R.A. Cooper
Played 2024-09-25, IFComp 2024

Die Hard in Space

I got a laugh out of my immediate embarrassing death.

Sleep Chambers
A small room with nothing but your Cryotube in it. You see the release mainframe to your right and the Port door to the west. The mainframe's tacky lights and fixtures blink erratically. Captain Kirk would be proud. The Port Door has a red light above it indicating it is locked.

The vastness of space can be seen from this room. > Thousands of stars surround you, planets streaming slowly across the sky go in all different directions.

You can see Port door, Cryotube (empty), Hunting Knife and Bloody Note here.

> x mainframe
The release mainframe that handles the opening of the sleep chamber entry port. You don't remember how to operate this. You see a small lever stating “Release -Push for entry/Pull for hatch”

> pull lever

You pull the lever. The hatch leading into space opens sucking you out. You have died.

* The End *

Interface design matters, folks. Also, who put the cryotube in the airlock?

I thought at first that this gag was meant to establish a dark comedic tone for the game. Instead this is a relatively self-serious Die Hard In space, with an ample supply of corpses.

There are some good moments in here: A properly-foreshadowed “hide in the closet” moment works well. The crew (and, er, ex-crew) we encounter are written in different voices, and if I'm not mistaken have names that loosely reference original Trek, so it was easy to project personalities onto them. Ending with a big choice was a good call. On the whole it works as a compact action-adventure.

There are a few spots where implementation was a bit uneven. One that stood out to me was this mention of a trail of blood, which I wanted to follow - after all, we're being a hero an investigating a mystery.

> x marks
Several laser marks are along the wall. It looks like whoever overtook the ship lined several people against the Subway Station walls and executed them. There are blood drag marks where it looks like bodies were pulled off to somewhere.

> x drag marks
You can't see any such thing.

> x blood
You can't see any such thing.

Note, we *do* follow a trail of blood later.

I also found some naming unusual. I find “Platform Box” an unusual name for a transport, and doubly confusing that it seems to be called “Transport Car” from the other end, not to be confused by the four “Rails” in the Subway station, which we ride by going a direction, rather than by entering a vehicle.

I found most of the puzzles quite clear which was a good choice to keep the action-y pace up. The place I got stuck and turned to the walkthrough was really my fault - I couldn't find the keycard, and eventually gave up looking before realizing that I could shoot the welded-shut closet with the gun. I'm not sure I would've gotten the “look up/look down” puzzle if I hadn't spotted it in the walkthrough around this time; I'll be curious to read how others found it.

I'd say it captures the fantasy! Well done.