itch.io

Not quite what I expected.

Really expected more rules, some mechanics and like roll lists to come up with a spaceship and what has happened to it, and it’s journey across multiple owners. Maybe some direct inspirations on the looks of it. Basically a little bit of a “toolkit”.

Instead this is really just a couple of prompts and meditation… ideas. Which just really not what I expected or I’m really that interested in.

It’s like, the page on the captain says “what kind of person could have been the previous owner? Perhaps a mercenary? What could that owner have been like?” and I’m sitting here and going… well I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I hoped this would help me come up with answers for it, maybe give me some more concrete ideas. Have me roll on a tables, and then challenge myself to use and work around these “limitations” the RNGods “forced” upon me as anchors to build upon and work around.

I want to make clear, this is fundamentally just a mismatch of expectations. I think for some folks some sort of meditation prompts can be really insightful or helpful or relaxing. It’s just not for me.

But it did make me think, and made me wonder if I shouldn’t make and write myself the thing I expected and was looking for. And hey… it inspired me to work on my own thing. That’s worth something.

While the fundamental idea is an interesting one, the visuals are neat, the necessary information to properly play the game is conveyed really poorly.

• While I understand that a degree of ambiguity is the point, the way information is relayed is not enough. For example, it’s completely unclear what the three values are even supposed to represent; “Happiness - Defense - Peace” as far as I can tell, but it’s not clear how they even relate to each other and to events. For example, my first game I lost, because Westland had %85 happiness, but -100% peace… so I everyone turned into marauding bands of happy Jokers I guess.
• The second issue is how every map-event is simply labelled “Stop them / Dismiss”, which can be really confusing; for example “Corruption has been discovered”… okay, now what does each option mean? Does “Stop them” mean “Stop the corruption charges and let them (whoever that is) continue be corrupt”, or does it mean “Stop the corruption and bring them to justice”.

Both these issues combined, means it’s purely a game of memory.

That all said; still neat idea and super neat presentation.