I’m going to keep posting some impressions here, even though I know most folk have long gotten their fill of the game and uninstalled. Playing on Xbox Game Pass, by the way, and still having a lot of fun. I’m really enjoying the progression, both in terms of gameplay elements like adding danger and then giving you options of handling it, and also adding new options to buy and just generally paying down your debt. It’s kind of odd how satisfying that can be.
I guess with many games there’s that little meta-satisfaction of seeing numbers going up and down, but this also has that ‘16 Tons’ element of being a wage slave and so little power. Now I’ve gotten to a point where management has put some kind of middle-manager guy in place, who seems to only exist to spout company lines and platitudes at us while we’re working. It’s slightly infuriating, as it was no doubt intended to be. But my supervisor just gifted me a ship! Which kind of blew my mind but also, just for a second, introduced this flight of fancy - I imagined what if: I could fix that ship up, blast off to points unknown and then just start this whole other game? You could wander the galaxy finding new stuff, getting into adventures, maybe meeting aliens and things like that! Which I mean, you don’t need to tell me how patently ludicrous the idea is, that they’d hide a whole other game behind this game. But it was fun to dream.
I keep finding little incidental items that amuse me, mainly new ways to damage myself. I’ve burned up in the incinerator and been crushed by the other collector thing. I haven’t fallen into the barge yet, but I’m guessing I would wind up for sale in some secondhand shop on Venus or something. Last night I was grabbing stuff out of the crew area of a ship, and yanked a chest at myself so hard I damaged my helmet and started hearing music. And then I did it again, but bopped myself so hard I cracked my helmet and asphyxiated. There’s a lot to do here!