Ok today i decided to present you a nearlly unknown game that i ve been playing for 10 months.
Transcendence (
http://neurohack.com/transcendence/index.html ) is basically a free 2D space shooting game (single player only). You ve got a spaceship (you choose between 3 different ones : The heavy cargo, the light yacht and the strong gunship) that you will be able to equip later on with a large choice of weapons (the range, the speed, the number of cannons firing at the same time, and what kind of ammunitions they use vary a lot between each weapon), armors and shields (some of them balanced, others with weaknesses and resistances, and also sometimes special features), and other useful equipment (solar panel, weapon enhancers, etc...). With this you can engage into fierce battles during which it s not unusual to see all your screen full of enemies firing lasers, missiles, EMP, irradiated wepaons, thermonuclears grenades and other nasty things at you.
However if this game was only a shooting game i wouldn t speak about it : Transcendence is a lot more than what we usually call "space shooting game". In this game, you dont stay on the same screen waiting for waves of asteroids or aliens spaceships. Instead you explore solar systems and are free to go where you want, and do what you want.
The game offers you many different possibilities : Attacking outlaw bases, escorting cargo ships, fighting in Space Gladiators competition, selling merchandises...even illegals ones
, and a lot of others things that i wont tell you because part of the fun of the game is discovering all the possibilities and secrets
Moreover, the guy who made it was inspired by Nethack so you see a lot of the features that made Nethack so successful :
- Every game is a new one : System solars are created at random (although some of them have a fixed position with some fixed features in it...such as the first one which always have a commonwealth base and a Sisters of Dominia station). Moreover some of the items in the game are unindentified (they have a code name that change with every game) until you try them on your ship. And you never know what kind of weapons, shields, and equipment you will be able to find/buy.
- Although you re not as free as Nethack, you can still play the game in your own way. You re never oblige to do a specific mission or to be a good guy. If you wanna kill every single station and ship in a system solar, you re free to do so...just deal with the consequences. :p
- Another important thing from Nethack...Death is permanent :p Loading a game will erase the save. So, unless you re a sissy coward that saves and then renames the file to keep it, when you die its GAME OVER . You will have to try again from the very beginning.
So even if the main part of the game is about shooting spaceships, Transcendence keeps you interested because you never play the same game. It s also a lot less stressful than Nethack. You can often goof around without major problem (where as in Nethack every single move can lead to your death). That's why I think the game managed to find the perfect balance between the games who are always the same and the awful Nethack.
The game isn t finished yet. The good point is that it is updated quite frequently...The last update was at the end of July and added a lot of equipments, new alien races and new things to do (However it also made the game harder). The not so good point is that you cant finish the game. The end for this game isn t the real end (at the beginning they tell you that you have to reach the Galactic Core, but for the moment the game ends when you beat a huge boss). That's a not a real problem because the game is already very long (i never managed to finish it myself..only one of the people to whom i introduced the game and who didn t cheat with the saves managed to finish it and it was with the older, easier version)
P.S : Windows only because the dev wanna finish the game instead of wasting time porting the game to Linux. Dont flame me for that
