#asteroid base

"Who will live, and who will die? No one can say until the battle is done. One thing we know is for certain . . . is that with each beautiful flash of light, people — even hundreds of people — are turning to dust in the emptiness of space."

NZMB108

Profile: One of many listening posts (Neutral Zone Monitoring Base) established across the Romulan Neutral Zone after the Earth-Romulan War. Considered a soft assignment while the Romulans were behaving, each crew rotation brought something to make the base a bit more homey.

Pictured: NZMB108 as it appeared in the late 2260s.

Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime (PS4) 

Developed/Published by: Asteroid Base Released: 09/05/2015 Completed: 10/07/2020 Completion: Beat it! Didn’t collect *all* the friends though admittedly. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

I’ve written about a few Toronto games before (Super Crush K.O., Capy’s output, of course They Bleed Pixels) and this is one a bit close to my heart in that these fellas were working on Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime around about the time I was working on my own post-Sound Shapes project and, years later, I have to tip my hat to them, having finally played through the entire thing in local multiplayer as god intended. This is brilliant.

It’s a nice simple idea: you team up with someone else to control a space ship by actually moving around in it, and you have to deal with moving a shield, firing guns, and moving around, all of which you can’t do without moving behind different stations. In practice, this usually means (or at least, it meant for me) one player takes control of movement and maybe shields while the other one dashes between guns (unless there’s a chance to let the ship stay still so you can blast something) but there’s just such a wonderful co-oppy co-op experience here as you both frantically try to do slightly too much. It’s joyous.

The art is adorable too, and the sound is great (well, the terrified screams of the trapped friends is too much in my opinion, but the soundtrack has some amazing standout tracks.) It’s just long enough too to feel substantial without overstaying its welcome, plus it has some light rogue-like touches if you want to replay levels.

If I had some issues, it might be that there were a few sections where it felt like that rogue-like level design made things occasionally unfair, and you could definitely get the ship trapped frustratingly… but then, also, it’s pretty easy to panic. And the single player mode is more fun than I’d have thought (there’s no real AI to it, I’d say thankfully) but it’s really not the same at all, so keep that in mind too.

Anyway. I loved this. If you’re locked down with a loved one or someone you at least tolerate give it a shot (there’s a fair chance you added it in PlayStation Plus and forgot about it, and if you don’t, it’s on Switch. Everyone loves co-op games on Switch!)

Will I ever play it again? I didn’t get all the trophies, but co-op games are a bit weird in that I feel like I’d rather just experience them rather than try and max them (which can lead to too much quarterbacking, I’d say) and as I said above the single player is alright, but you’re probably going to struggle to do the more complex achievements. Which is my way of saying I had a lovely time with this so I’m happy moving on.

Final Thought: Here’s a nice wee blog post from Asteroid Base talking about their sales numbers, and I’m warmed to discover that the game has done well for them across the long tail, especially what with a Switch launch and that.

Spending some time repairing and refueling while relatively relaxing with the meager accommodations available at Base Camp asteroid station in the Soul Nebula...

This is the very last station along the rest of the Perseus Reach Expedition; the expedition is for small ships only and is scheduled to skirt along the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way on the way to Beagle Point and beyond...