Altair-III : Search And Rescue

Disclaimer: to the author, take everything in this review with a grain of salt. I’m not a professional writer and only somewhat of a seasoned reviewer. To the readers, this review will contain lots of spoilers, so I suggest you read the storygame first.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I like the decision to use a letter in the storygame description. It quickly establishes character while allowing the readers to get a sense of the world, its problems and the sci-fi space elements. The protagonist comes across as a likable person, with his genuine care for his parents and his excitement about working on the station orbiting Altair-III. The worldbuilding feels naturally integrated and the pacing doesn’t slow down to overexplain scientific jargon. His enthusiasm for S&R would likely play a role throughout the story, given the title. Personally, it’s a bit odd that the letter is signed off with ‘Me’, but I suppose the parents probably know who he is. Maybe the protagonist is deliberately kept nameless.

Seems like a large portion of this storygame involves piloting. As someone who failed a Kidzania piloting simulator as a child (I crashed the plane), I’m not the most confident in my ability to do well haha. I’ll probably do a playthrough more focused on the storyline, likely using the autopilot mode, then another where I attempt to actually fly the ship. Let’s see how these go.

This storygame does a good job at creating a strong sense of atmosphere from the start. I love how space and the planet are described, followed by the protagonist reminding himself of the dangers that lurk beyond. The picture is great too.

A nitpick: having two different lines of dialogue on the same paragraph is confusing, so it’s best to always start a new paragraph for each line of dialogue.

Both the protagonist and Jallen are well-characterized. It’s fun to read about their silent competition, with how they’re trying to one-up each other yet appear humble at the same time, and I like the contrast between the protagonist’s thoughts and what he actually says. Similarly, Jallen does a humble brag: “I’m an all-rounder”. Through the description about her background, the protagonist knows quite a lot about her and muses about how her past influenced the person she became.

In a story about space and the unknown world, the choice to focus on character is good, as it allows readers to connect to them even when the situation may not be something they can relate with. Still, their struggles with fear and acceptance are relatable. The protagonist’s character dynamics with Jallen are interesting too, as their competition stops him from revealing how nervous he truly is about what’s to come.

WRITING STYLE

At the start of each page, the prose immerses readers in the setting, describing the sights around them. It’s both factual and descriptive. The appearance and layout of the station is painted through details, like the “slowly spinning dic” and the “tiny white lights of windows”, alongside relevant pictures.

The writing style is quite descriptive and uses some story-specific metaphors. The protagonist is alert “like a hunter venturing into wildness beyond the settled lands” and the ship is suspended “like a chrome dragonfly, hovering and watching”. Often, there’s a fascination for space travel and the protagonist sees the beauty in the world beyond, conveyed through vivid descriptions: “The unknown parsecs, whether they're inanimate void or teeming with startling life or sentinelled by ancient machines, press in on my subconscious like some kind of chaotic jungle of sighing boughs, muttering beasts and uncatalogued species.” I love how evocative this extended metaphor is.

Sometimes, stream-of-consciousness-like ramblings are used, touching on philosophical topics. At one point, the protagonist muses on how his life or death doesn’t matter to even an atom of the billion stars, but yet his choices mean something to him. It’s not easy to reconcile between the apparent insignificance of our lives and the significance each one of us believe we hold within ourselves.

At the same time, the reader is greeted with lots of facts about the planets and space travel, which makes sense given the protagonist’s occupation and the use of first person pov. It adds a sense of realism to the worldbuilding too, like how some of the serving crew aged as they traveled back in a comatose state moving at 80 to 90% of lightspeed.

Dialogue portrays each character and their role, such as how there’s more informality with Jallen and Frank’s group of friends, whereas Clair and other officials speak in a formal, straightforward manner.

Throughout the story, proofreading was great. I only noticed minimal typos: “wa” on the page to choose Petro; ‘alonga’ on the ‘through the airlock’ page when they arrive on the planet.

Everything is written from a deep point of view, where the protagonist’s personality shines through the prose. From the filler words like “I think” to the narration providing information he deems important, it really puts the readers in his shoes. For example: “This is real. I'm in command here, I'm about to fly this thing. And it's so much like the simulations and training flights, and yet elevated to a whole new dimension.” It anchors the readers to the story, making them care about the protagonist’s fate, while raising the stakes.

A slight nitpick is that the noun-based sentence structure tends to give this story an informative feel at times, like reading a physics textbook, especially with the technical terms and scientific jargon. But maybe that’s just my unfamiliarity with the sci-fi genre as a whole. Not to mention that since the protagonist is so familiar with this way of life, it makes complete sense, just like how I’d randomly use law terms with my friends at university especially when talking about cases.

The author has so much knowledge on flight and aviation it’s impressive (I’m going to overuse this word to describe your storygame many times throughout this review—be warned). Either that, or he’s very good at worldbuilding and making everything sound realistic, like the processes to prepare for the flight, suiting up and checking the airlock. Perhaps it’s because I know nothing about flight and space, but this is truly one of the best cases of ‘write what you know’. The expertise in this matter goes a long way in breathing life into this world.

GAMEPLAY & MECHANICS

This storygame makes great use of the branching, choice-based medium. Even from the start, every choice—from choosing personality traits to what the protagonist did with his money—has a larger impact. Delayed consequences are used consistently throughout the story, so much that a choice made at the beginning can affect the story you get over and over again. Even when choosing to find out more about a situation and questioning different people, speaking to a person after another results in different text than speaking to them first. This attention to detail is impressive.

The only fake-out choice was the one to pick between Derraline and Petro. I would have thought this would lead to different subplots, but due to sickness and exhaustion, neither of them would be able to lead the mission. However, this is foreshadowed well during the earlier scene when the protagonist interacted with these characters and given the emphasis on Jallen’s character, it makes the most sense for her to join him on this mission.

For the purposes of my first playthrough, I’ve chosen intuition and the cyber implant that enhances sight and reflexes, bought the recovery powder and chose Petro as mission specialist. Hence, the storyline I’ll review would be based on these choices.

(Note: the next few paragraphs include a lot of rambling as I embarrass myself trying to figure out the piloting system. You have been warned).

Now, let’s talk about the part that everyone is losing their minds over. JohnX, how did you create a whole flight simulator using CYS’ archaic system? This is insane. There are different systems like one for aligning the ship’s trajectory, another to look out into space, and even a whole handbook to aid the reader.

I’ll admit that I was doing well until I decided to mess with the RCS to navigate towards the platform, lol. Then I aligned the end of the triangle to P, but each time I clicked ‘continue’ it got further away. Not sure if I was just doing something incorrectly, though. The distance towards the Sagan Platform kept increasing until I got to more than 15,000 km away (started off with over 10,000 so you can tell what a terrible pilot I would be haha) so I had to restart the game. Turns out heading east was the right direction. Edit: I just didn’t read carefully enough, as there was an important note for novice pilots: “The ship's attitude shows only the direction in which the ship is pointing, and NOT the direction of movement.”

Later on, when the ship was at 99% and I guided the protagonist out to fix it, the background changed from black to dark red. It’s another cool detail and adds to the stakes. After the ship was fixed, the black background returned.

It took an embarrassingly long time for me to struggle with finding out what affected what (and wonder whether I had to do mathematical calculations for the apogee based on the planet’s mass) until I found the autopilot button. For those who can’t find it, go to orbital navigation and it’s right under ‘radar’. Turns out you’ll need to get far enough from the station to use this. Apparently it’s possible to just abandon the mission and head back to the station. During this time, the comm activates and there are a few messages from other characters which adds to the immersion. Edit: I don’t know if I just failed to land back there, but I couldn’t undock so now I have to make my way towards the planet with half my fuel wasted on indecision.

During a second playthrough, I think that we’re supposed to use the radar for undocking and moving away from the planet, match the ‘heading’ angle using the RCS, and then use the orbital setting to get closer to the Sagan Platform. Even so, I’m not very sure about that. But somehow, after getting quite near to the platform, I started getting further away even though the angle was close to correct (I didn’t use a protractor but started calculating angles by the tenth degree), and had to rely on autopilot again. Definitely flunking flight school lol. One thing I liked was that if the protagonist—aka me—struggles attempting to fly it manually for a long time, the voice message over the comms would say there is no shame in using the autopilot mode. Yet if I resort to it very quickly, as I did in the second playthrough, the voice message would instead warn me not to overuse it. I decided to attempt docking instead and managed to get 300 meters away (there was a lot of spamming the translate buttons until I realized it’ll be faster if I ignited the engines), but somehow I started moving further away. Maybe my angle was wrong, or maybe I had to do something to counteract orbit or gravity, but I felt sure I was clicking the right buttons to move the white dot towards the red one. Still, perhaps that’s something I’ll have to figure out another day.

A suggestion is to implement a ‘hints’ system for readers who want to try piloting the vehicle instead of relying solely on autopilot. Maybe you could allow the protagonist to converse with Jallen and have her nudge him in the right direction? After all, she’s almost as qualified as him. I’m not sure if adding this would be too complex, though, so ignore this if it can’t be easily done.

CHARACTERS & PLOT

Each conversation between the protagonist and Jallen reveals more about their personalities. When Jallen asks about grants, the protagonist replies instantly. Both their struggles are relevant, as even in this current day and age (at least, as someone who is close to graduation), there are warnings about signing contracts with large corporations that may keep you tied to certain companies. The protagonist can read Jallen so well and inwardly berates himself for his tactlessness. And the choices are impactful: choosing to be muscular leads to him not even realizing she’s taken the offer, whereas being charming means he merely recognizes she’s uncomfortable and smoothes over the conflict.

Later on, the protagonist makes a lot of good observations about the social groups at the station. The power dynamics and each subgroup based on personalities and values adds realism to the story, making the world feel more lived-in. There’s a lot about company politics too. Two companies want to purchase the current one, and though there’s a clear ‘better’ choice given how the information is portrayed, neither sounds ideal. The loner presents a more balanced view as he mentions how no one has a clear picture due to group-think. There’s the opportunity to find out more about these later, which further reinforces the theme of corporate greed brought up in an earlier conversation between the protagonist and deuteragonist.

The call to action occurred when all qualified pilots were told to report to the briefing room. Then, the stakes were set: they had to search for and rescue potentially injured crew with only one hundred hours before they hit the mesosphere. These were raised when they had less notice than normal, their specialists were not fit for travel so they sent two rookies instead, and neither of them had completed training. It added to the severity of the situation.

Woah, there’s a whole flight manual. It maintains a good balance between telling the readers how to work out this spaceship thing while keeping in character as an actual manual, with regulations and a version code. And I’m learning lots of new words too, such as apogee and prograde. While I was partially overwhelmed by information, feeling like I’m taking a higher level astrophysics course without having the necessary prerequisites, the bolded words, definitions and to-the-point writing style definitely helped. The library data is a nice touch (and adds to the high tension, too).

Hahaha, it’s funny how there was the option to reemerge from the airdock as soon as the protagonist gets in. “The hangar crew give me long stares, as if I'm a green alien with five legs”. I like this simile and the second-hand embarrassment, combined with the protagonist’s response, is hilarious to imagine.

Then, the protagonist gets to pilot the vehicle. Sorry for the lack of chronological order, as I’ve put my experience about this in the ‘gameplay & mechanics’ section. Long story short: it was not a smooth ride.

Finally, we arrived on the planet! There’s the choice to either search for the scientist or the engineer. When looking for the scientist, there is a locked door, barring her escape. I knew the implant would come in useful! But since bypassing the challenge felt too much like cheating, I tried another route. The scientist was too stubborn to leave behind her samples even if it came at the cost of her life. Slight obstacles like this made the story more interesting, as it serves as a reminder that everyone has different goals, motivations and values. But the protagonist is skilled enough to take the ship around (luckily this didn’t involve the reader doing any steering, otherwise, I’m sure there would have been multiple casualties here).

The scientist’s passion for her samples and research may seem illogical at first, but it makes sense when the protagonist understands how value-driven she is. Not only do they represent her entire career, but her actions are driven by the desire to save alien life forms. Again, her words echo the theme of corporate greed. First, they seek to transform an outpost dedicated to science into a place for more profitable ventures, then now, the scientist believes that even if there is life there, without proof (or maybe even with it), they plan to destroy this planet in order to extract a few materials. This quote links to the earlier theme of creating significance for oneself: “Have you ever carried the future of a whole planet in your hands before?”

The engineer is also stuck on his mission, which makes sense why they did not leave or send a message earlier. It was a nice touch to show how he’s completely sane, but doesn’t want to leave due to his passion and determination for his mission, just like the scientist. There was a slight continuity error when going back for the engineer: “But she needs to concentrate on getting the Professor out. I won't distract her.”. This line about Jallen is not true, as she's on the spacecraft with the professor.

It is later resolved when the protagonist can call Jallen to help with the code. After all, given she hasn’t actually done much on this mission to prove that her test scores rival the protagonist’s, having her be better than him at coding is a good way to show this.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t find a way to open the bulkhead door on Sagan or find out what the rotary cutter was for. I wonder if I needed to have bought the most expensive tool at the shop near the start of the story to enter that room? Acting on this impulsive thought, I went ahead and tried it, and having all the equipment meant the engineer told the protagonist about the bodyguard room. But I couldn’t use any of the items to enter it, not even the one found in the locker. All the advanced tech from the shop didn’t help. Since I chose to be strong this time, I just knocked the engineer unconscious and drove off lol.

Note: on the "You're right Tomas let’s get out of here” page, there's a code error message.

Lol, I love that it’s possible to crash the ship when landing. And if the ship is not repaired, well, there’s a chance everyone dies in space. What I didn’t like as much is how the commander knows everything, such as how the protagonist crashed the ship a few times and overused autopilot. He fired him even though he saved two lives. Ungrateful much? Guess I have to try yet another playthrough.

Jokes aside, like the author’s comment says, it’s possible to get to the ending just using autopilot. In this case, the protagonist retains his job. On the voting day page, there are no spaces between the paragraphs, but it returns after the next link. Haha, the puns about Destiny and Sirius are pretty funny. It makes sense that the different groups of people would try to find comparatives between these companies such as management structure and financial statements. The polarizing opinions—“Either Sirius is a faceless machine that will chew us all up and spit us out, or they have vast experience at listening to their employees and fitting each individual with a role in which they will excel”—adds to the layer of confusion too.

Different types of voters are described, such as those with strong political opinions, trying to sway the others, alongside those who are just there for the free beer.

When speaking to Derraline, she acknowledges how big corps can be ruthless but Sirius wouldn’t take over Tourmaline for their own ‘humanistic vision’. This ties back to the earlier conversation the protagonist had with Jallen and how he thought back to his father’s views. In a way, that may have been a misbelief, thinking that all large corporations are evil. But this mission definitely changed things: there’s life on the planet and this decision may affect more than Altair; it affects Tourmaline, too.

There’s such a close call with the votes. If the protagonist abstains or votes for Destiny, they take over. But even if the protagonist does all he can to dissuade the Destiny voters, reaffirm the Sirius voters and convince the floating voters to pick Sirius, there’s a tie and the re-vote on the next day allows Destiny to take over.

The last page reads like a summary of events. But it shows the negative impact of the company: Petro disagrees with them, has an outburst and leaves; Jallen finds work at Sol even though it’s not what she wanted to do; the protagonist has another S&R mission where there are horrific injuries alongside some deaths. Worst of all, however, is how the company ignored the scientist’s research about the potential life forms on the planet and colonized Tourmaline.

Forced to return, the protagonist catches a glimpse of life on the planet, though it disappears into the distance, prompting his realization of how bad of a company Destiny is. He quits. It’s a poignant theme, as illustrated by the line: “Believing in the orderly propagation and expansion of our race is one thing; driving at that one goal at all costs will lead to an expanding sphere of deadness, a galaxy of a million scorched earths like this one.” Language is employed effectively to create emotional impact. Using the phrases “ a kind of racial supremacy thing” and “philosophy of interstellar fascism” makes the company appear like a sci-fi version of Hitler and the Nazis, eradicating other species for the ‘superior’ human race. And there’s an apt extended metaphor where they had become a “swarm of locusts, rendering all before us into the likeness of what we already know, consuming what we never took the time to learn about, trampling it into ashes in our haste” an apt extended metaphor.

No matter what, I can’t seem to get to an ending where Sirius takes over, though I’d like to predict what happens. Perhaps the protagonist overcomes his misbelief that all large corporations are negative, as Sirius seems likely to leave Tourmaline alone at the very least. Maybe if he had found a way to help the engineer too, things would be different. Or, based on the note on the first page of this storygame about how using the autopilot too much prevents readers from unlocking the best ending, finding a happier ending may not be possible until I figure out how to use this complex flight system.

Either way, it’s a spectacular, well-written storygame involving out-of-this-world (get it?) gameplay mechanics. I highly recommend it to anyone who sees this review. Also, to the author, if it isn’t too much of a hassle, I would greatly appreciate a walkthrough for some of the puzzles and piloting challenges.

Top notch sci-fi magic from John!

couldn't get past the game after the 1st mission. Too much autopilot will get you a game over.

The layout is beautiful. You've done a really good job with the coding. The pictures, the fact that things on the radar move with decisions is truly witchcraft as Mizal stated.

Unfortunately, playing your game, John, has made me realise I'm not very smart, since I seem incapable of even putting it into autopilot lol

I will come back to your game, and win!!! For now though, here is your 8 from the sheer effort and coding magic. Everything is smooth I'm terms. Of dialogue and storyline.

Hey, I thought I'd run through my own story and see how it goes. For reference, I was so lazy (or rushed) that I used the autopilot for all maneuvers. That ought to encourage you to try it even if you flunked out of flight school ;)
I won't tell you how I voted in the finale, but all I can say is that it's destined to be a serious contest between two opposing worldviews.

This reminds of a time in which I used to read games like this. And when I checked the release date, the date it was released would be in the 90's or early 2000's and I would be like "wow, that was a while ago, and this was really good." Lots of images, an interesting premise, and it seems like a hefty amount of work was put into it as well.

When I saw this was in the new games, and I clicked on it, I was quite pleasantly surprised with the quality I was getting here. So, I enjoyed it immensely from the ground I've covered with your story-game.

The sheer effort that went into this is absolutely insane. The story is great (from what I went through so far. Its a massive game, due to space.) I can't wrap my head around how much effort was put into the actual game piece of this. The docking procedures, the undocking, a full blown instruction manual for every piece of "how to fly a rocket".

Serious props are given here.

I ended up playing level 2 I think? It said "I know how to press buttons" and I absolutely got lost in what to do when it came to actually flying the rocket. But thats my own problem and nothing to do with the author's writing/ code. The choices in the beginning were pretty cool! They give some background on your character. There is also a money system that actual tracks the amount you are currently carrying (I tried to break it). Inventory system is also working very well.

I can't say how my choices will affect the rest of the game as I play through it, but serious props here. Even if it turns out the rest of the story is trash - the coding is very impressive. This will be a hard one to top.

JohnX is using WITCHCRAFT!