Review: Spaceship

(No reviews at all on IFDB. So consider this an ad as well as a review. It’s a good game.
https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=3d3z2tvvqmnjup1)

Desperate and alone in outer space, … cracking jokes.

What a fun and engaging game to spend an afternoon with!

The aptly named Spaceship features you as the captain of said spaceship. Your entire crew is on leave and you are enjoying a nice nap when suddenly disaster strikes. A meteor impact!
Now you’re all alone on a depressurized and oxygenless spacecraft, left to your wits and some mighty fine McGyvering-skills to get yourself and your ship out of this pickle.

Despite the lifethreatening situation and the oxygen in your hastily donned spacesuit slowly decreasing (the oxygen-meter serves as a very effective timer), Spaceship is consistently funny. Consider this response when you examine your quarters: “Above [the desk] is a porthole, with a stunning view of bugger all.” The tension created by this contrast between the emergency of the situation and the humorous narration is just right.

The ship is littered with objects, so you’ll quickly have a heap of stuff in your inventory, most of which you will never need. Luckily, the puzzles are well clued and there are some alternative solutions, so juggling the inventory items never becomes a real problem. Actually, I found that some puzzles were overclued, diminishing the whole “alone and left to your wits”-feel of the empty spaceship. The obstacles all have logical solutions, some with a lot of intermediate steps. However, if you cram your inventory with everything you can take on your first exploratory tour of the ship, you should always have everything needed for the puzzle at hand.

A few of the obvious paths to rescue turn out to be red herrings, but they are great puzzles in themselves and they add to your score. So instead of being frustrating or disappointing, they just mean more fun!

I encountered a few unobtrusive bugs (and a huge one that was actually meant to be in the game…), but overall Spaceship played very smoothly, no small feat when you take into account that this game was written by a large group of authors. Kudos for keeping the atmosphere and quality so consistent throughout the game!

To the authors, I’d recommend one last round of editing and testing (cranking the handholding down just a notch in some places, (Particularly in the Infirmary.)

To anyone else, I heartily recommend playing this game!

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