Affordable Space Adventures

Affordable Space Adventures is an indie puzzle-adventure game that manages to make better use of the Wii U gamepad than any of Nintendo’s own titles on the system. Telling a cynical story that attacks the exploitative practices of large corporations while offering innovative mechanics that generate unique puzzles, the game only falters when it comes to its difficulty curve, which falls sharply during the climax.

The game aptly opens with a commercial: Uexplore invites people to participate in its exploration program to the planet Spectaculon, showing lush green landscapes, magnificent waterfalls under a striking rainbow, and dolphins jumping out of water at sunset. The video promises unimaginable riches, appealing to the imperialist mindset of its target audience: “If you map an area first you can claims it as yours,” it promises.

These ads are the soul of Affordable Space Adventures’ narrative. Just the first one, for example, offers several contradictions and ironies that set the cynical tone of the story. The dazzling, inviting environments the first commercial proudly displays are accompanied by the guarantee that they are absolutely safe to explore. However, to make the concept of conquering foreign lands more tempting, the company also claims that 99% of the planet’s surface has not yet been mapped, which puts the validity of its previous claim into question. The company goes on to state that there have been zero reported accidents since 1995, but the emphasis should go to the word “reported” and the countless fatalities it can subtly hide. Later on, that date even changes, warning the player of the company’s dishonesty: “0 accidents since 1993,” says the company booklet displayed on the loading screen. Meanwhile, the man in charge of security matters that happily appears in another ad, Alex Bonody, has in his last name an acronym for “nobody” and his face clearly photoshopped in another man’s body.

It’s not a surprise, therefore, when the reality in Spectaculon reveals itself to be very different from Uexplore’s marketing. As soon as the protagonist’s ship (the character isn’t named nor described, leading the player to put themselves in their place) appears on the screen, its operating system is rebooting after experiencing undisclosed problems. The ship itself is tiny, with its flashlight illuminating a sinister area bathed in menacing purple light. As soon as the ship is able to move, its frailty is reinforced: its engine makes it bump slightly, turning its movement unstable, almost as if the ship is shivering, while a dense black smoke comes out of the exhaust vent. Outside, a fierce lightning storm blocks part of the view while a wreckage made of Uexplore’s equipment marks the finishing touch in building the hostile environment.

You move this feeble ship in a 2D plane, but the point of the game actually lies in controlling the ship’s operating system, which is displayed on the gamepad’s touch screen. This operating system is the game’s core mechanic: by touching the screen the player activates and deactivates several mechanisms and systems that are gradually made available during the adventure, as the ship’s OS recovers its core functions.

There are two engines, for example. The fuel-driven one, which allows the ship to push heavy objects but makes it shake violently if its stabilizer is not on, and the electric one, which makes the ship perfectly stable, although weak, and offers more complex options, such as control over how it’s affected by inertia or gravity. There are other particularities inherent to these two engines – only the electric one allows submerged movement, for instance – but the complexity comes mainly from the need to adapt these options to the puzzles involving the environments and the enemies.

The first puzzle of the game is a basic one, being part of the universal language of the genre: the player needs to push blocks and press devices. After mixing these two elements for a while, however, Affordable Space Adventures, fortunately, begins to present its unique ingredients: the constant shaking of the ship, for example, becomes a problem when you need to cross a corridor full with laser beams. Diminishing the shaking with the stabilizer, however, increases the pressure on the reactor, and may cause it to explode if the player takes too long to cross the room.

Enemies complicate the situation even further. The ship is not equipped with any weapons – Spectaculon is completely safe, after all – so the only two options are either running from or trying to pass unnoticed by the alien artifacts scattered around the planet. This is done by controlling the ship’s many systems: each engine and equipment affects the level of heat, noise, and electricity generated by the ship and picked up by enemies.

The general logic behind the puzzles, then, becomes clear. It’s necessary to activate the necessary mechanisms to overcome an obstacle, but in such a way that it’s not perceived by the hostile artifacts that surround it: the player must try to find out what is the specific combination of the ship’s equipment that will allow it to safely traverse each area. The difficulty keeps rising with the constant addition of systems to your ship – each one usually comes with a significant drawback – which increases the number of things to consider and deal with: the player must discover not only which engines and mechanisms to activate but also figure out what’s the best time and order to do so, sometimes switching them on the go. Later on, it’s also required that the player think a little outside the box, such as the possibility of turning the ship off completely so that it simply falls down, unnoticed by the artifacts, and turning everything back on at the precise moment to avoid impact.

The game’s difficulty curve, however, falls precisely when it should reach its peak: the last levels are as simple and easy as the first ones. The logic behind this design makes sense, as it creates a circular journey by taking away the ship’s functions. The problem is that it feels a bit anticlimactic since the puzzles that came before this moment never quite fulfilled the potential of the game’s mechanics. Perhaps realizing this, the developers have released, in a later update, new levels with much more challenging puzzles, but they are accessed separately from the story.

The game’s presentation, on the other hand, is flawless. By always designing huge, imposing environments, the developers are constantly reinforcing the fragility and insignificance of your ship in front of that mysterious and hostile planet. The interface of the escape capsules found in the environments also surprises by emulating the aesthetic of Windows 95: a thematically appropriate surprise since it points to Uexplore’s false advertising regarding their cutting-edge technology. The sound design, in turn, is composed mainly of diegetic sounds, which come from the environment, adding to the planet’s oppressive atmosphere, while the few instrumental tracks are subtle when they appear, just complementing the sounds of the environment.

Another positive aspect of the game, and unfortunately unavailable after November 2017, was its excellent use of the now-extinct Miiverse during the epilogue, when messages written by other players contributed to the important final punchline.

Affordable Space Adventures is a game that manages to rival Nintendo’s biggest ones on the Wii U in regarding to creativity. Its cynical story is skillfully told and its mechanics prove to be unique, providing a good amount of challenge puzzles.

July 16, 2020.

Review originally published in Portuguese on October 27, 2017.