LIFE Epsilon - RELEASE!

[Jubal]

A Whovian Adventure game by James Baillie

Your planet has been destroyed by the Dalek Empire, and your memory of the events half-obliterated; having been saved in unclear circumstances, you find yourself on a resistance base from which you can begin to fight back against the daleks who destroyed your world. Starting out with almost nothing, you must find your way through the world and get to know its bizarre and wonderful array of peoples, creatures, and sandwich fillings, as you carve out your own path towards your eventual destiny.

The resistance have a dalek of their own, that said: the Good Dalek, as they call it. Its single great pronouncement is their motto, a motto that has helped fuse a once-disparate collection of species into a desperate alliance to take the fight back to the Daleks and save the galaxy...

LIFE RETURNS
LIFE PREVAILS
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

LIFE is a Whovian adventure game, fan-made, freely released and set in the Doctor Who universe. You are some sort of sapient species, recently evacuated to an asteroid base where rebels aligned with the mysterious Good Dalek plot to overthrow the might of the evil Dalek Empire. Your aim is to strike back against the Daleks using whatever skills, spaceships, and sandwiches life puts at your disposal!

On your way, you'll be able to explore an open-world, lovingly crafted setting with multiple planets to visit, asteroids to dodge, card games to play, robots to pilot, mazes to explore, a snarky text parser, and everything else you'd expect from an adventure game. You'll meet a range of DW aliens as well - draconians, sontarans, foamasi, adipose, silurians, even these weird ape-descendants called "humans" got in there somehow...

I hope you enjoy the game! Please report bugs here.

FEATURES:

• Text-parser adventure focussed on puzzle solving and item use
• Open world gameplay with around fifty scenes to visit across two planets and four other spaceships and space stations
• Fully illustrated with classic-style pixel art and with a range of backing music and sounds to build up the theme of different locations
• Six playable species that emphasise different aspects of the game and different solutions to puzzles
• Multiple routes to victory and some puzzles that change with each game, giving significant replayability value
• Minigames that give different playstyles, allow for more advanced puzzles and tactical thinking, or change up the pace from regular text-parser play
• Wide range of other options for things to do - discover more about the world through dialogue, complete missions for the resistance, keep pets, upgrade your spaceship, and more
• Richly detailed world with extensive added backstories and many nods to Doctor Who lore
• Achievements system allowing you to unlock some extra content

DOWNLOADS

Itch.io
IndieDB

MEDIA

Trailer:

Screenshots:

[Tusky]

Congrats on the release!


Just downloaded & giving it a go right now.

[comrade_general]

Noice!

[Jubal]

Thanks for trying it - do let me know your thoughts

I'll try and add more screenshots and a second download link (which will be IndieDB) soon.

[Tusky]

Ok, it turns out I am dreadful at text based RPG's like this (I think the last one I got anywhere in was a spoof LOTR one on the BBC Micro! ). I have yet to solve the first puzzle, but I have explored as many of the first station's rooms as I am able, and have completed the tutorial.


Some inital thoughts:

• I like the genral theme / setting of this, it's nice to explore and interact with the Doctor Who universe. I also much prefer more of a straight forward scifi setting like this as opposed to Moffat's recent over the top and silly plotlines, for example
  
• The pixel art style works well
  
• The music is really nice and sets the tone however...
  
• None of the options allow for toggling sounds / music on or off
  
• Feature request from someone used to using CL commands - I keep trying to press the up arrow to get the last command back. Not sure if that's a normal thing in games like this, though
  
• Writing is clear and sometimes pretty funny. The text you get when you try to take the dorm pillow made me laugh
  
  
  
  
  
  

[Jubal]

Oops - the MUTE and UNMUTE commands exist and should allow you to turn sound on and off. That should be noted in the options list...

Up arrow for previous command I'll add to the requested features list.

[bigosaur]

I love the TARDIS sound effect in the trailer.

Does the final version differ a lot compared to the demo I played in Cambridge? I don't recall being really good at the game myself, but I might give it another go if there are some new things.

[Jubal]

In style, not that much, though the command system is significantly improved so it should be a lot less difficult to work out the right commands for what you want to do. In terms of content, it's massively expanded since then; more minigames, missions, etc etc.

[comrade_general]

I managed to get into the good dalek thing and to a few planets, was feeling pretty successful with it, died a few times but remembered to save.

Sorry Jub, I copied the text but foolishly closed out the game only to find that the text didn't copy.

[Jubal]

Aie - no worries.

Any bits you particularly liked/disliked?

[comrade_general]

Adipose driving a forklift. xD

Nah really I can see you've put a crapton of effort into this, and the extra challenges and games, like asteroids and cards, is a nice touch. I didn't get to mining yet, and I still have no idea how to actually play that eskimo card game, but I'm pretty sure I've won every game I played.

[Jubal]

I think the minigames seem to work well - people seem to like different ones, I've known some players get really addicted to hlastak whereas other people hate the randomness of it but like the more planning-based challenge of the mining game And yes, I was pleased with the adipose.

How many achievements have you got so far, out of interest?

[Jubal]

I did some bugfixes today and uploaded them, mostly just parser bugs.

[Miggo]

This is a really fun adventure game! I played through the tutorial and the first mission in the  waystation. The text parser is a lot of fun and finding the relevant things to look into in each room flows really well. I like to have the log at hand so I can scroll up and check things, although the Padbook and Glyphfree functionalities are designed intricately as well and they seem like they'll have a central role in the gameplay, especially after loading and losing the log. The graphics work well, even though they're grimy because the atmosphere is built in the text anyway. Though I should say the Waystation Bar was pretty atmospheric! I liked the flying simulator minigame too, I appreciate the "3D" effect with the enlarging sprites. That said, I've a hunch this game is pretty big and I've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

This game reminds me a lot of Frederik Pohl's Gateway which also has you taking missions, punching coordinates and traveling to various planets!

I ran into a bit of trouble with saving. I named my character MIGUEL and for some reason the name of the savefile became HODORMIGUEL and I couldn't load it! I began the game anew, named my character miguel again and then the problem disappeared. It's probably nothing to worry about but I suppose there's no harm mentioning it.

[Jubal]

Oh, oops, that's a simple but silly bug: I simply forgot to put a newline at the end of the file that has the list of saves in it I'll try and remember to post a patch for that to Itch sometime.

I'm glad you're enjoying it so far! And yeah, the asteroid base + way station is definitely not a huge percentage of the game, though a lot of the game is optional on any given playthrough: I think you can pretty much win the game while missing out an entire planet if you stick really closely to the base's mission tree, and conversely I think you can also win without doing any of the base missions at all. I'll be interested to see how you progress