a love letter to my favorite game
My favorite game is unlike any game I’ve played, comparing it to anything else i’ve played feels unfair, it’s barely a game but it could occupy my top 10 games by itself
It isn’t the most fun, engaging, adrenaline rush ever, ultrakill or titanfall have it comfortably beat in that category
It doesn’t have the most well constructed narrative, signalis has more intrigue and disco elysium is a better character study
but all of those are constructed, you always feel the hand of the author
There are games with better character creators, but they don’t let you actually *play* your characters
in baldurs gate you can change basically anything about your appearance, but at the end of the day the preset dialogue the developers came up with is your only real option for roleplaying
which is understandable, letting a character say *anything* would be basically impossible, there’s no way for an AI to account for every possibility. Though it still feels like half measure, like i’m playing a customized variant of a default character
The trick is to pack 100+ people into a game and let the situation unfold
A simulated space station with simulated air, you need a proper mix of Nitrogen and Oxygen or else you’ll suffocate (or waste oxygen)
your characters body is the most in depth health bar i’ve seen in a game
you have blood, everyone has an appropriate blood type, and getting the wrong type is toxic. If you get shot the bullet can cause internal bleeding, which you need surgery to fix.
The same bullet can hit your bone, breaking it, a broken hand won’t let you hold something, a broken leg will slow you down, a broken skull will be very bad for any important organs that happen to be in it
if you get hurt enough, your body goes into shock
it gets harder to breathe, you gasp for air and collapse onto the ground, struggling to get back up before dying, if you don’t get medical attention you will inevitably die
The Station itself is similar to a body, needing a working engine to pump electricity through the hull, making sure the lights stay on and the doors keep working
Breaches in the hull leak air out, needing an engineer to fix it before the room succumbs to vacuum, if the station computer gets a virus it can pump flammable gas into the same hallways, leading to the most lethal analogue for a fever since plague inc
And every person, the doctor that keeps you from bleeding out, the engineer that keeps the station powered, the security guard that makes sure the law is obeyed
every single one is a real, living human, a person who logs in to the server to play
the stories that this makes is unmatchable, you do something and everyone asks in the unpredictable but sane way that humans do
what happens when a crewmember takes a contract from a rival corporation, or said rival corporation decides that nuking your station would be a good idea
how do people react to a creature straight out of The Thing replacing a crewmate
what happens when a vampire starts abducting people and enthralling them?
what if a Space Wizard attacks?
No round is the same, and I haven’t even talked about half the jobs
There is something to love for anyone
there’s combat with more true to life pacing than dedicated shooters
there’s roleplay with more reactive characters than any constructed narrative
there’s always a way to optimize a system a bit more, always a reason to come back
It is my favorite game, it’s barely a game, it’s a playable movie
I spent my whole life learning lessons from media i watch, because they’re all meant to have a purpose, something to say
but i get really annoyed when someone does something stupid, i wonder what i would have done in their situation, i wouldn’t monologue before killing my victim, i wouldn’t go into the dark hallway with a xenomorph hiding in it
i know i’d find some other way to fuck up, and Space Station 13 gives me the chance to
I see this game in everything, it’s addicting enough that i barely realize i’ve been playing it for 8 hours straight, i have my current *real job* because of this game
and it’s free, short of donating to the people hosting the server, or the people working on the engine itself, you cannot spend money on this game
this game is older than i am, based in an engine that predates Y2K, and nothing released since has captured its magic
Play Space Station 13, you might not like it, it took me 2 tries over 3 years for it to click, but once it did I had hundreds of hours in my first few months of playing
as for where to start? Paradise Station is pretty cool. GoonStation (yes that’s its real name) is way more advanced than any other codebase, at the cost of lag. /TG/ is pretty ubiquitous, at least some code fragments from there are in every server.
Personally, i recommend Para, but each station i mentioned has an appeal to someone
If anyone who reads this gets a bit curious and does any amount of research into the game, I’ll be happy
thank you for your time, and I’ll see you in outer spess
