- An interesting environment.
- Alien cultures to explore.
- The ability to be something other than a boring human.

There are moments in this which bring about some moments of genuine joy, exploring an alien ruin, the first huge discovery one makes (I won’t spoil that), the well thought out alien race and all their artefacts lying around, the scanner which allows one to learn about the World around them, a detailed World, the first time one gets to adopt a non-human form, the sense of open exploration it provides (even if it is slightly an illusion), and some wonderful set pieces.

On the latter count, I remember one scene yesterday that stuck in my head.

“Hey, I have a party member, and he’s helping me fight stuff. Yayyy!”
“Look, there’s our way out!”
“Hmmm… but there’s blood in front of that ledge, I wonder why… oh look, a drawbridge on the other side!”
“Find a way to activate it!”
“Okay! :D Hmmm… I’ve found a button. I wish to push this button but I don’t know what it will dooo… oh well. Let’s push it!”
“The drawbridge is down! Let’s get out of hereEEYAAGH!”
“Hm… my friend seems to have died, in the same spot that that blood is. I wonder what’ll happen if I move his body from that spot. *SPIKES!!!* Ow, crap. So that’s what happened to him, and that explains the blood!”

The moral of he story, if you see a patch of blood, it probably means other people have died there and you need to be wary.

The pacing and the level design leaves me a bit cold. For example, after finding the one mineral deposit that the tutorial told me about, I’ve been looking around and scanning all over but not found another. It makes me think the developer simply forgot about that feature.

Being able to acquire DNA and new forms is interesting, but otherwise this doesn’t strike me as an ambitious title at all. You can’t really choose where to go or what to do with the ship and you have no crew. Compared to Star Command on a Commodore-64 emulator, to Star Control 2, all the way to Mass Effect on the PC and 360, Ancient Galaxy really doesn’t offer anything in the way of spacey exploration. Sadly there’s really not many games that allow a sense of exploration and couple that with character advancement mechanics. AG isn’t really even trying for that, it appears to be an entirely linear experience. There’s some really good linear experiences out there so I wouldn’t see myself buying this, not even sure if I’ll give the demo another try.

If anything, I almost think it’s too ambitious for what it is trying to do. The voice acting is distracting and of horrible fidelity. I can’t map my keys quite the way I want. I’ve found at least 3 grammatical and/or formatting errors in the first level. Animations are stiff and wooden. And I could care less. I’m loving it, warts and all. It may not be the prettiest game that has come out in the last month, but it sure seems to have the depth and replayability and variety that I enjoy. I’ll play through the demo a time or two but, right now, I’m thinking of putting the 16 dollars down, if nothing more than to support this labor of love and hope for a more polished vision down the road.

sorry to be verisimilar

I can’t believe that site is still up.

KG