Deep Sixed Preview

Intrigue! Drama! Moral choice! An interactive AI that helps decide your ending! Deep Sixed has all of these on its to-do list, but unfortunately doesn't have those yet. Find out why this game still on KickStarter could be worth the risk of backing.

Deep Sixed Preview

Introduction

There's nothing quite like a good roguelike to pass the time whether you have a few minutes or a few hours to kill.  Most rightfully fall under the radar, but every now and again one manages to rise up to become a common household name.  That is, if your household consists purely of avid gamers.  Roguelike space simulators are especially a dime a dozen, but one comes to mind when you think of this subgenre:  FTL:  Faster than Light.  There are so many imitators, I know many people to whom "Roguelike space sim" is synonimous with "FTL Clone."  When I first began Deep Sixed by Little Red Dog Games I thought it would be just another subpar copycat with delusions of grandeur, but I immediately found that isn't a fair assessment.  Currently there is only a brief demo as the game is in the process of being kickstarted, so I can only judge on what I played and the plans they've given.  I can say that this project isn't the most impressive thing I've ever seen, but it has good bare bones.  Very bare bones.

If what I'm about to describe sounds like it's for you, hurry and check out the project on Kickstarter.  $10 is the minimum tier to receive the game.

Deep Sixed Preview, there isn't much game yet but what there is works well.

Story

You play as someone known simply as "The Pilot," a woman indebted to an evil megacorporation whose job is to go into space when the corporation tells her and to do whatever it is they need.  There is also an AI that apparently will have an alterior motive, but as it stands I could barely scratch the surface of what Little Red Dog Games promised.  That all sounds well and good, but in the small tutorial I played I was merely the pilot being guided through ship management and a few little bits of combat and mining.  I cannot judge the merits of a story that has yet to be written.

As it stands, the developers did a great job with creating ambiance through the graphics and even gameplay of being a lone figure being unwillingly thrust into a suicide mission by her corporate overlords.  It is just the pilot, the AI, and your handy dandy manual for when things go wrong.  For it is never a question of "if" things go wrong, it will only be when.  And chances are, it will be something you did because it wasn't explained.  Still, that does create a good ambiance of needing to be ruggedly determined because you have literally no safety net.  

The best analogy I can draw is that if FTL is Star Trek, then Deep Sixed is Alien or perhaps 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It feels more foreboding, grungy, and solitary than its predecessor.  Still, it does a great job telling the story through atmosphere rather than just telling you "You work for bad people who hardly care about you."

Deep Sixed Preview, Half of your travelling company is your maintenance guide.

Gameplay

The gameplay reminds me of a point and click adventure game with far higher stakes.  Pretty much all you can do around the ship is click to interact.  You click to examine things, to put items in your inventory, to open the map, and to move around using said map.  It does have a feature that lets you hold space bar to tell which items you can interact with, which I think was a great way to keep you from just clicking all over willy-nilly until you find something you can open to find a useful item.

In a move that definitely takes inspiration from FTL, you do have to manage your ship's energy between your weapons, scanners, warp drive, and even targeting as a separate thing from weapons.  The systems are next to useless with minimal power, but sometimes you need to drain a system in order to let off a shot at a space monstrosity closing in on your ship.  There's just a lot to manage, which is daunting and even overwhelming at first, but if you've played FTL or really any more intricate strategy game, this won't be too challenging for you.

My biggest complaint is how you navigate around the ship.  I didn't like the scanner being separate from the map.  You have five different viewing docks around the ships as well as a scanner room, a warp room, and a generator room.  The scanner lets you see where threats are, and the map lets you address them.  If the scanner were to somehow be joined with the map so you could immediately move to where the problems are, that would save a few precious seconds and clicks.  

Deep Sixed Preview, The scanner lets you see everything around, but not do anything about it.

There is also combat and mining, which are the parts in which the game comes alive, at least temporarily.  When you're running around the ship trying to fend off the invaders while simultaneously managing energy it is fun at first, but it was irritating that you only could have such a small amount of energy to go around the ship when there were so many invaders.  Then you have to go and reinsert a fuel cell into the generator, which really breaks the pace as you do that while you hear space lobsters punching a hole through the hull.

One of the big points they are marketing in the Kickstarter is the fact that there will be no undo button.  If you break something, it will stay broken until you fix it.  Their goal is to make savescumming impossible in the game, so this will definitely be a space sim for the hardcore audience.

Deep Sixed Preview, The game is full of things that don't yet do anything, but look interesting.

Graphics and Audio

The 3d graphics out of the windows of the viewing chambers are fine, nothing wrong with them.  The creatures all look weird and alien, but nothing spectacular.  The main problem I have with the graphics is in the 2d inside the ship.  That sort of thick-outlined look goes well with a 3d cell-shaded game like Borderlands or the Sly Cooper series, but as it stood I felt almost like I was playing one of those 90s educational games from my childhood.  That isn't helped by the fact that everything on the ship is static and only moves if you interact with it.  That works alright when nothing is happening on the ship, but when you need to be sprinting around as the sole crew member of a barely-functioning starship it really doesn't match the intensity of the situation.

I was, however, a fan of the sound engineering.  There is no music in the background, so there is only the disturbingly chipper female voice of the AI and the obviously fed up voice of The Pilot.  Even though the voices weren't perfect, they were very good for the few lines they had to say.  The voices they picked were great for the roles and the lack of much ambiance is oppressive in the best way.  I really felt as though if I were to drop a pin I could hear it echo through the empty halls of the ship.

These complaints should be taken with a grain of salt.  On the Kickstarter page they do have a good chunk of money for modeling and animation so that will fix my problems with the graphics.  They also have even more blocked out for professional voice acting, which though I don't think was bad professional voice actors could help this story reach it's maximum impact.

Deep Sixed Preview, The pink distracts from the crippling loneliness!

Conclusion

Though I got maybe half of a taste of what's to come, I have high hopes for Deep Sixed.  Not necessarily high expectations as I have been burned by Kickstarters before and that has left me jaded and cynical, but Little Red Dog Games seems to have a plan in place for a great hardcore space sim.  This isn't Little Red Dog's first game, they do have some experience under their belt with a game called Rogue State, which I may check out at some point.  I cannot in good conscience say for sure that this game will be fantastic.  It is too early in development to say anything definitively.  Backing anything before it is made, whether it be on Steam Early Access or Kickstarter, is inherently a risk.  Still, I do think that this is a game that could be a lot of fun if it makes it into a full release.  If you're a glutton for both punishment and dark science fiction, check out their Kickstarter.  It's a low price for an idea with potential.

1 Comment

  1. Avatar photo

    Update: As of now the kickstarter did not pick up enough backers. However, Little Red Dog Games has tweeted “We have not given up and the game is still very much going to happen!”

    Reply

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