I – A Whole New World…

After getting my education from the army, I decided to be an explorer! In Space I, when you go through a “landing sequence”, all this entails is a black screen with a loud beep going faster and faster until you land. I actually found this kinda charming, and kept that charming feeling in mind as I landed upon my chosen world to explore, which held the exciting name of…RT48V12W. Yeah, honestly, I didn’t think the name was very inspiring either, but it kinda makes sense since that’s the kind of uninspiring and bland name astronomers are naming star systems these days, right? RIGHT?

Anyway, after one lands, your goal is to find minerals to sell back at home base for money, and along the way, you can find fuel, friendly natives, bad weather, wild animals, and so on. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to the order of why or how these things happen, they’re just thrown at you willy nilly. Sometimes you’ll barely find anything at all, while other times you’ll hit the mother lode. Again, there’s no pattern or anything to this, which is good in its unpredictability, but confusing in its sometimes-makes-no-sense-ability.

Moving on, once we landed, the first thing we did was find a fuel source, which is great because you use fuel to mine minerals and harvest food sources — once you find them. However, our ship was full, so we could only use a few units. Could we save this spot to come back and get more? Nope, once we passed it, it was gone, like a faded memory or the Silence from Doctor Who.

After we took what little fuel we could from that site, we got attacked by wild animals! How many? Don’t know. How big were they? Don’t know. But they were WIIIIIIIILD, baby, wild. Thankfully, we neutralized these animals without harming anyone in the party — and there is a party, you just never know who else is IN the party because they call it “The party of Brian Rubin”. I know I was the center of the party everywhere I went, but this is ridiculous. ;)

Anyway, that actually ended the first round of exploration. We found some fuel, fought some WIIIIIILD animals…and nothing else. Feeling as if that was anticlimactic, we decided to stay for another round, since we still had plenty of food and fuel. Those, by the way, are the two resources you need to keep an eye on. If you get low on either of ‘em, it’s time to leave. I mean, you CAN risk another round of exploration in the hopes of finding sources of food or fuel, but if you don’t, it’s likely not a good thing (I never got to that point, as I always left with a reasonable amount of food or fuel, to ensure my party’s safety…whoever they are).

In continuing our exploration, we sadly lost a bunch of food in a storm. Why did we lose food that should’ve been secured in the ATV? I dunno, game didn’t tell me, so whatever. If you’ve guessed by now that the game can be pretty vague about some things, you’d be right. It doesn’t really take AWAY from the gameplay, but…I would’ve liked more detail about stuff like this.

Anyway, so we lost some food, which really didn’t matter because a moment later we found a food source, which we harvested using some fuel, so our food situation was taken care of. This used some fuel, but that’s okay since we then found a fuel source to replenish our fuel tanks! Yay! Luck seemed to be in our favor.

A bit later, we found some friendly natives, which traded us some food for some mineral resources, since we now had plenty of food, I commenced the trade, since I needed SOMETHING to go home with if this trip didn’t find minerals soon. Once that was done, we were again offered the chance to leave the planet or explore some more. Our reserves were still okay, so I chose to continue.

Well DAMN if my party didn’t have an actual party, because between sessions, our food went way down, no idea why either. The natives came back to trade, but I didn’t trade this time to conserve what little food we had left. Next, we found a mineral deposit…FINALLY. And hey, it was of moderate to large value! Woohoo! Having near the maximum amount of fuel (250 units), I used 100 units of fuel to mine a ton of minerals and still have enough fuel to get home. This time, when offered the choice, leaving for home is exactly what we did.

As we left, the text on the screen slowly rose upwards as the computer beeped, giving again a charming illusion, though this time of taking off. When we got back, we sold our minerals and I got to keep hundreds of thousands of credits, which I would use toward buying a ship in order to be a trader. The smaller of the ship requires a .8 million credit down payment, so I thought I was well on my way…until I saw my final balance? WTF?

It was then the game stopped. Yup, just stopped, as in needed to be restarted. I’ve no idea why this is the case, but it’s a bit annoying to go through the unskippable intro again each time this happens. Since the game stopped at this point, so will this article. ;) You’ll have to wait until the next installment to find out why I was so confused about my balance upon leaving RT48V12W.

I’ll always cherish the memories I had on RT48V12W, and I’ll always count those brave members of my party as my close friends. ;) Stay tuned for my next installment, wherein I become a trader and build my fame and fortune among the stars. I hope you enjoyed this installment into my look at Space I, and I thank you for reading it. :)

You can read parts 1 and 3 by clicking on their links, or see all of the screenshots from this story in one place below.