Games worth discovering

The captivity of Space.

323 View2023-06-18

[Intro]

As we begin this review, think with me, it won’t be long, it won't be short, but let us just think for a moment.

Space is vast and dark, space has never failed to captivate the human imagination, a vast empty vacuum… but it isn’t that empty. Within the vacuum exists many asteroids, planets, moons, and stars to name a few space objects. It would almost seem infinite, though if we follow paradoxes such Zeno’s Paradox of Plurality are understanding of infinity is, shall I say obscured, everything is a finite, we don’t understand true vastness as everything is relative in size… but we are going off topic, as much as pondering the vastness or lack thereof of vastness we understand as if you choose to believe the Paradox of Plurality.

The Fermi paradox is another point of wonder, the lack of evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life despite the seemingly high probability of its existence, while in real life there have been many proposals of ways to contradict this paradox whether it be that life is rare, that life exists in one of the billions of planets we have not even seen properly in our galaxy, or even that intelligent life has a short lifespan in the grand scheme of the universe, they a technological point just waiting for us in the future that caused their extinction…

The beauty of the Fermi Paradox is that it makes you think, it makes you… wonder, how much of our galaxy, let alone our universe is unexplained?

Our nearest neighbours are generations away, by Einstein's theory of Space relativity there will be noway that a journey to them would take more than a century, even two. How will we learn of intelligent extraterrestrials that existed, let alone ones that still live? If we find extraterrestrials that existed, will we learn what happened to them? Keep this thought.

This wonder.. The fascination that you may feel is the same sense of wonder that man has always had when looking towards the stars, the want to understand the unknown. As we look to space we see what is a mystery to us, even after we have broken through the heavens, partially leaving the cradle we know as earth.. We know so little. Unlike the oceans which we are still exploring and gaining an understanding of, space remains mysterious, an enigma. Everything we learn about space brings more questions, nothing gives a final answer.

A lot of media has tried to capitalise on this wonder, Space Relativity? Hyperdrives. The Fermi Paradox? It depends from media to media, for instance, Dead Space solves the Fermi Paradox in a grim dark way, intelligent life cannot be found because it was absorbed into the brother moons… Speaking of gaming. Some influential games have been based on our ponderings of space and the unknown, which would lead us perfectly into our subject today. Strike Busters.

[Section 1. Captivation]

Strike busters fail to capture that feeling of space, there is no feeling of an infinite vacuum, it is just like earth, while there are planets here and there, the occasional shimmer of a star… it does not hit the mark. It just feels like space for a bait, the enemies are terrestrial in design, there is just no sense of wonder.

All the planets are flat with no evidence that they could be spherical, just like flat earthers obscured our reality. Space is bleak and black, nothing to really look at, no beautiful wonders that could be used in a 2d game, such as nebulas or even as environmental objects. Despite being in space you barely see any stars, it is just bleak and unimagined.

The game's surface may appear to be like the night sky, but unlike a blank night sky there are none of the glowing stars to captivate your wonders.

It is more like an emos vision space, bleak, empty, and cold. There is not much to be said here.

[Section 2. Gameplay]

The game follows older principles of game design, it is a simple game in other words, it tries to be many things at once, but it is mostly a wave based game.

As of the demo it is basically only the tutorial and a continuous 1min 20sec loop, at the end of the timer a boss spawns and the loop continues after the boos is dead. The game feels like an old Java Phone title, very barebones at least from the demo. As stated in the captivation segment, yeah this game could easily take place in the skies of earth, it does not feel like a space game.

Very hard to die in the game too making it just an endless cycle of nothing.

Yeah that's about all, so uh. Thanks for reading my talk on paradoxes,

Delta out.

(I could not continue with the paradoxical after section 1 sorry to disappoint.)

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