Introduction. I'm a computer games nut. I started playing computer games in 1967 (a stock market simulation on an IBM mainframe) and I've never stopped. Big shelves in my home office hold boxes for the games I decided to keep; I've given many more away when moving from one house to another. (Sadly, nowadays everything is available online, so I'm not adding more boxes.)
Starflight. My all-time favorite game is Starflight (1986, distributed by Electronic Arts). That's a space RPG that ultimately ends up having an emotional conclusion to the slowly unfolding plot line. [Big spoiler coming!] You start out with a dorky, weak ship that can only get to the planets in one solar system. You land on planets (witnessing amazing fractal graphics for the 1980s). You drive around planets in a space buggy, picking up minerals and plant samples and fighting monsters. Your main goal is the mineral endurium, which is needed for warp-speed flight. Over the course of the game you burn thousands of endurium crystals. Eventually you get better ships, discover many wormhole routes that lead to distant corners of a huge galactic map, and you interact with many alien civilizations. There is a sense of urgency, because a death-planet is traveling through the galazy, wiping out one civilization after another. Eventually you get the technology and the knowledge to find and land on the death-planet, seeking to destroy it. That's when you finally learn that all those thousands of endurium crystals you've been destroying are actually a silicon-based life form for whom time passes extremely slowly. They perceive other life forms as fast-moving gnats. They aren't trying to destroy the galaxy. They're trying to protect themselves. At the end you must choose whether to wipe them all out.
That's an interactive novel with a very good sci-fi plot. [Note: This game is available for free on several abandonware websites, and it's easy to play it on a current computer using Dosbox. I replayed it about a year ago on a Windows7 box with no troubles at all. It's still the best.]
Favorite Genres. My favorite game genres are MMOs (massive multiplayer games) like Everquest (which my wife and I are still playing though it's 15 years old); RPGs (roleplaying games, like Dragon Age); strategy games (like Civilization); all kinds of space games; loot games (like Borderlands, a first-person shooter, where the goal is to get better and better guns); and roguelikes (like the classic Rogue, which I think was first programmed for Unix mainframes).
Approaching Infinity. I've now found another game that engages my imagination to the same degree, and which might end up being a new all-time favorite. It brilliantly blends all of those genres except the first. And it actually has good graphics, as I explain below.
So this is to alert everybody to an incredibly wonderful Indie (independent) game I've just stumbled across: Approaching Infinity. It's designed and programmed by a guy named Bob Saunders, who uses the Internet name IBOL. His one-man company is called Ibology. The game is distributed by Shrapnel Games (www.shrapnelgames.com). The game was just released in mid-December and is still version 1.0. [Correction: First version of this mistakenly said it was available on Steam.]
I learned about it by email from Shrapnel Games, and I got it on a special deal for $35. It's now selling for $40. I guarantee it's worth it! There is not yet much forum discussion about the game, and so far not much of a modding community, but I'll bet that's coming. There is some good discussion on the Shrapnel forums. The game can be downloaded right away and isn't very big. It's available for the PC and the Mac.
IBOL has been making computer games for nine years and thinks Approaching Infinity is his masterpiece, as I know from one of his blogs.
The game was financed with many small individual contributions coming in through the new Kickstarter program. I missed the news on that, alas.
Okay, so what's going on with this game Approaching Infinity?
Roguelikes and Permadeath. First of all it's a roguelike (in other words, a game like the classic Rogue). Rogue was a dungeon dive. You went by yourself into a dark dungeon. The goal was to get down to the 17th level, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and survive all the way back to the top. Every level was randomly generated as you entered it. It used the simplest ASCII graphics. For example, a dragon was a D, which you did NOT want to run into.
You had to find weapons and ammunition. There was much urgency, because you had to find enough food to stay alive dodging or fighting monsters for 34 levels. It was almost impossible to win. I've only ever won a few times.
Most roguelikes drive the player relentlessly onward. A great roguelike from a few years ago is the indie FTL! (Faster Than Light), which I diaried about. A scourge is sweeping across the galaxy, and you have to keep going relentlessly to the right until you get to a final showdown.
Another key characteristic of roguelikes is "Permadeath." You keep going until you die and that's it--end of game, no save and reload.
Approaching Infinity defaults to Permadeath on. You can opt to turn Permadeath off, but then you lose loot bonuses and the ability to score "achievements." Of course, if you want to do a little hacking, you can figure out how to play with Permadeath on with the option to reload if you die. Or so I've heard, he he.
Places to Go, Things to See. In Approaching Infinity you start in a space "sector" with a small, weak ship. Each sector is 30 x 30 squares, a perfect size. You land on planets of many different types, each of which is also a 30 x 30 grid. You scout and explore. You pick up loot and fight monsters.
Some planets have caves you can spelunk in. Each cave screen is--you guessed it--a 30 x 30 grid. Some caves are infinite! Each new level is procedurally generated on the fly, and if you have enough oxygen and don't get killed, there is no limit to the descent. My current record is about 50 levels down in a cave, but I've seen others claim they go much deeper.
You go to space stations. You interact with many different alien races. You buy better and better ship components, weapons and devices. I could write many pages on the witty interactions with the aliens and the crafting system, that eventually lets you design uber-power weapons!
Approaching Infinity is designed to be infinite! There is no limit to the number of sectors. In my current game I'm in sector 58 (on Hard difficulty), with no end in sight.
The battles in space, on planets, in caves, and on shipwrecks, are very entertaining.
The game has thousands of quests. Some are of generic types, but each alien faction has a long sequence of quests--if they will speak with you. There are many ways to "win" the game, if you wish, by finishing a faction's line of quests.
One great thing about Approaching Infinity is that it does not relentlessly drive one onward. One can always go back to earlier sectors, and there are many reasons to do that. For example, one can go back to alien embassies to get new quests or turn in quests. At the start, one can only explore a few kinds of planets, but later you can explore all of them as you get better gear. So you can go back and exploit every resource on every planet, if you're a completist like me.
There's a fascinating system involving mysterious alien artifacts, which can have amazing special powers. They all have funny names. For example, I found an artifact called the Light Bulb of Submission. It works to give a high power scanner to your away team, which is incredibly valuable.
Performance. Approaching Infinity is flawlessly programmed and blindingly fast. I have been playing many hours now, and haven't seen any glitches or crashes. On my computer (a middle of the road gaming rig) it loads in 5 seconds! I've only encountered one minor bug (on one quest the alien faction the Tentaculons give you the Shield Regenerator instead of the Ionic Accumulator). But one post on the Shrapnel forum got me a code to fix that right away from the developer himself. There will be future updates to the game.
RPG Elements. There is a simple but very enjoyable RPG system. There are six categories of crew (for example, scientist or tactical officer). There are more than 50 skills divided among the categories. You start out with a captain. I like to start as a planetary officer who gives a special hitpoint and attack bonus to the away team. Eventually, at different space stations, one can hire officers for the other five slots. The officers all level up as they earn experience, getting many promotions that give them more valuable skills. The game has this balanced nicely. Some players will keep their captain on board the ship and just send out one officer with the red shirts. Myself, I always send all six officers down with the away team. That way the away team has more hitpoints and the officers gain more experience.
Crafting. The crafting system is a bit opaque at first, but it blossoms into an incredibly wonderful part of the game. The key thing is to level up an officer to have the skill Build It Better 3. And there are devices that increase crafting skill. And one's crafting skill levels up over time. Eventually you can make awesome stuff. For example, I started my current game with a shield with 50 hitpoints. My shield is now almost 10,000 hitpoints! That helps a lot when facing a sector swarming with evil attack robots.
Graphics. Approaching Infinity uses old-fashioned turn-based tiled graphics. Some of the graphics in Approaching Infinity, especially the planetary surfaces, remind me a lot of Starflight. That was a 1986 game. This game is coming out 29 years later. So on first glance it has a "retro" look. It's a shame that this will put off many gamers, who want super-duper high-speed 3D real-time graphics.
Many will reject a game like this out of hand. I hope some people who like the highest end graphics in PC games will nonetheless check this one out for the miles-deep gameplay.
Nothing is more powerful than the human imagination. I myself was put off by this game's dorky graphics for maybe 30 minutes or so. But then the imagination kicks in. Now that I've been playing awhile, I think the graphics are actually stylish and very effective. And remember, this is just one guy collaborating with a handful of part-time friends, not a big million dollar graphics studio.
So Go Buy It. I have no financial interest in the game. I can't remember ever feeling so enthusiastic about promoting a game. But this one is worth it. The sound effects may be mainly bleeps and bloops, but the hair on the back of your neck will still rise if you take one more tentative step through a dense forest and suddenly find your away team face-to-face with a gigantic carniverous plant that can kill your whole party in two chomps.
Note on Editing and Republishing I foolishly posted this about noon on Thursday, getting very few eyeballs. I'm republishing on Friday night. Incidentally, I've been here more than 11 years, and this is the first diary I've republished. I also made a few small corrections.