Shortest Trip to Earth

by  

Interactive Fate and  Iceberg Interactive

If Shortest Trip is telling you one thing, it’s that space is a pretty terrible place.  There are asteroids to avoid, giant space worms looking for their next meal, even a race of rat people trying to burn holes in that metal tube you call a spaceship.  The space faring survival game, currently in early access on steam, is all about getting your crew of poor saps out of the coldest depths of space back to the warm embrace of, you guessed it, Earth.

Your crew's time in each star system will mostly be spent traveling
between planets looking for resources.

Finding their way back to earth requires your crew to warp between star systems using up what limited resources they have.  Your crew will spend their time in most systems looking for additional resources;  in particular the search for fuel seems like the never ending priority.  Resources can be found in most systems through mining planets, bargaining with traders, or through other random events. But space isn’t as empty as your crew may hope and often they will encounter opposing spaceships resulting in a battle that may result in new modules that can be fitted into your ship.  Or typically in my case, a  game over screen requiring a restart from square one.

It’s combat where Shortest Trip shines.   Combat mostly  requires you to direct individual crew members to manage ship modules like shields, weapons, sensors and so on.  But mostly, your crew will be busy running around the ship fixing whatever mounting damage they can before their only way home comes apart.   Considering that you mostly issue these orders in real time while choosing enemy ship modules to target and how to divide the ship's energy among your own modules, and you get what the game play is like.  The hectic nature of the  game play always feels like things are  a moment from going terribly wrong.  In other words, it’s exactly what you think space combat should feel like.  It’s ultimately a blast that will keep you coming  back for more punishment.

But wait a second,  this is all starting to sound a little familiar isn't it.   Of course it does, Shortest Trip is strikingly similar to FTL released almost six years ago right down to the colorful graphics.  A game that is also about  the realtime management of a spaceship crew as they venture through space.  FTL is a good game; a very good game.   So, I won’t necessarily complain about the developers borrowing heavily from FTL.  And besides,  maybe after six years fans of FTL are ready to see what can be added to the formula FTL seemed to help perfect.

Even patching holes require the right resources.  

What Shortest Trip does add to  FTL’s formula is mostly complexity. For example,  instead of just fuel, you will now have to manage multiple resources.  Your crew will require food (imagine that) and raw materials to patch up holes in the ship.  Combat can involve fending off multiple ships at once. Planets in  star systems can be explored in a non-linear fashion. Crew members and ship modules come with numerous stats to obsess over.  Good or bad, these additions tend to make the overall experience an even more difficult one than FTL ever was.

If you played FTL to death and are looking for more, or just want to try your hand a managing a spaceship with all odds against you, Shortest Trip is definitely worth a try. But is it worth purchasing during early access?  The multitude of star systems are divided among ten levels with only the first five levels currently available.  The last five levels as well as additional ships, modules, weapons, crew, and so on are promised as the game approaches release in January.  That being said, there is still plenty of content to keep a wanna be captain busy for some time.  If you plan to wait for a full release, I do plan to revisit game during that time to see what's new.

If you want to begin your trip back to Earth, head onto steam to purchase Shortest Trip.

Wartile, developed by Playwood Project and recently released into Early Access on Steam, is a game not quite like anything I have played before. The fresh take on tactical RPG combat has you moving detailed figurines of various Viking warriors around a static, yet beautiful diorama battlefield. The deliberate effect is to give the feel of playing a board game, with all the advantages of being a digital game. 

Combat takes place in real time, but each figure can only be moved once every three seconds or so. Standard attacks are made automatically once an enemy is in range, while special abilities can be activated by dragging the relevant card from the player's "hand" onto the target. This design creates a sort of controlled frenzy, where the player only needs to take a couple of simple actions every few seconds, but must be constantly thinking ahead. Positioning of units makes all the difference, with relative height, flanking attacks, and leveraging the terrain in your favor all factoring in to making sure your fighters prevail.

Each fighter under your control belongs to a particular class. There are damage dealers, shield bearing tanks, spearmen who can attack from two spaces away, and more to come. Putting each figure in the appropriate place is critical to keeping them alive, as you are often outnumbered. A tactic I exploited early on was holding a narrow pass with my shielded warriors, while my spearman attacked freely from range. Whenever there is room you will want to keep your men moving, getting behind enemies to get a flanking bonus to each attack. Enemy figures will keep moving as well, adding tension to the melee. 

As mentioned before, you have a hand of cards, independent of the individual characters' abilities, that let you activate special powers at any time. This deck of cards can be customized before starting a scenario, and is then dealt out randomly, two in hand at a time. Using these abilities depletes a limited supply of points, which must be recharged over the course of the battle. Early cards include healing, boosts to damage, and a trap which can placed on the map. As you complete scenarios, more cards are unlocked and can be mixed into your deck. Playing these cards at the right time, and only when needed, is another factor the player must keep in mind as a battle unfolds. 

Between scenarios the player can spend gold to purchase new figures and other things, as well as customize the figures he has. Armor and weapons can be equipped, as well as small bonuses to stats that can be swapped around as you like. Like any RPG, the further you get into the campaign, the more variety of options you have for customizing each character. You can make your figures into glass cannons, tanks, or balanced fighters. As characters level up you can add more stat bonuses, and they can be reset at any time, so you are free to try new strategies as you go.

It is certainly worth mentioning again how lovely this game looks. While the environments lack any animation, this actually works wonderfully. The whole thing has a very hand crafted feel to it, channeling those detailed battlefield dioramas you see in museums. I especially liked the crashing waves frozen in time and other cool details spread across each stage.

One thing I hope to see changed is freeing up the camera a bit more. There may have been an option I was missing, but I constantly found myself wishing I could tilt the camera more, so that I could take in beautiful landscapes from more angles.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, which I haven't tried yet, but expect will certainly force you to adopt more imaginative tactics. While the AI will give you a good challenge, it won't throw too many curveballs your way in its current state. Most of the surprises come in the form of sudden events which add new enemy figures to the board, usually in prime position to outflank your warriors.

Despite being in early access, I did not encounter any bugs or glitches during my first few hours of playing Wartile. I was happy to see that, despite the impressive visuals, the game runs perfectly smooth and loads almost instantly on my machine. There are a lot of positive things happening here, and I look forward to seeing more content added to the game over time. It's always good to see someone take a new approach to game design and aesthetic. This could have been a bog standard turn-based combat game, but instead it steps out, through visual design and game mechanics, into uncharted territory and that makes it a welcome breath of fresh air.

Official Site: http://www.wartile.com/

Available Now on Steam Early Access

- Joe Beard