While I enjoyed the slick and snappy writing of “Within Constellations”, I think it’s actually too snappy in places. A good example is at the beginning, where a panel buzzes briefly and a door opens slowly in the same sentence. In particular, I think “slowly opens” is a missed opportunity to literally slow down somewhat. How does the slow opening door make our character feel? Are they frustrated? Scared? Disappointed?
Similarly, an escape pod is launched with all the fanfare of a button press. The player is told they’re running out of time, but never actually shown it. We’re searching for our crew, but they’re nameless and faceless entities. As far as I can tell, there’s only one named character in the entire story!
The writer also suffers from a widespread malady among pulp sci-fi writers, present company included: They underestimate the vastness of space. The fastest man-made object to date is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which has reached a maximum speed of 690,000 km/h. If you shot the probe directly at the sun from Earth, it would take nine days to get there.
On a technical level, I was blown away by the slick animations, the well-chosen fonts, and the expertly timed delays on some of the lines.