After playing RymdResa for a considerable amount of time, I’ve come away with two very distinct thoughts. One, RymdResa is incredibly unique, and two, RymdResa is insanely difficult.
RymdResa
Developer: Morgondag
Price: 11.99 USD (10% Launch Discount)
Platform: PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for RymdResa
The only way to really describe this game comes from the developer themselves, RymdResa is an extremely unique “poetic, rogue-like space odyssey,” and it should be treated as such. While it would probably take an English Professor and a couple hundred hours to decrypt the meaning of it all, it still has emotional prowess. That said, much of the game won’t make sense to you, or at least, a lot of it didn’t make sense to me.
The basis of a story is there. Essentially you play as one of the last (or possibly the last) humans to survive Earth’s destruction by taking to the stars. While there is a level-based structure to RymdResa, each level is almost entirely procedurally generated. Each launch is a different experience than the last, even if you’re playing the same level, which adds to RymdResa’s replayability and difficulty.
I’m not sure whether to congratulate or complain to Morgondag on RymdResa’s difficulty. It’s mostly challenging in a
fun way, but after many, many tries it has left me wary. I may just not be good, or I may be becoming worse as I grow more frustrated, but having to restart the first level a good 20 times is a little bit infuriating. That said, only the first level or so have to be beaten without dying, which makes the rest of the game considerably more easy.
The multitude of features, attention to detail and unique gameplay elements are what make this beautiful indie title really shine. Each mission you play begins with you selecting a ship. To begin with you’ll use the Embla Colonizer, a run-of-the-mill starter ship that is highly customization and has pretty average stats. As you discover more mission points, planets and ship wreckages you will obtain both star points and new technologies. The former can be used to purchase new ships, while the latter can be used to upgrade and modify your current ship. The ship purchasing system adds to the game in many ways, but most notably the difficulty. Many will discover that they prefer one of the purchasable ships to the starter ship, but every time you die you must purchase a new ship. This means that every ship has a sort of perma-death, and only the beginner ship can be used every time. As you travel you’ll discover star dust, which grants your pilot experience points to level up. Surviving a year will also grant large experience bonuses. This experience is used to upgrade your pilot in one of a few aspects, allowing for more control of the ship or for more advanced technologies to be unlocked.
Each mission is somewhat unique, but the overall goal stays the same, move from point A to point B. While this sounds like a relatively simple concept, it could not be more complex. To start, RymdResa’s health system is also your ships fuel, so as you fly around you literally kill yourself. However, true to the laws of outer space, velocity is conserved, so it’s possible to seemingly float off in one direction for quite some time without the need of fuel. The difficulty comes in when you introduce thousands of procedurally generated asteroids, comets, red mine-like objects and a multitude of other obstacles. If you’re going fast enough these can kill you in one go, and if you’re going too slow you may just bounce from asteroid to asteroid until you explode.
Poems, easter eggs and dialogue fill the spaces where space is empty. Aside from the visually stunning space junk and interstellar phenomena, you may find a few space cats in the cockpits of giant F-16s or some star dust reservoirs that surround a verse of a poem. Every year that passes or event that is experienced queues mostly new diary entries from the pilot, which is fully voiced in robotic type of voice. While the voice work is done very well, like most other aspects of the game, I do not fully understand it. I believe the pilot is supposed to be human, but the voice seems to be that of a text-to-speech device. Maybe our pilot has lost his voice, who knows.
My experience was almost completely unaffected by any bugs and fixes, which is impressive in this day and age, especially for an indie developer. One possible effect that may have been overlooked is the ship’s orientation during hyperboosts. Every jump I made my ship turned in literally any direction other than the direction I was moving in. This didn’t affect anything at all, but it did not match my movements. That said, the experience was otherwise flawless.
The Final Word
For everything that RymdResa is and isn’t, it’s a beautiful game. For reasons unknown my emotions were stimulated, and my mind was put to work. Controls are fluid and the game kept me coming back. While I don’t understand it all, and at times it frustrated me to no end, I love it all the same.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
