From Star Trek’s endless stream of inexplicable anomalies, to the eye-gouging horrors of Event Horizon and Warhammer 40,000’s Warp, and even relatively well-meaning beings that are utterly incomprehensible to the human mind, I’m honestly quite happy not going to space. It just seems like quite a bad time, all around, but in What The Stars Forgot, it’s utterly necessary for a research vessel filled with brave souls to explore and face countless unknowable mysteries.
Humankind has become a space-faring race, but it seems we’re utterly alone in the galaxy, until an anomalous signal was detected at the Legasov Nebula, leading to Earth’s governments to sanction a scientific expedition to explore. A cutting edge ship was created with fold-drive technology powering its space flight, and a crew of our very best (and a bunch of more OK support staff as well). And then there’s you, the quantum AI dubbed as SNPAI – geddit? – who gets to play a bit of an all-seeing HAL 9000 role, just hopefully less evil.
What awaits in the furthest reaches of space aren’t pleasure planets and friendly life form discoveries, but an endless string of sci-fi horrors and anomalies that need to be investigated and resolved. Your job is to oversee the ship’s operations, assign shift patterns as efficiently as possible, divert staff to tackle crises and dynamic events, and find the path to the next sector of space.
What’s immediately striking is the retro aesthetic, with this game feeling every bit the SNES JRPG thanks to the blue gradients behind so much of the UI, and pixel art characters running around. The ship is arrayed out in front of you, like someone cut off the outer hull of the Red Dwarf, with the command bridge at one end, and all the expected med bay, brig, science, shuttle bay and more. But there’s a nice self-sustaining element as well, as there’s a chicken coop, grain growing, and a Silent Running-like park for crew to go and relax in.
But the running of this ship is constantly upended by those anomalies, with the demo taking a scripted path through a bunch of what could happen in the full game. To start off, a maintenance panel has caught fire and needs immediate attention, grabbing a pair of available crew members, they’re seriously unqualified for the job and…. well, they blow up. Let’s remember to try and assign well-qualified crew in future, OK?
Then the seriously odd things start to happen. The chickens start exploding, leaving bloody messes throughout the coop, so you race to send agriculture experts to diagnose the issue, before Science can take over to cook up a vaccine, and then to manufacturing to produce the cure. And just when you think that was resolved, half the crew just ups and disappears!
It’s a good thing you brought a few spares along with you, because you’ve got three shifts of staffing to fill the available slots. All your crew has a five star rating in 11 categories, making them suited to comms, engineering, cooking, leadership, manufacturing and more. Shuffling them around to fill vacant slots is fairly easy, but when you want to have the most competent crew as possible, it’s could be the case that you sacrifice a four star rating in one category just to get a two or a three slot filled elsewhere. I’d love to see the UI for this overhauled a bit, giving a bit more of a spreadsheet feel for a wider overview of the crew or more than a single category filter, because you can easily get stuck in the weeds bouncing back and forth between rooms and shifts.
All of the procedurally generated crew will have hidden talents as well, potentially making them better or worse suited to certain tasks, and having potential to grow and level up over time. Maybe they’re secret wannabe cultists, or cannibalism curious, though? I guess that’s what the airlock is for – this room’s cell design being especially dark, with just a sandwich of force fields between the interior and the vacuum of space.
The final anomaly for the demo comes as a mysterious energy being appears in the shuttle bay and starts to feed off the shuttles. Rushing to send scientists to investigate, it quickly becomes clear that this is a direct existential threat as the creature is drawn to the energy of the Fold Drive itself. The quick reaction chance is to manufacture a fake Fold Drive and vent it into outer space. This, however, doesn’t exactly go to plan, and ends up not mattering as more of these beings appear and blow up the ship.
I’m fascinated to see how this game comes together, being created by a industry veterans Justin Fischer and Brock Feldman, who founded Airlock Games to escape the abstracted roles that upper management lead them to. That’s putting them very hands on in a lot of areas of the game – Justin is composing the music, making sound effects and writing dialogue, for example. There’s great potential and adaptability from this small scale, of course, and so there’s the possibility that the ship’s design and layout could be put in the hands of players, with synergies between departments and how they’re staffed.
I do really like the tone and overarching direction of What The Stars Forgot, blending more eldritch horrors into its FTL and Star Trek-inspired adventure. With four sectors to navigate in a single playthrough, I’m keen to see just how weird this game can get.
And as the game goes live on Kickstarter today, Airlock Games is looking to move quickly, with an early access build put into the hands of backers in December and a 1.0 launch expected in March. With such an intriguing blend of ideas and inspirations, we’re going to keep our eyes on this one.
