Antares: Wrap-Up and Final Rating

     

Antares
Nightmare Productions (developer); Bomico (publisher)
Released 1991 for Amiga

Date Started: 7 July 2015
Date Ended: 19 September 2015

Total Hours: 23

Reload Count: 24

Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)
Final Rating: 30

Ranking at Time of Posting: 106/199 (53%)

For most of the summer and early fall, I was thinking that Antares would turn out to be a kind of ongoing source of humor on my blog. The game fell into a kind of tedious rhythm--survivable, but only in small doses--and I saw myself making one Antares posting in between other games, maybe covering one dungeon level per entry or something. Eventually, it would stretch into 2016, and after every post, commenters would wonder why I was still playing the game. But I'd plod on, probably reaching a conclusion around the time that I finished 1991 in general.

But after my unintended hiatus of the past two months, I've changed my mind. Even though it would be fun to be the only one online to document ending of this little German oddity, it's not going to be me. I couldn't even get through another dungeon level. The mechanics of managing light, food, fatigue, and healing are too much for what the game offers in return--a nonsensical, wandering plot and combat involving only the most basic of "tactics." Whatever percentage of the game I experienced during my play, I feel like I hit the highlights.

Messages strewn in the dungeon corridors show the game's Bard's Tale heritage.

Antares clearly draws from The Bard's Tale in its basic approach to exploration and turn-based combat, particularly in the variety of messages on dungeon walls, riddles, and static NPCs. But it joins other German games like The Legend of Faerghail and Dragonflight in offering a selection of gameplay mechanics and elements that are highly original but, unfortunately, not very good. I must both admire the game for deviating from the norm and chastise it by noting that the norm, however ordinary, makes for a better gameplay experience. Some of Antares's original deviations include:

• No character creation system; instead, the player selects 5 from 12 pre-defined characters, including androids, mutants, and robots, each with different skills in fighting, technical ability, medicine, language, psychics, and cooking.

• A food system by which a party's "hunger" meter slowly depletes and is restored by cooking ingredients found in shops and combat. The amount restored on the meter depends on the ingredient and the cooking skill of the character.

• Division of hit points into physical and mental health, with different enemies and different attacks having various effects on both. Different items heal the two types of health, dependent on the character's healing skill.

• Combat likewise is divided into physical and mental attacks, with the mental attacks sort-of replacing "magic" in a typical RPG, but without nearly as many options.

• A strange approach to sound: no sound effects, but a track that plays different techno music selections when a party member uses certain found devices like Walkmen.

• A weird sleep system: each character sleeps independently of the others, while the party is otherwise moving around and even fighting, slowly restoring the fatigue bar.

• A selection of languages that the characters must translate by finding the appropriate books.

• Part of the status display tells you what level of monster you're likely to encounter at any given moment.

Some of these don't sound too bad, but the combination of them--fatigue, health, and hunger, primarily--create a frustrating experience in which the player constantly has to juggle these logistics. Such considerations can be done well in RPGs, when made fun or particularly challenging, but here they're just tedious.

Still, we have to recognize a few things that the game does well. The monster portraits and other visuals don't represent the height of artistic achievement, but they are highly creative and very different from what we find in other games. The developers did a good job with dungeon design and wall textures, eschewing the bland repetitiveness of The Bard's Tale and Wizardry and really making each dungeon feel like a different place. I love that you can get hints and observations from your party members as you explore. The inventory system is reasonably well done, requiring some investigation and experimentation to determine what items actually do. I appreciated touches like the storage depot to store excess equipment. And in an era in which the default game seems to allow saving anywhere, any time, I appreciate that Antares offered a greater challenge by refusing to allow saving in dungeons.

One of the game's original monster portraits.

    
To recap the story, my party consisted of the remaining crew of the Auriga, a ship dispatched in 2314 to the Antares system to find out what happened to Earth's first interstellar spaceship, Hope, which had broken contact 34 years earlier. The same thing happened to Auriga that happened to Hope: shot down by an unidentified alien spacestation, with the crew stranded on the planet Kyrion. Among the remnants of the Hope crew--who were mysteriously sterile--I learned that the Antares system is home to three alien races: the Umbeken, the Questonaten, and the Vuronen. The latter are the evil masters of the system. Some mysterious being or force called "Tahun" seems to be influencing things.

As I progressed from the opening area, through the first dungeon, and to the first two cities and their associated dungeons, a mysterious "projection" kept popping up to help guide me along. Eventually, he said I should seek out an Umbeke named Ranishtar in the city of Akrillon. I was in the process of trying to find him when I last blogged.

An NPC offers to sell me information about Ranishtar.

I can fill in some of the rest of the blanks from the document that my commenters so helpfully translated. Ranishtar turns out to be a severe, war-weary Umbeke revolutionary who's also being visited by the mysterious "projection." He tells the party that the Vuronen live in a domed city to the north and suggests they build a bomb to use against the evil aliens. He gives the party a list of ingredients and parts needed for the bomb.

The next few dungeons seem to be full of riddles and puzzles as the party tries to find the parts for the bomb. If I had kept playing, I would have found several characters--including an android and an Umbeke--who would join the party and fill in the last character slot. Another race called the "Lepers" would have made an appearance, as well as a blue dwarf that keeps popping up and offering to sell advanced weapons for absurd amounts of money.

Eventually, the party makes its way to the domed city with the assembled bomb and starts sabotaging key industries and factories. Through a series of dungeons, it becomes clear that the Vuronen are working on a virus to destroy other life forms, and that they are capable of easily cloning and replacing themselves. They encounter the TAHUN, which seems to be a big glowing crystal that psychically impresses people to calmness and obedience. The party briefly falls under its power, but one of the robot characters is immune to the influence and guides the rest of them away (I have no idea what happens if the party doesn't have a robot at this point).

The projektion was up to no good.

    
Somehow, the party gets captured and tossed into something called The Death Zone. There, the helpful "projection" reveals herself as a female Vuroner named Stasia who has been using the party to sow chaos so that she can take power. At the end of the Death Zone is a final confrontation with Stasia. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything in the document that looks like congratulatory or end-game text. [Edit: my commenters found it and translated it! See the comments.]

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

• 3 points for the game world. I'd like to go higher, as it is original and unusual, but it just doesn't hold together well. Elements of the back story and plot make little sense; major revelations are handled in a banal, deadpan manner; and several plot threads are simply dropped. The storytelling is as blithe and careless as it is original.

• 3 points for character creation and development. The skills system is a good idea and creates a logistical challenge in party creation, but I don't like selecting pre-designed characters, and there's hardly any satisfaction to leveling. I guess characters get a little stronger, but their skills don't increase and there are no choices during the leveling process. You don't even get a notification that it's happened.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. Discussion with a variety of NPCs advances the plot of the game, but it's all Bard's Tale-style, with no dialogue choices or role-playing options.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The highly-original monster names and pictures become bland when actually faced in combat. There, they devolve into two basic types: physical creatures and mental creatures. Other than monsters, there are a lot of riddles in the game, though translation issues make it difficult for me to judge their quality.

• 3 points for magic and combat. Again, the division between mental and physical attacks and defenses is original, but it doesn't end up doing much for combat tactics. Overall, combat is even more rote and boring in Antares than in the games that inspired it.

• 4 points for equipment. The long and varied list of items that you can buy and find make for a challenging puzzle. There aren't nearly enough inventory slots, though.

The halogenlampe lights up the dungeon. I never figured out what the Atari ST was for.

• 3 points for the economy. You get money for killing enemies and spend it on food, healing items, and other equipment. I never felt particularly rich or poor. Nothing good or bad here, just bland.

• 2 points for a long, meandering main quest with no side-quests or role-playing options.

• 4 points for graphic, sound, and interface. The interface is well-explained in in-game documentation, and the graphics are both original and serviceable. The lack of sound--other than occasional techno music tracks that I turned off after a few seconds--is a major liability.

• 2 points for gameplay. While the challenge is pitched okay, the game is ultimately too linear, too big, and too long.

The game features a fairly useful in-game help system.

The final score is 30, in that uncomfortable zone where I can't quite recommend the game, but if it were still 1991, I'd encourage the developers to try again. Just teenagers when they developed Antares, they definitely showed promise with design and programming. Alas, they didn't take my hypothetical advice. This is the only title from Michael Wyler, Kjell Marc Droz, Olivier Schraner, and their company, Nightmare Productions. Droz wrote to me briefly back in July, but I haven't been able to get him to answer a list of further questions about the game and its development.

With this, another German game has defeated me. I lost Faerghail because of a bug, The Ormus Saga and Dungeons of Avalon because I couldn't figure out how to win, and Antares because I wasn't willing to invest any more time. We'll see soon whether I can break the pattern with Drachen von Laas or Rings of Medusa II.

****

And with that, I'm back! Things have finally quieted down, and I have two more postings in the pipeline, so I hope to maintain a consistent schedule for at least the rest of the year. Finally settled into my new house (regrettably, only a seasonal rental), I plan to take an entire two weeks off in December, focusing on my blog during the day and Fallout 4 at night. Hopefully, by the end of the year I can make up for all the time I missed this fall.

Antares: Anlagen und Geräte

This monster portrait freaks me out for reasons I don't understand.

At the conclusion of the last session, I had been visited by a "projection" that told me to travel to Akrillon and see an Umbeke named Ranishtar. Before I left, I wanted to check out the one un-explored dungeon in Nomiris: Tiefencastel.

Despite its name ("deep castle"), Tiefencastel ended up being about 17 squares. There were a couple of trite messages ("Life is expensive, even after death!") along the way. The hallway ended in a barricaded door and there was no way to progress. "Despite being a bit disappointed," the game said, "you're nevertheless glad that the way ends here. Everything you've seen from these corridors so far didn't exactly inspire confidence." I don't know if some other event will bring me back here or not.

It's nice that the skull and crossbones has universal meaning.

So much for that. I returned to the transport hub, entered my found PIN, and set off for Akrillon. I'm not entirely certain whether the three places I can travel from the transport hub are different planets in the Antares system or different cities on Kyrion.

Akrillon was much like Nomiris: a 20 x 20 city in which every wall is a door to a building. I explored them all and found a lot of empty houses, four food shops, one equipment shop, a storage depot, and two dungeons: Tornac and Dominia. There was no sign of Ranishtar in any of the houses, so I reasoned that he was probably in one of the dungeons.

The city of Akrillon.

The storage depot was a nice touch. It allowed me to stuff any of the equipment I was carrying in a locker for later retrieval. I put almost all my "Electerium" there, a bunch of food for when the stores were closed, and a couple of items that I was afraid to discard but I didn't know what they did. This freed up a lot of inventory space. This might even be a CRPG first. I can't remember a previous game that allowed me to store items in a central location.

A nice touch for an inventory-limited game.

I decided to try Tornac first. It turned out to be a two-level dungeon, each level consisting of two 6 x 19 areas connected by a 3 x 7 corridor. In general, the developers of this game did a good job varying the size and shapes of the levels while still making them symmetrical enough that you can identify likely secret areas. They also did a good job with different textures in the dungeons.

One of the symmetrical levels from my latest exploits.

I didn't find Ranishtar in the dungeon, but I did find a bunch of messages related to the mysterious Questonaten race. "It's strange that the Umbekes' best friends carry such a 'questionable' name," the first read, opening a mystery I haven't yet solved. Another indicated that the race can assume a spectral, ethereal shape, and a third said that they were telepathic.

"Our masters are exceedingly reserved. In all of their history, they have chosen to bother with only three other cultures--us being one of them." I assume this one is talking about the Vuroners, but I'm not sure. "You'll see us," a final one promised, "and then, at the latest, you'll recognize us." Okay.

The main quest reward from the dungeon.

On Level 2, I found some kind of medallion that the game assured I would need later. Then, after navigating a room with invisible walls ("Do not trust with your eyes what they're not able to see," a clue offered), I ran into what I assume is a member of the race. He asked me telepathically to name him, and the answer--QUESTONATEN--opened the way back up to the exit. So I guess the medallion was the real purpose of the dungeon.

Encountering a member of the Questonate race.

The dungeon was also unique in that it had a shop in the middle of Level 1, run by a guy named Ernesto Samson. The shop sold a variety of objects labeled "container." I suspect these are supposed to be boxes that allow you to expand your inventory, but unfortunately every time I try to open one, the game crashes. I hope this doesn't turn out to be plot-relevant.

I have no idea what these containers do except crash the game.

As I explored, I did my best to puzzle out all of the various items of equipment in the game. To help future players Googling the terms, I've pasted the full list (so far) at the end of this posting. Of particular note are a series of devices that help with dungeon navigation. A "Detektor AR-1" alerts you to messages within a few squares of where it's pointing; a "Detektor AR-2" warns you of messages and traps. I haven't found any way to avoid or disarm traps, though, so this is of limited utility.

The Detektor alerts me to a trap.

An "Auto-Mapper" does what it suggests, although it only lasts for the active level, so you can't really rely on it for all your mapping needs.

It would be nice if this meant I no longer had to do my own mapping, but alas...

 
Other notes:

• In an earlier post, I mentioned how difficult it is when your fatigue meter gets to 0 and you're forced to sleep, even in the middle of a dungeon. Well, I found a loophole to that. On the initial encounter screen--where it tells you how many enemies you face and asks whether you want to fight or flee--time still passes. I can remain on this screen indefinitely, letting my party members get a nice, long rest, before either fighting or fleeing. Unfortunately, light and food also deplete during this period, but they're not as much of a problem.

• Blue laws are apparently in effect on Kyrion. Shops are closed on Sundays.

Man, the Puritans made it everywhere.

• Akrillon, unlike Nomiris, had a bunch of houses that I couldn't enter.

• One of my victories produced an "Atari ST." I have no idea what to do with it. It would be the coolest thing ever if, when I "used" it, it opened up a mini Atari window and let me play a basic game. But we're way too early for such things.

The computer only an alien would own.

• Based on the percentage of paragraphs in the translation document that I've accessed, I'm only about 20% of the way through the game.

• I rather thought I'd find an NPC to occupy that sixth party space by now. Did I just miss the ability to add that sixth member during character creation?

You can't say I'm not trying my best with this one, but I'll continue to intersperse posts on other games in between Antares articles. Let's check out Enchantasy.

Time so far: 21 hours 

Reload count: 23

*****

Aluminum-Platte: Aluminum plate (armor) - 100
Armschutz: Bracer (armor)
Aspirin: Aspirin (mental healing) - 50
Asthanen-Steak: Steak (food) - 120
Atari ST: Computer (unknown use)
Auto-Mapper: 450
Beruhigungspille: Pill (mental healing)
Biospalter-Ragout: Food - 20
Blei-Mantel: Lead coat (armor) - 450
Container: Containers of various types all crash the game
Demograllampe: Lamp (utility) - 30
Detektor AR-1: Warns you about messages ahead - 140
Detektor AR-2: Warns you about traps - 190
Druckverband: Bandage (physical healing) - 40
Eisenstange: Iron bar (weapon) - 120
Electerium: Use in landing craft to resurrect characters - 423
Glasfaserkabel: Fiber optic cable (unknown) - 20
Halogenlampe: Halogen lamp (utility) - 20
Handschuhe: Gloves (armor) - 80
Handtuch: Towel (unknown) - 20
HiFi-Center: H-Fi Center (makes music) - 210
Hut: Hat (armor) - 60
Isolierband: Insulating tape (armor) - 60
Jogging-Schuhe: Jogging shoes (armor) - 50
Kichererbsen: Chickpeas (food) -
Kompass: Compass (utility) - 50
Kompass "Ali": Compass (utility; stays on longer?) - 60
Kreuzring: Cross ring (unknown; "increases self-confidence") - 180
Marmorbuddha: Marble Buddha (unknown; "increases self-confidence") - 300
Marschallstab: Unknown
Megaphon: Megaphone (does group psychic damage in combat) - 374
Messer: Knife (weapon) - 50
Nomiris-Vodka: Vodka (food) - 90
Pflaster: Bandage (physical healing) - 20
Poisodan: Unknown - 60
Refraktor: Unknown - 120
Rippenknocken: Ribcage (weapon) - 30
Roboterhand: Robot hand (unknown) - 150
Roter Hering: Red herring (unknown) - 60
Sandspargel: Sand asparagus (food) - 10
Schlüssel: Key (unknown) - 20
Schutzanzug: Protective suit (armor) - 150
Skrit Reference: Translation book - 12
Stahlschild: Steel shield (armor) - 200

Sonnenhut: Sun hat (armor) - 30
Stablampe: Flashlight (utility) - 20
Taschenmesser: Penknife (weapon) - 30
Tokero: Does mass physical damage - 309
Totenkopf: Skull (unknown) - 100
Trash: Trash (unknown) - 400
Walther PPK: Gun (weapon) - 250
Wasser: Water (food) - 10
Wochen-Abo: Unknown

Antares: Langsame Fortschritte

I get the ability to travel to several new places.

Since my last post on Antares more than a month ago, all I've accomplished is the exploration of one dungeon--though as we'll see, it appears to be a pivotal moment in the game.

Before I recount my brief adventures, let's recap the plot: my crew of 5 are the only survivors of the Earth spaceship Auriga, which was shot down on the planet Kyrion while trying to figure out what happened to a previous expedition, the Hope. We soon found the Hope's survivors scattered in cave-like dwellings in the area of the planet called Lauree. The small human population is sterile and has no way to leave the planet. We received some intelligence on the alien races. The Vunoren are the iron-fisted rulers of the planet. Two other races, the Umbeken and the Questonaten, serve under the Vunoren and may be fomenting rebellion against them.

I left the opening area via a dungeon called Eriankeller, which connected to a long, linear dungeon called Philgoel-Tunnel. This latter one emerged in a new city, called Nomiris. An exhaustive exploration of Nomiris revealed two more dungeons branching off of it--Sakral and Tiefencastel--as well as a transport hub where I couldn't do anything because I lacked a PIN.

In this session, I explored Sakral, a six-level dungeon. Four of the levels were 5 x 5 squares, but two were larger, more complex diamond shapes.

The 6 levels of Sakral. I just realized there's probably a secret door that I missed in the upper-right of the last one. Damn.

      
Before I described what happened there, let me explain why exploring dungeons is a logistical nightmare and why I have to force myself to get started with every new session. The first set of difficulties are in-game. As you explore, you have to keep constant attention to a few things: your fatigue level, your hunger level, and your supply of lamps. Of these, hunger is the least perilous, because you can bring some food to cook and there's a good chance that you'll find some food on slain enemies.

Lighting is a little more annoying. Each character only has 6 inventory slots, and 4-5 of them are taken up by weapons, armor, and special items. I might only have 3 or 4 empty slots, total, among my party members at any given time, and a six-level dungeon easily consumes 3-4 halogen lamps.

Fatigue is the worst. It slowly drains for every character except the android and does not last 6 dungeon levels. Inevitably, the characters need to sleep. Unlike most games, you can't just bed down for 8 hours of rest and wake up refreshed. Instead, you sleep in real time, as you explore or stand still. Since there's no place safe from enemy attacks, this is a risky thing to do in a dungeon--but inevitable since this particular dungeon had a one-way door on the third level.

The game warns me that, "From here, there is no turning back!"

        
The internal logistics, which might just be "challenging" in a satisfying way by themselves, are complicated by external ones. To play the game, I have to have five windows open at all times: the game itself, my Excel map book, the Word document to which I copied the translation you all did, Google Translate for the small bits of text that weren't translated in the big document, and a notepad for taking notes for the blog entry. This is all tough to arrange on a single laptop screen, so I've been saving Antares for when I'm home with my second monitor, which is almost never.

While the game is tile-based, it's not turn-based. Hunger increases, fatigue increases, lamp life decreases, and enemies can attack while standing still. This makes it difficult to take notes, review translations, and add to the map during game time. Yes, there is technically a "pause" function, but the emulator captures the mouse, and anything you do to get it to release the mouse also unpauses the game. I have to remember to move to a different window, then click on the emulator window header (if I click in the middle of the screen, it re-captures the mouse), then hit the "P" key to pause.

Finally, the dungeons feature a lot of small messages in various squares, most of which weren't translated in the commenter document (that's not a criticism; I appreciate all the help you offered). This means I have to type them myself into Google Translate. Of course, while I'm doing that, there's a chance that a random encounter can appear and override the message, forcing me to fight the encounter, win, leave the square, and re-enter to get the message again. This cycle might repeat 3 or 4 times before I finish translating.

I could easily get attacked 5 times while trying to translate this drivel about needing to exercise the mind.

  
Overall, you can see why it's been tough to prioritize the game. At least one thing is a bit easier: commenter Anym was correct that the scroll bar to the right of the message window controls the text speed. This has been a god-send.

"Once again, you enter the empty, bare rooms of an underground labyrinth. You try to find something positive in that, but most of you are only human...." It's like the game can sense my ennui.

As for Sakral, on Level 3, I encountered the skeleton of a dead inhabitant of Kyrion, chained to the wall. The encounter noted that I found a small steel plate on his wrist that said "KOMC40." I guessed immediately what this was for--more in a bit.

Most of the important stuff was to be found on the final level, where a series of squares brought me face to face with the same Projektion that helped me in the first dungeon. The projection asked me three questions in different squares. In general, they seemed to be tests of the game's lore. For instance, the first was: "Once, she was Kyrion's most important city, but she fell victim to a Vunorian act. She was destroyed, utterly. Only a ruin tells of its former glory." Now, there's some back story here that I didn't know, but overall, I guessed correctly that the answer is LAUREE, the opening, trench-filled map.

The second question, "What does everything on Kyrion revolve around?," was even easier. The answer is the star for which the game is named: ANTARES.

This was a freebie.

It was the third one that stumped me: "They exist as particles--if not in this, then surely another dimension. They have a name--if not in another, then surely in this dimension." At first, I thought the answer must be SCHEMEN, the game's name for those ethereal party members that don't seem to have any physical form. (It translates as "specter.") Alas, that was not it.

Tell me this doesn't seem to fit perfectly.

After trying a few more options, I fear I couldn't help caving in. The translator of this section had put the correct answers in ROT-13 after the text, and it turned out that the answer was TACHYONEN, or "tachyons." Now, I understand what tachyons are, or are supposed to be, but I don't know if this was a straight riddle (if so, a difficult one) or whether I was supposed to find the answer in-game. The translated document doesn't mention tachyonen anywhere else, so I suppose it's the former.

Whatever the case, after I answered the three riddles correction, the projection (which the game seems to call a "she") congratulated me:

Congratulations, you have proven that you're intelligent enough to persist in more dangerous areas. I think that together we could succeed in breaking the dominance of the Vunorians. I possess the knowledge, you possess strength and stamina. And please, don't fret too much about my appearance. I cannot and don't want to divulge my real identity yet. This is safest for me and you as well, rest assured! As a sign of trust I will help you onwards: Travel to Akrillon and seek out an Umbeke named Ranishtar. He counts himself among the most tenacious opponents of the Vunorians and their eons-old friendship with the Umbekes. If you manage to earn his trust and survive long enough, he'll be a great help. But first you'll have to reach him. That he is still alive is proof enough that he's a force to be reckoned with, and a sign that his Questonates will confront you with serious challenges.

The helpful projection moves the quest forward.

As for traveling onward to Akrillon, the path was as I suspected: When I returned to the surface, I re-visited the transport hub and typed KOMC40 when prompted for my PIN. I then got the ability to travel to three new locations: Akrillon, Remoria, or Sistar City. I still have Tiefencastel to explore in Nomiris, though.

Entering the PIN.

A few notes: 

• There are dozens of odd items found at the end of combats and in stores. Although I've translated some of them several times, I keep forgetting what they are and what they do: megaphon, tokero, poisodan, isolierband, krach-bonbon, marmorbuddha, schutzanzug, refraktor, and so forth. To figure out what they do, you have to ask a technically-skilled character, whose answer of course must be translated and is often somewhat cryptic. Because of these issues, and because of very limited inventory space, I'm probably not getting all the use out of the game's items that I could be. 

A megaphone does mass psychic damage in combat. I'm not sure what the other two items are.

• As I discussed before, the types of weapons you can carry are limited by your physischer kampf skill. My first two characters are currently brandishing Walther PPKs, which never run out of ammo.

My lead character's current inventory. I'm not 100% sure what any of the first three items are for.

    

• Sakral had a lot of secret areas that, in Wizardry tradition, could be entered by walking through a wall. I don't remember any such secret areas in the previous dungeons; I should probably return and check.

• Nomiris has no items for sale that heal physical or mental damage. I either need to find the items on slain enemies, wait a long time, or trek all the way back to Lauree if I want to get my party to full health.

Although apparently, according to this message, there will be healing available in Remoria.

• Combat is extremely variable in difficulty, but in general not overly deadly. I've lost more characters to traps than to battles. When a character dies, I've just been reloading rather than make my way all the way back to the beginning of the game and resurrect him in the landing craft.

• My characters are up to Level 8. I don't really know what leveling does for you. Neither statistics nor skills seem to increase. I suppose maximum health must increase, but you don't see that numerically.

I haven't otherwise included a combat shot in this posting, so here's one.

I remain a bit confused and lost as I play the game, much as I often am when visiting a foreign country. In this case, I haven't been able to determine if my confusion is related to the foreignness of the game, or if the game is just a bit inept. I'd really love to see a native speaker's account of the game and to see whether you have the same issues I do with inventory and the abruptness of the storytelling. Can I persuade any of you to fire it up?
 

Time so far: 17 hours 

Reload count: 23

Antares: Lineare und Langweilig

Emerging into a new area.

The Eriankeller dungeon had culminated in a set of stairs going down. I took them and found myself in a new dungeon called Philgoel-Tunnel. I prepared myself for another 20 x 20 square, but the dungeon turned out to be an extremely long, linear tunnel of several hundred squares with only a few, brief, dead-end branches. Once I realized what was happening, I didn't even bother to map it.

Going through a long tunnel.

As with the previous level, I had to stop frequently and translate (both in-game and out-of-game) several messages found along the way. Incidentally, these messages aren't part of the text extracted and translated by my helpful commenters, so I'm having to use my own resources for them. The one above is clear through beispielsweise, and then I get lost. Something like, "All is relative. Depending on the position of the viewer, for example, a planet may revolve around itself or its sun"?

The others were a little easier. One was simply a road sign indicating 145 steps to Lauree (where I'd come from) and 28 steps to Nomiris. Another said something like "intelligence means knowledge, creativity, and power of deduction." I don't know exactly what to make of a message like that or the one above. Are the developers just throwing some philosophy at us, or are the messages somehow relevant to the plot of the game?

There were lots of encounters in the tunnels, with beasts called things like "lacoons" and "drakans" and "stix." Once again I'm reminded that while Dungeons and Dragons games can get boring and derivative, at least I know what the monsters can do and how much I should fear them. Games that generate their own bestiaries, like The Bard's Tale, Questron, and Antares make it difficult to remember who I should be afraid of.

It looks scary, in any event.

So far, none of the monsters in Antares have been very difficult. They vary only by whether they inflict physical damage or mental damage--and which, in turn, they're most susceptible to, something that my team can remind me with the beraten ("advise") option. Generally, when my attacks hit the creature, it's an instant kill. The only real trouble I've had is when I get swarmed with large groups of enemies and they get to go first in combat (I'm not sure how the game determines this; it varies even with the same foe). Occasionally, I have problems when my party members really need to sleep but I can't find a safe place to do so.

Anyway, the Philgoel-Tunnel eventually emerged in the city of Nomiris, where I got a cut screen with a few paragraphs of text:

The end of the tunnel is reached. You enter a new city: Nomiris, built by the Vunorers for their subjects in the middle of the desert. You feel you are on the right path. The empire of the Vunorers, oppressor of many nations on Kyrion and other planets, lies in front of you. You are sure that something special will happen on Antares V. You are confident that one day you will show the Vunorers the true meaning of fear. The time might still be far away but heroes are not born every day either. 

   

So some weird stuff here. A few screens ago, my characters were just learning about the different races on the planet, but somehow we now know that the Vunorers are "oppressors of many nations on Kyrion and other planets," and my team has somehow made them our personal enemies. Also, I think this is the first mention of Antares having a numeric suffix.

Nomiris introduced some more sci-fi looking wall textures. The map turned out to be 20 x 20 again, but it changed the rules of the first map. On the first map, some of the "walls" were doors leading into houses, but those houses didn't occupy physical space. Here, they do. Literally every wall in Nomiris has a door, most leading to empty houses, some leading to advertised shops and services, and some leading to hidden shops and services. One of the latter is billed as the "meeting room of the Resistance." This would be the Resistance against the Vunorers, I guess. I upgraded a couple of my party members to Walther PPKs, which I wouldn't have expected to find on alien worlds.

A store run by the Resistance.

One of the doors leads into some kind of transport hub, I guess. Check it out:

The screen is different than any other presented in the game so far. It's interactive, and moving the mouse alternately highlights the "exit" and "ticket" options.  Choosing "ticket" takes me to a screen that says, "Please enter your PIN." I hope this is something that I find in-game and not some kind of copy protection.

One Nomiris door leads to a new dungeon, called Sakral. So far, the game has been very linear in the presentation of its maps, and it appears that isn't going to change.

Since I don't otherwise have a lot to report from this session, I thought I'd discuss combat in more detail, because although it begins with a Bard's Tale base, it has a lot of quirks. You begin with a list of your foes, who can attack in multiple groups of multiple enemies each; I've faced as high as 30.

You start with three options: kämpfen (fight), beraten (advise), and flüchten (flee). Sometimes "advise" isn't there, and I don't know why.

The beginning of combat.

"Advise" takes you to a sub-menu where you can "consider opponents," "negotiate/bribe," "rob opponents," and turn their portraits on and off. If you "consider opponents," some party member will offer a paragraph that both assesses the relative difficulty of the enemy and reminds you what types of attacks are most likely to work. The paragraph only comes up if you've faced the enemy before, though; if not, you just get a sentence to that effect.

 

Eva says, "Has anyone here seen an opponent?" [I assume that's smack talk.] and adds: "The creature has no idea of psi and special weapons, but it bites. So it is best met with tough weapons."

I haven't negotiated yet--it's a mechanic I almost never use in RPGs--but if you select it, you enter an amount of money to bribe the enemy into going away. Similarly, "rob opponents" has never worked for me; the game just tells me that I'm fehlschlag ("busted").

"The opponent takes the money but still insists on a fight."

Back on the main screen, fleeing of course extricates you from combat at a small cost to your morale. Since successful combats increase morale more than fleeing decreases it, it's not hard to keep it high. If you do get it very low, by fleeing from many combats in a row, party members will refuse to act in combat. I should also note that fleeing doesn't always work, especially against flying monsters or large groups.

Fighting gives several sub-options for each character that you line up one-by-one: attack (with the equipped weapon), use item, "psychological action," defend, cook, and heal. (Cooking and healing require food items and healing items, respectively). "Psychological action" has a further sub-menu with "telekinesis," "hypnosis," "group hypnosis," and "psychological defense." Not every character gets all options; only my ball of energy, who's highly skilled in psychologie, has "group hypnosis," for instance. The psychological attacks, if they work, generally result in immediate enemy deaths, so I guess we can assume that "hypnosis," for instance, is followed by the swift decapitation of the momentarily defenseless creature.

Attack options. This creature responds to physical damage, so I'll probably have everyone angreifen.

"Group hypnosis" seems to be the only attack that targets more than one enemy. There are no multi-enemy physical attacks--at least not yet. Maybe if I get automatic weapons or bombs or something. 

Naturally, some enemies are more responsive to either physical or mental attacks, and some are completely unresponsive to one or the other. If my ball of light is sleeping when I enter combat with an ektoclone, for instance, I really just need to flee because he only responds to mental attacks and no one but Cubic is strong enough to make them reliably.

Once you line up the attacks and execute them, messages start appearing indicating what each character and enemy did, and the results. Sometimes enemies go first and sometimes the characters do, and I don't know how the game determines the order. It makes a huge difference, especially when fighting large groups that are either a) going to attack me one-by-one and perhaps kill someone; or b) all get wiped out before they can attack by Cubic's "group hypnosis."

Watching the selected attacks execute is easily the worst part of the game. The descriptions of your attacks and enemies' attacks scroll by so slowly that I want to scream, and unlike other games of this ilk, there's no way to speed up the text in a setting or by hitting a key. [Edit: it turns out there is! I was overlooking a scroll bar. Thanks to the commenters who pointed this out.] I once faced a party of 30 enemies in one stack. I tried to "group hypnotize" them and it didn't work, and the individual messages saying that it didn't work on each enemy in the stack took about 3 minutes to scroll by. Then I had to sit through another 3 minutes of each enemy attacking my characters. This game desperately needs a "quick combat" option.

Oh, come on!

At the end of combat, you're told how many experience points you earned, and so far there seems to be little relationship between the difficulty of combat and the number of points. I'll spend 10 minutes fighting a stack of bugs and get 300 points only to kill a single raptor in my next combat and get 1,500. Some enemies also drop "kaley" (the game's currency) and occasionally weapons, armor, healing items, and food items.

Doesn't "Erfahrungs-Punkte" sound like a rock subgenre?

A worse foe than any enemies on the screen is the food meter, which inches downward relentlessly, no matter what screen you're on. (Both the food meter and the energy meter decrease in real-time, not based on turns.) It even decreases in the middle of combat, and more than once I've had to reload after coming out of a long combat and having a character instantly starve to death. This is apparently why you can "cook" in the middle of a battle. Refreshing the food meter means buying food in a food store (or finding it from slain enemies, which is spotty) at fairly high prices; most of my money goes towards food. Limited inventory space means that you can't carry much food with you. Food stores aren't open at night, and a couple of times I've stood outside the food store, hoping that the sun would come up before the food bar completely depleted.

Burglary would be defensible here.

Other notes:

• I've been carrying around a "Disk-Man" since the beginning of the game. I finally thought to try to "use" it, and techno music came blaring out of my speakers. That was only fun for about 3 seconds, but it solved the mystery of why there was a "sound on/off" button in a soundless game.

Note the little music icon in the upper-left, too.

• Leveling up isn't very exciting. It happens completely behind-the-scenes, automatically, and is not, as I thought earlier, accompanied by any increase in attributes or skills. I frankly don't know what it does for you.

• Based on some experimentation after our discussion last time, I'm convinced that "SW" refers to physical defense and "SB" refers to mental defense. You can equip multiple items to increase the stats (e.g., armor, gloves, and boots), but inventory space is so limited that I've been restricting everyone to one item each.

We've seen a lot of rare and unique elements in Antares, including the variety of character types, the separation of physical and mental "hit points," the cooking system, the ability to assess opponents, the morale meter, the on-screen dangerousness rating, the sleeping system, the translation system, the relative coordinate system, the method for identifying items, and the way that you can have characters speak their current concerns. As I pointed out with Legend of Faerghail, however, just because something is innovative doesn't mean it's good. I can't say I'm really enjoying the combat system (which, lacking spells, offers even fewer tactics than The Bard's Tale) and constantly having to watch food and energy levels during exploration. There simply aren't enough good RPG mechanics to make it an enjoyable experience.
       

In such cases, you at least hope that the plot is interesting, but so far, it seems ill-defined and juvenile. That leaves me playing for no reason than simply to not quit. I'm not going to quit--at least, not just yet--but we've definitely entered the "more work than fun" stage.
     

Time so far: 13 hours 

Reload count: 18

Antares: Übersetzungen

Translating one of the dungeon's many messages.

All right, we're trucking now. Some truly excellent readers managed to translate all the text in the game in a single day, making it go a lot faster, and also making it possible for me to play the game when I'm not online. As we're going to see, several things are still a bit lost in translation, but in general, I don't dread playing the game as much.

I also figured out how the in-game translation system works and used it to translate Kevin McFly's phrase into TOTE LACHEN NICHT ("the dead laugh not"?) and get the key to the game's first dungeon: Eriankeller. He also said something I don't quite understand about "the Krull" (the translation offered is: "And if you do not want to look after your adventure like this, than be on guard before the Krull..."), but it kind of became clear later.

This image is entirely out of context here, but I wonder where "tsirata" comes from.

But let me back up a bit. Having better translations of all the NPCs filled in a few of the holes. As you may recall from the back story, my characters' ship, Auriga, was shot down "by an unknown space station" while tracing a distress call from Hope, humanity's first interstellar ship. The planet we're marooned on is called Kyrion and the specific area (the first map) is called Lauree. The trenches I've been exploring were specifically built by the survivors of Hope, and they populate all the houses and shops. I guess there were quite a lot of them--enough to make a new society. 

With the key in hand, I returned to the store to purchase a lamp for the dungeon. The item in question is called a stablampe; Google Translate has issues with the "stab" part, but the "lampe" part seemed clear enough. I also bought aluminum-platte for my three lead characters and equipped it. 

Then I spent some time getting my characters fully rested and bought enough food to get the food meter up to about 2/3. At some point, completely without notice or fanfare, my characters leveled up from 1 to 2 and then from 2 to 3. These seem to have been accompanied by 1-point increases in a single attribute per level, and perhaps an associated skill increase. (I don't have any comparison shots from when my characters were at Level 1).

Ready to explore, I headed into the Eriankeller dungeon. I was surprised to find that it had typically fantasy-looking textures, but then again the entire game so far has been a fantasy RPG with a sci-fi framing story. The first level was 20 x 20, no space between walls, all squares used. It featured a dozen wall messages (something the developers picked up from The Bard's Tale), a couple of traps, a couple special encounters, and at least one fixed combat.

The first dungeon level.

It soon became clear that I hadn't brought enough stablampen because each one is only good for about 5 minutes. Rather than immediately return and buy more, I allowed myself the playing-like-a-jackass luxury of exploring and mapping the entire level first--running from every combat and reloading when my lamps died--and then going quickly through the dungeon for "real." I won't do this in subsequent levels, but doing it for the first one helped me establish the game's conventions.

I can't see "Willkommen" without singing the theme song to Cabaret.

 
There were messages everywhere, and most required me to use the game's translation system to render them from "Skrit" to German. This is accomplished by hitting the "translate" button and then typing the name of the origin language (and/or the name of the translation book that I'm carrying for that language). I don't know why the game couldn't just automatically translate if you have the book. Anyway, the messages:

• "Welcome!  You have just gambled your life!" (Near the beginning.)

• "Only perseverance leads to the goal--or to death" (You can just see this one on a motivational poster.)

• "Dead can sometimes be quite useful." (No idea. I guess you can still stick them with inventory.)

• "Someone has stolen my Thallium sword. The finder receives a reward!" (It amuses me that the translation both rhymes and has a near-perfect string of dactyls. I don't know if this is some kind of side-quest, or just a note to be on the lookout for a Thallium Sword.)

Would the reward be...a Thallium sword?

 

• "The cross to quench your hunger." (This seems to have to do with a cross ring (kreuzring) that I found in the level's one fixed combat. I don't know how it works. Perhaps wearing it causes the hunger bar to go down slower. I know you can't cook it.)

• "Do you own what 'nothing' is?" (No idea. Maybe a hint to keep an empty inventory space for some of the fixed encounters on the level.)

• "Containers are not only good for waste." (Okay... I haven't found any containers yet. That would be really handy if the game had some, because my inventory is getting tough to manage.)

• "Athindoar is the Umbekan Goliath." (Probably refers to some boss encounter later.)

• "Reason is the seat of resistance." (Some reference to the friction between the Umbeken and the Vunorers? See below.)

• "Enter at your own risk. In case of accidents, no liability is accepted." (This is at the entrance to the final area.)

• "Attention! You enter the path of no return!" (Further along the path. You can, in fact, return.)

• "This door carries death and destruction." (Just before the one fixed combat of the level.)

This is in contrast to all those games where you can sue someone if your characters get hurt.

There were also two fixed encounters with NPCs. The first was with a homeless-looking Umbeke. The game noted that his clothes were "shabby and torn" and that he "does not fit the description of the Umbeken from Dvorak," so I don't know how I knew he was Umbeken at all. Anyway, when I entered his room, he was ranting:

"...revenge. They shall die, these murderers. Yesss... I will have my revenge on each and every one of these dirty Vunorers! I'll send hordes of Questonants their way. I will order them to suck out the Vunorers' brains! Hehe hehehe... the Vunorers will beg me to leave them in peace. On their knees, they will ask for forgiveness for what they did to my children. And they will restore Lauree to what it used to be... and then they have to make me their ruler. I will have all the power, ALL OF IT! But first, I'll have my terrible revenge... Or I'll draw the Asthanes' attention to this system. They will trample the Vunorers with joy. They will make an example out of the Vunorers--so that no people ever again dares... anyway, this false friendship between us and the Vunorers will be at an end. Hmm, such a transmitter would..."

It's a trap!

So definitely some friction among the game's alien species. I don't know who the "Asthanes" are--some species from another planet I guess. The game noted that as I left the room, "one of your party remarks, in jest, that affairs here are worse than on Earth. You aren't in the mood for jokes, though." I'm not sure what bothers me more: the game putting words in my character's mouth, or the game telling me how another character felt about it.

Now we know what happened to the shadowlords when they left Britannia.

The second encounter was with a shadowy projection of "a mighty being in a brown tunic." It wished me better luck than "the fools who came before" and gave me something called a tokero (no German translation) which seems to be a weapon, although no one in my party has the skill to use it. It bade me farewell with "may the Tahun never leave you." Another reference to the "Tahun," which sounds like some kind of deity or religious system.

The level culminated in a battle with "Kruul," whom McFly had warned me about, albeit with a different spelling. A little flying impish creature, he destroyed me when I first encountered him, but then I was just screwing about.

My characters are actually refusing to fight because my morale bar is so low.

Later, exploring the dungeon for real, and having leveled up in between, I was able to defeat him. He left me 2000 experience points (the highest before him had been around 600), $600, and a few items including the "cross ring." Beyond him was a passage down.

The spoils of victory.

A few notes on what I've discovered of the game's mechanics:

• When it comes to weapons and armor, characters are limited in what they can wield by their combat skills. When viewing items in the store or in inventory, a little symbol appears next to the item if the character can't use it. So far, my most skilled characters have eisenstangen (iron bars), and my weakest has to make do with a rippenknochen (rib bone). I assume that as I increase levels, these skills will increase.

• The value of the weapon helps determine its damage rating. Current armor class is indicated by the letters "SW" in the character portrait. I don't know what "SB" means. It might have to do with mental defense. Are there any German phrases for which these letters would make sense for physical defense and mental defense, respectively?

• You can have characters analyze items to find out what they do. They don't even have to have the items in their possession. You just click the little magnifying glass, type in the name, and the character comes back with something like, "you can cook that" or "I think that's a weapon." Very neat.

• My inventory is getting very tight. Every character has only six slots, and between weapons, armor, quest items, healing items, and food, they go quickly.

• The various commands to study your enemy before combat give you a decent sense of what attacks to use. You have to have fought the enemy previously, though.

Eva recommends psychological attacks.

• As I mentioned in a previous post, the second bar under each character's portrait is his physical health. The third is his mental health. To heal characters, you have to use one of a variety of items that works on either type of health; for instance, bandages for physical damage and aspirin for mental damage. How much you heal depends on the healing skill of the character using the item.

• You can't save in dungeons. I'm trying to force myself not to use save states to get around this.

• I don't know if there's an absolute mapping system (i.e., if each square has fixed coordinates), but there's a relative one. You can use the "locate" button to set an origin point, and from there the game tells you how far you are from the point.

Checking my position before heading down.

• You can talk to your characters! At any time, you can hit the "mouth" button and either cycle through all the characters or choose a specific one. So far, they haven't said much that was interesting.

Bio-splatter ragout will do that to you.

• Restoring a character's energy by sleeping takes a long time--like almost 20 minutes of just sitting there. The android needs no sleep.

• No food is consumed when resting in the landing craft, which is nice.

• If you run out of food, a character immediately dies. That's pretty harsh. I'm not sure how long it takes to kill off other characters after that.

In short, there are some odd and interesting innovations in the game. In the last session, I finally settled into a comfortable groove, and I'm looking forward to what's next.

I did hear briefly from one of the developers, Kjell Droz. He confirmed that he and his friends ("school boys," but I don't know what age) were primarily influenced by The Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64, and he suggested that Antares includes "many labyrinths and five or six cities," so don't expect a quick end. I wrote back with some more questions, and I hope we can get some more development and background information from him.

Time so far: 9 hours
Reload count: 12