Game 45: Space II (1979)

Space II: The Even More Final Frontier

It's another first for the blog today, as I reach what I believe is the first commercial sequel to a game that I've played before.  I played the original Space back in 2015, and didn't much care for it.  I even somewhat question its credentials as a CRPG: most of the game is spent trading on the stock market and mining planets, and while you generate a lot of stats in character creation, it's not really apparent what effect they have on anything.  It feels more like a loose collection of minigames than anything else.

The original Space was created by Steve Pederson and distributed by Edu-Ware.  Space II, on the other hand, seems to have had no input from the first game's creator.  It was apparently created by a student named David Mullich while he was still studying at California State University.  Mullich will go on to have a pretty decent career in the games industry, creating The Prisoner from 1980, and working on a bunch of games in the Heroes of Might and Magic series.  He also helped create the Empire series, which was a replacement for Space and Space II when they got sued off the shelves by Game Designers' Workshop for infringing on the copyright of the Traveller tabletop RPG.

The original Space offered five scenarios that you could take your character through: "Explore", in which you explore alien planets for resources; "First Blood", in which you can engage another character in one-on-one arena combat; "Trader", in which you fly back and forth transporting passengers and cargo between planets; "Defend", in which you defend a colony from alien invaders; and "High Finance", in which you play the galactic stock market.  None of those are as exciting as they sound.

Space II adds two new scenarios: "Psychodelia" and "Shaman".  It also has the character creation program, just in case you bought Space II without already owning Space.

Choosing a scenario.

Character creation is exactly the same as it was in Space.  You begin as an 18-year-old who is drafted into the military, and you must play through at least four years of training, choosing your various fields of study.  Stats are generated (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing), and you also get a physical and psychological evaluation.  The game will tell you pretty quickly if your character isn't good enough, and gives you the option of starting over.  I must have created over a dozen character before I got one that wasn't hopeless: all of my others were legally blind, deaf, suffering from terminal heart conditions or completely psychotic.  I swear, the Space universe is possessed of the unhealthiest populace I've ever seen in a video game.  Eventually I created a character who was hale and hearty. Sure, he was a pervert who should apparently be kept away from natives and animals, but everyone has their flaws.  I set about training him up in gun combat, brawling and knife fighting, because a sex creep with a knowledge of guns never did anything bad for society.  It was time for Maximus Rocker to be unleashed on the galaxy.

Did you have to highlight it?

The first of the scenarios that I chose was "Psychodelia", in which you go to the Zintarean colony to experiment with various recreational drugs.  The end goal here is to increase your stats, but there are plenty of risks involved.  Here's a warning: this section gets into drug use and suicide attempts.

The sales pitch and the disclaimer.

There are six drugs to choose from: spice (the obligatory Dune reference), quack, OJ, Pepsi, nag and surge.  Every time I've played it I had to start with spice, as you need to build up your experience to try the drugs further down the list.  They don't seem to provide much in the way of a different experience, but it's likely that they have more of a statistical effect on your character.

What's a duck's favourite drug? Quack cocaine!

You choose your drug and a dosage in milligrams, and then your character has a trip which is represented by odd phrases that pop up all over the screen.  Occasionally you get a warning that "something is after you", and are asked if you want to fight back.  Sometimes it's just the DTs, and in that case it's best not to fight.  Once, it was space pirates, and they made off with half of my life savings while I was tripping balls.  Other times I've fought back, and beaten the space pirates up, but as you'll see below fighting back isn't always advisable.

At least it was only half.

Sometimes the things that are after you are the police, who will arrest you in a drug bust, and drag you to court.  Given that the Zingarean colony is the "homeworld of the galaxy's supply of recreational drugs", the narcs must have a really easy job of finding people to bust.  Normally you just get charged for possession of drugs, but if you fight back you'll also get charged with resisting arrest.  The fine is usually a few thousand credits, but you can lower that by bribing the judge.  If a bribe attempt fails, though, your fine will be greatly increased, and for me it seemed to fail more often than not.  I wonder if the Social Standing score has an effect on that?

Receiving my sentence.

The game says that doing drugs has a chance of increasing your stats, but I never experienced it.    Occasionally good aliens come down, and it says that they "increase your memory", but it didn't make any of my scores go up.  Mostly I just saw my physical stats gradually deteriorating.  If my character made a suicide attempt, they would drop drastically, and suicide attempts are pretty frequent.  I think they happen more often if you try to fight when you have the DTs.  Most of the time they're unsuccessful, but once my character did kill himself and it dumped me right out of the game.  I don't know if I've ever played a game where that's happened before, and I'm sure that I care to do so again.

Your mind begins in a normal state, and as you get into stronger drugs it advances to "self-transcendent" and "cosmic consciousness".  Some weird things start happening at that stage.  I'll list some of the outcomes I've had below.

• Sometimes you spend a night in social services, which costs a few hundred credits.
• Once my character flipped out and killed everybody around me, after which the screen filled up with words like "axe" and "Manson".  I got off with a massive fine, which seems pretty lenient.
• I've had my character get delusions of being the messiah, which resulted in him receiving a few hundred credits worth of offerings.
• At one point I was contacted by the "lord of many of your worlds", and asked to commune with him.  I answered "yes", and spent ten years talking to a figment of my imagination.

Another week of lockdown and this will be me.

I suspect that there may be some positive outcomes to be found, but after many attempts at this scenario my character had very little to show for it except for much lower stats and an empty bank balance.  There are some interesting results, but I suspect that there's no victory to be achieved here, and it's not worth playing if you actually want your character to improve.

The "Shaman" scenario sees you going to an alien planet to do some missionary work, not that you'd know it at first.  When it begins you're in an ATV, cruising through a forest landscape as trees whiz past you.

Cruising in my ATV.

You can't control the ATV as far as I can tell; all you can do is press a key to stop it and get out.  Once out of the ATV, you're in the wilderness, which is laid out in a grid of 10x10 sectors, with each sector being made up of 10x10 squares.  The entire wilderness is 100x100, which at first seems pretty daunting to explore.  It's not so bad once you realise that the game tells you what's in each sector as soon as you enter.  You just need to explore the sectors in a lawnmower fashion, and soon enough you'll find all of the towns, shrines, and other areas of interest.

Of course, that would be a lot easier without all of the hostile natives.  As you explore you're likely to be attacked by peasants, warriors, shamans and sorcerers.  Maximus Rocker had good physical stats, and was able to take care of the first three without much trouble, but those sorcerers were tough.  At the start of battle you'll be asked whether you want to fight physically, or with magic.  I had a magic score of 0 at the beginning, so I had to fight my early battles with my fists.  Combat is completely automated; there's nothing to do except watch the scores of each opponent go down, and occasionally answer yes or no when asked if you want to continue.  There's no consequence for leaving a battle, or even for being defeated.  I suspect that it might lower your stats, as winning battles sees them gradually increase.

Fighting a shaman.

I spent much of my time early on in this scenario stumbling through the forest, getting into fights, and wondering what the point of it all was.  Eventually though, I found a town, and the options given there led me to the conclusion that I was some sort of galactic missionary.  The goal in town is to minister to your flock, and increase the number of your disciples (which begins at 0).

The town menu.

The towns have different types of societies: I encountered military, horticultural and agricultural.  I'm not sure what difference it makes, but I'd guess that the societies react differently to the various religious practices you can perform.  The stats underneath tell you how well you're doing.  At one point I had a popularity of 6%, and the natives would stone me every time I stepped outside.

Attending the seminary allows you to increase various skills such as healing, astrology, and alchemy.  At the market you can buy charms and idols, some different types of drugs, and even an ATV and fuel.  You can also donate money to build temples.  I don't know what increasing the number of temples in town does, although I think it might increase the amount of credits you earn every turn.

Something tells me most missionaries would not approve of these options.

There are numerous ways to administer the faith, and grow your number of disciples.  Doing so takes you from the rank of Witch Doctor to Medicine Man to Priest to High Priest, and increases your score in magic.  I'll go through the options below.

• White Magic: This gives you the option of either healing the sick or making a prediction.  If you choose healing, you'll be presented with someone who has the black plague, or "the dribbles", among other diseases.  You either succeed or fail based on your healing skill, and success will increase your disciples.  Sometimes you will be called on to exorcise a demon, If you choose prediction, you have to predict which of the four cardinal directions will bring the best farming, mining, or looting.  You're presented with a range of percentages, but I never did figure out what they meant.  Usually I would just pick a direction at random and hope for the best.
• Black Magic; You'll be asked to "liquidate" a peasant, warrior, shaman or sorcerer.  The combats here are no more or less difficult than those in the wilderness.  After attaining the rank of High Priest I was able to deal with the sorcerers with little trouble.
• Drug Usage: Here you can take any of the drugs available at the market: Charisma Drugs, Trance Drugs, and Demon Drugs.  None of them seemed to benefit me in any way.
• Sacrifices: You can sacrifice either food or people.  Every time I tried to sacrifice food, Maximus Rocker would insist on sacrificing people (probably due to his psychological problems).  Usually the natives are horrified by this, but every time I had them agree to do it the game crashed, so I avoided this option.
• Preaching: You can preach fire and brimstone, serenity, and family worship.  I spammed fire and brimstone to get my followers up, and I think that's how I ended up with a 6% popularity.
• Calendric Rituals: You can hold services for harvest, midwinter, or midsummer, depending on the time of year.  You can also hold an astrological service at any time.  Doing all of these were pretty harmless, and I used them a lot to get my numbers up.
• Consulting Oracles: Every time I tried this I got a message telling me that the oracle was a no show.

Maximus Rocker has a mind of his own.

It didn't take me long to figure out how to succeed in gaining disciples: you just need to spend plenty of time in the seminary advancing your skills.  It takes a few years of your character's life, but in real world time it's pretty quick.  I advanced each of the skills available there twenty times, and after that my religious ministrations were very successful, and I was able to become a high priest in no time.  I couldn't really see the point of doing so, though; you don't get to keep any of the money that's earned, and I don't think your increased magic stat can affect anything in the other scenarios.  Much like "Psychodelia", it didn't seem to me that "Shaman" was a worthwhile way to advance my characters.

I decided to "lawnmow" the game world, just to see if I could find anything else.  I came across my ATV, where I'd left it.  I found a bunch of other towns.  I found a spaceport, which you can use to leave the planet and save your character's status.  Finally, just as I was thinking there was nothing left to do, I found a shrine.  Later on I discovered that you can't enter until you've reached the rank of Priest, but at this point I was able to go in.  Inside I was confronted by a demon.  It's stats were higher than mine, but fighting it with my magic I was still able to defeat it.

About to fight a demon in a shrine.

After the battle I found a key, and the shrine disappeared.  Well, if there was a key there had to be a lock somewhere, so I kept on searching.  Soon enough I found another shrine, and another key.  And not long after that, in sector 8-5, I came to the foot of the Holy Mountain.

Finding the Holy Mountain.

I tried to enter, but I was told that I needed three keys.  I figured there'd be one more shrine for me to find, but there were another three, for five shrines in total.  I entered them all, and killed all of the demons before returning to the Holy Mountain and getting my victory message.

Eternal life without shoes?

It's not the most verbose ending, but it's somewhat gratifying to find that the Space series does have some sort of an end goal beyond amassing more and more wealth.  I wasn't able to access Maximus Rocker after this, unfortunately, so I didn't get to take that eternal life into the other scenarios.  I guess he spends all that time on a mountain, or in the presence of god, or whatever it is religious people do when they achieve transcendence.

Taken as a whole, there's a definite theme to Space II, which is something I'm not used to dealing with in games of this vintage.  Both scenarios see you achieving transcendence of a sort, or at least attempting to do so.  In one the means is via drugs, and in the other religion.  One leads to debt, potential suicide, murder, and other nasty repercussions.  The other leads to eternal life.  It strikes me as something of a backlash to the drug culture of the late 60s and early 70s, although I'm not sure how deliberate it was on David Mullich's part.  Regardless of his intentions, it gives Space II more complexity than the other games in this blog so far, at least thematically speaking.  As a game it's not quite such a success, but I should save that for the RADNESS Index.

RADNESS INDEX:

Story & Setting: The story of a retired military person out to take drugs or become a missionary is certainly novel, and it earns a little bit extra due to the minor thematic depth I mentioned above.  The setting is quite piecemeal, but there are amusing little snippets and suggestions here and there that hint at something more.  Ultimately it doesn't cohere, though.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Characters & Monsters: There are plenty of characters in these two scenarios: the police, Judge Quentin Qualude, the space pirates, the various natives both hostile and friendly.  There's very little that can be done in the way of interaction though, and none of them display much in the way of personality. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Aesthetics: It's a mostly text-based game, with some odd beeps here and there (the drug bust siren is particularly startling).  The writing raised a smile now and then, but not enough for me to give it an extra point. Rating: 1 out of 7.

Combat: The combat in both scenarios plays out automatically, and there's not much you can do about it.  It also has a curious lack of consequences, which does make it feel fairly pointless.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Mechanics: In terms of your statistics and how they affect things, the game keeps things fairly opaque, so it's hard to know how well they're being implemented.  The controls for the game are mostly a series of menu options and yes/no questions, but it performs adequately enough. Rating: 3 out of 7.

Challenge: "Psychodelia" doesn't have any sort of end goal that I'm aware of, and if it does the random nature of the scenario makes it very difficult to achieve.  "Shaman" has some minor challenge at the beginning, but once I figured out what I was doing it was very easy to complete.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Fun: If I'd stopped playing this on the first day, I'd definitely be giving this one a minimum score.  The randomness of "Psychodelia" doesn't make for enjoyable gameplay, and I had no idea what I was doing in "Shaman".  Finding the end-game of "Shaman" gave me a small amount of fun though.  Rating: 2 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 0.

The above scores total 12, which doubled gives a RADNESS Index of 24.  That puts it one point higher than Space, surprisingly, but I do generally enjoy games that have an ending more than those that don't.  Overall, Space II is sitting equal 39th out of 51 games, and equal 16th out of 21 CRPGs.  As for the question of whether it truly qualifies as a CRPG, the "Shaman" scenario puts that to bed.  It has level advancement and stat-based combat, so I'd say it definitely makes the cut.

NEXT: I'm still playing Rogue, obviously.  Next on my chronological list is Haunt, another mainframe text adventure that sounds pretty wacky.

Game 9: Space (1978): Victory.

Space, created by Steven Pederson and Sherwin Steffin and published by Edu-Ware Services, was released in 1978 or 1979 for the Apple II.  Sources differ on which year it was released.  I've seen it cited as being possibly the first commercial CRPG release, although that credit most often goes to Beneath Apple Manor.  To be honest, it may not even qualify as a CRPG at all.  But, assuming that it does, it's definitely the first ever sci-fi CRPG.

Before I begin discussing the game, I should talk about it's similarities to the tabletop RPG Traveller.  Published by Game Designer's Workshop. Traveller was the first sci-fi tabletop RPG.  Many of the elements of Space can be found in Traveller, not least the in-depth (and sometimes fatal) method of character generation.  GDW eventually sued Edu-Ware for copyright infringement, and production of Space was discontinued, to be replaced by the Empire series.  I may get to those in time, but for now let's get stuck into Space.

This being Version 2.5 makes me mildly irritated.  I want to play 
these games in their original forms, whenever possible

I'm not entirely sure what the end goal is in Space.  You begin the game with a lengthy character creation sequence, and after that there are a number of scenarios you can choose to play through.  The goal for most of these scenarios is to amass money and resources, but it's not clear why.  Yes, the accumulation of in-game wealth can be a motivator all on its own, and I guess it works as a sort of career simulator, but it would be nice if there was an endgame in mind, or even an indication that there is an endgame.  I've no idea if Space has an ending at all.

Creating a character is the first thing the player will need to do, and this was by far the most involved character generation method seen in a CRPG at the time.  You begin by selecting a name, and then you are taken to a screen that displays a letter informing you that you've been chosen for compulsory military service.  From there you get to choose which branch of the military you want to work for: Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts, or Merchant Marines.  There's an option for "Other Services" which I'm unsure about, and also an option to just be drafted at random.  As far as I can tell, the military branch that you select mostly determines what skills you are able to learn.

The game then takes you to a menu from which you can review your character.  The first option takes you to your stats.  Characters in Space have six stats: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing.  I assume that these are randomly generated; I've had scores as low as 2 and as high as 12.  I haven't been able to find a manual for the game, so I'm not entirely sure what effect these stats have on the game.  At the very least they seem to affect the character's physical and mental well-being, as described below, and low stats can also limit which skills you have access to.

The second option shows the results of your character's physical examination.  You get rated in the following categories: cardio-vascular, pulmonary, skeleto-muscular, neurologic, vision and hearing.  I've had characters that were robust and healthy, and I've had one character who was blind, deaf and had a severe heart problem.

The third menu option gives you the results of your psychological evaluation, and this is where the most amusing results come from.  It's not uncommon to have characters with severe personality flaws.  I had one guy who was classified as a "pervert", with recommendations that he be kept away from domestic animals.  You can see below a character who is listed as completely psychotic.  Sometimes it feels like the Space universe has more crazy people in it than sane ones.

(I won't discuss the rest of the menu options yet.  They have to do with your current skills and training, your service record, and your financial accruals, and are basically blank at this stage of character development.)

Despite the warning that this character should be discharged immediately, I was still able to go on with my training.  Your character must do at least four years of military training, and for each year you get to select a stat or skill to improve.  For the first year I tried to study Gun Combat, but due to "psychiatric instability" I wasn't allowed to do so.  I chose Electronics instead, which was deemed as being fine.

For my second year of training I chose Navigation, but again was rejected for psychiatric reasons.  I had to settle for Mechanical.   I was rejected in year 3 for the Jack o' Trades and Streetwise skills, and due to a lack of education I was also unable to choose anything from the Professional Education list.  During the course of those rejections my character got injured, and I was given the offer to restart the game.  Being injured during training results in some significant drops in your stats.  I chose to continue, and eventually I was able to train myself in the Vaccuum Suit (sic) skill.

In year 4 I was unsurprisingly rejected for training in Gunnery and Blade Combat.  With a very small set of skills available to me, I opted to raise my Strength score instead.

At this point my initial enlistment was over, but I had the option to reenlist.  The risk of reenlistment is that your character can be injured or killed.  You can also opt to retire, with either a cash or material reward.  (I'm not yet sure what the material reward might be.  Every time I've tried to take the material reward, circumstances have forced me to take a financial one instead.)  I tried to reenlist, but due to my "psychiatric disability" I was discharged for medical reasons, with a retirement pay of about $16,000.  (Sometimes there will be a state of galactic war, and in that case you won;t be able to leave the military until the war is over.)

As mentioned above, you can die during training.  This hasn't happened to me too often.  Mostly it seems to occur when I have a character with severe heart problems, and attempt to train him in physical skills.

After character creation the game proper begins, and you can choose which of the five scenarios you want your character to play through.  I'll describe them a little below:

FIRST BLOOD

In this scenario you engage in single combat with a character controlled by the computer.  It seems as though you can select either a generic enemy named "Adversary" or any of the other characters on your disk.  I like to think that at least one pair of brother got into a fist-fight over a dead character in this scenario.

You will either be attacking or defending; it seems to me that the computer decides which.  You're able to choose your weapon and armour types, the terrain you'll be fighting in, as well as your general combat tactics.  From there you just sit back and watch as the results scroll by round after round, until one of the characters is dead.  Apparently the winner claims all of the loser's money, but I'm not certain because I've yet to win a bout.  In fact, the character I just created above got killed so that I could get some screen shots, so I hope you're happy with them.

Selecting my tactical approach to the coming battle.  I went with 
"Uses Counterattack."  It didn't go so well.

A typical combat round during First Blood.

Addendum: I managed to win one of these battles, and you do claim the loser's money.  Here's proof that I won.

DEFEND

In this scenario, you're placed in charge of a remote planet under alien attack.  I've tried this one over and over, and to be honest I have little idea of what to do.  Here's the main screen.

As far as I can figure out, you need to allocate power to the shields for each region (sensors, defenses, starport, residences, energy banks and control center), as well as your weapon strength.  That seems simple enough, but after a round or two I always find that my energy is completely depleted, and there's nothing I can do but wait for the inevitable.

As far as my Jack Manley novels go, this is strictly non-canon.

Occasionally my characters have had psychological breakdowns while defending.  When this happens you are stripped of command, and there's nothing you can do except watch until the colony is destroyed.  You have the option of making a getaway on your own, which I've done once.  I felt pretty bad about it, but at least I was still alive.  You can also surrender, which didn't go so well for me the one time I tried it.

Personally, I think the situation merits at least one more exclamation point.

I've given up on this scenario, because I've tried at a dozen or so times, and I'm getting no closer to success.  If I could find the game manual (assuming there is one) I'd give it another shot.  As the situation stands, I'll have to leave this scenario incomplete.

Addendum: Success!  I was able to get through this scenario by pumping the maximum amount of energy into my weapons.  This hadn't worked for me in the past, but this time around I fluked it.

I'm happy now that I've managed to successfully complete all five scenarios in the game.  Without a proper endgame, I'll consider that my condition for victory.

EXPLORE

Exploration involves seeking out uncolonised planets and mining their resources.  You are initially given the choice of a few planets, with some minor details to go on: how dangerous the planet is, the status of animal life and natives, how much fuel will be readily available, and the estimated value of any resources found.  The amount of information you get varies from game to game, but most of the time it gives a fair idea of how dangerous the planet is, and its level of resources.  There's even a category for the likelihood of a supernatural occurrence; I've played this scenario a lot, and have yet to encounter one, unfortunately.

Each round upon the planet lasts for a year.  During that time you may experience harsh weather, attacks from hostile animals, and encounters with the natives (either friendly or hostile).  You may also find fuel, food, and mineral resources.  Harvesting food and mineral resources costs energy.  Success in this scenario is a matter of managing your resources.  As long as you don't run out of food, and you keep enough energy to make the return journey in your ship, you'll be fine.  Sometimes the weather will destroy some of your food, and I've been wounded by animals and had vacuum suit mishaps, but on the whole this is one of the easiest scenarios to do well in.  If you find a planet with abundant resources, you'll be able to make a lot of money.  The only time I've died is when I ran out of food due to carelessness.

Wedge was also 106  years old, which may have had something to do with it.

TRADER

Once you've accumulated a decent amount of money, you'll be able to buy a ship and become a trader.  There are two types of ships available: a scout ship costing 1 million credits, and a merchant ship costing 8 million.  The former can carry up to 10 passengers and 10,000 tons of cargo, while the latter can carry up to 70 passengers and 100,000 tons.  Saving up the requisite money isn't all that difficult (it should only take one or two trips to a resource-rich planet in the Explore scenario), but you can also borrow money (with interest, of course) to buy a ship.

Once you have a ship, you can start trading.  You begin on the planet Xenon-12, where you can load your ship with weapons and electronics.  Once you've done that, you purchase fuel for the trip, and head off.  A number of passengers will also pay to come with you to the next planet.

The second planet is Y732A, where you can purchase drugs and crystals.  My initial thought here was that trafficking drugs might get me into trouble with the authorities, but I never encountered any.  Basically, this scenario involves loading your ship with goods and flying back and forth between the same two planets.  It's all a bit dull, but it's a surefire way to gradually increase your credits.  Once I was boarded and robbed by space pirates, but that's the only excitement this scenario has to offer.

HIGH FINANCE

This is where the big bucks come from, as this scenario sees you playing the stock market.  The stock prices are super high (in the millions), so you'll need to have some success in the earlier scenarios in order to play this one.  Each of the companies you can buy stocks in has a brief description.  They range from weapons manufacturers, to electronics, to food, to security.  Some are more dangerous to invest in than others: the security companies in particular may see you visited by goons and beaten up.

When I played this, I bought about 20 shares in Milkyway Munitions and sat back.  Each round of this scenario takes place over a financial quarter.  Messages displaying certain galactic events will appear during each quarter.  Sometimes its the breakout of a war, or a plague, or some invention, and each event has an effect on stock values.  My shares just kept going up, and I continued to sell out and buy more.  In the end I accumulated an ungodly sum of money, as shown below.

195,627,000,000 credits!  Of course there's nothing to spend it on except for more shares, so it does all feel a bit pointless.

Sometimes the Gallactica Financial Family shows up to offer you a loan.  I borrowed five million from them, and tried to get myself into negative credit, but my shares just kept going up.  I'd like to see what happens if I can;t pay my debts, but I don;t have the patience to keep going.

Occasionally you will get messages that your character's health is failing.  Most of the time you will recover, but not always.  When I grew near death in this scenario, I got the following message.

I wasn't willing to lose my billions of credits, so I didn't take the offer.  I died, but at least I died filthy rich.  I'm not sure who this guy making the offer is supposed to be.  Just a lord, as he says?  God?  The Devil?  It's all a bit vague, but I should probably just take it at face value rather than trying to ascribe this to mythical entities.

THE ENDGAME

There isn't one.  The only goal is the accumulation of wealth, with no purpose at all.  I tried to see what would happen if  one of my character died of old age.  I got one to 160 years old, and he died of ill health during the High Finance scenario.  It seems that there's no special ending to this game, or at least none that I could find.

FINAL RATING:

Story & Setting:  It's all very bare bones.  The suggestion of a setting is there, an interplanetary sci-fi civilisation set around the year 5,000, but it's just that: a suggestion.  There's no story to speak of either.  You simply play through your character's life, accumulating wealth until he or she dies.  Rating: 1.

Characters & Monsters: You don't really interact with anyone else in this game.  You can do battle in the First Blood scenario, or fight various hordes of space nasties in the Defend scenario, but they have no personality to speak of.  There are animals and natives in the Explore scenario, passengers in Trader, thugs and financiers in High Finance, but none of them are at all fleshed out.  Rating: 1.

Aesthetics: The game is presented almost entirely in test, with the occasional graphical representation of space, or your ship taking off.  Sound is restricted to a few beeps here and there, with a not-unpleasant fanfare on the title screen.  I considered granting this game an extra point for its extensive use of memos and letters to convey information, but even so I couldn't give this more than the minimum rating.  Rating: 1.

The graphical beauty of a starship takeoff sequence.

Mechanics: This is a hard one to rate, because the scenarios are so different, and so much of how the game works is hidden from the player.  I would rate Explore and High Finance as decent, Trader as adequate, and First Blood and Defend as poor.   Defend is very confusing, and it's difficult to know what effect your choices have in First Blood.  On the whole, I have to say that the game hinders the player more than it helps. Rating: 2.

Challenge: As with mechanics, the differing scenarios make this hard to rate.  Some are easy and a bit dull (like Trader), some are reasonably challenging (Explore, High Finance) and some are baffling and deadly (First Blood, Defend).  The game also relies far too much on random events for its own good, and playing it - even in character creation - can sometimes feel like navigating through a land mine.  Rating: 3.

Innovation & Influence: I considered knocking this down a point for its blatant Traveller rip-offs, but I reconsidered.  If I did that, I'd have to penalise every fantasy CRPG in existence for stealing ideas from Dungeons & Dragons.  As it is, this is the first ever sci-fi CRPG (even if its genre credentials are a little suspect), and the level of depth in character creation alone nets it a good rating.  Rating: 6.

Fun: While I can't say that I hated the game, it was never what I would call enjoyable.  Most of the fun came from the bizarre results found in character creation, to be honest.  Two of the scenarios I never properly figured out, and the rest were repetitious and unexciting.  Rating: 2.

Needless to say, this doesn't get the bonus point, as I'll never be going back to it.   The above scores add up to 16, which doubled gives me a total of 32.

Final Rating: 32 out of 100.

ADDENDUM:

Somewhat later in this blog I made the decision to overhaul my Final Rating system, so I'm going back through and fixing all of the games I've already played as of March 2020.  I've ditched the Innovation and Influence category, and replaced it for CRPGs with a category for Combat.  I've also changed the purpose of the bonus points, saving them for games that are important, innovative, influential, or have features that are otherwise not covered by my other categories.

Also, the Final Rating is a boring name.  The CRPG Addict has his GIMLET.  The Adventure Gamers have their PISSED rating.  Data Driven Gamer has his harpoons.  So I'm ditching the generic name and calling my new system the RADNESS Index: the Righteous Admirability Designation, Numerically Estimating Seven Scores. It's a pretentious mouthful, but I'm going with it.

Combat: This game is more of a strategy game than a CRPG, and it has several different combat systems. The First Blood minigame has options at the beginning, but then it takes control away from you completely, and I could never figure out which tactics worked.  Defend I found to be very confusing, and although I won a game I never did work out what I was doing.  There are battles in the Explore minigame, but those play out more like random events, and give you no control over what happens.  I didn't find any of them all that enjoyable, and was confused by them more often than not.  Rating: 1 out of 7.

Bonus Points: 1. It gets a point for being the first ever CRPG in the sci-fi genre.

For Space, the RADNESS Index is 23. This makes it the lowest-rated game so far, and it was the game I enjoyed the least up to this point in the blog.

NEXT: For the moment I'm concentrating on The Game of Dungeons v8.  I've managed to grind a decent character (about 20th level), and I'm making good mapping progress, so I want to try to power through and clear this game out of my backlog.