Greetings!
Thanks to Martijn for reaching out and let me know you’re playing Starflight this month! I haven’t followed the clubs podcast as well as I should have, but I’m 50 minutes into the Might and Magic Heroes episode to make up for it! 😉
I have deep rooted nostalgia for this game. I played it with my dad when I was around 6. The game had such a deep impact on me. I would revisit it every now and then when I was growing up, but the delicacy of the save state prevented me from getting pretty far. If you forget to save and quit, and just close that dosbox window… game over man! Ah well, remember those backups.
This game is pretty tough, I think, at least at the start.
I find the interface easy to use even in these days, as you can almost play the game one handed on the number pad. I have never beaten the game on DOS, I have beaten it on Sega Genesis.
To give the new players some clues, aliens will react differently depending on not only the “threat” level of your questions, but also the posture of your ship.
I don’t know all the things you can do to get all the different conversations. It’s far more important to talk to the aliens rather then slay them.
The game really only needs a few things to happen to finish, but if you cheese the game by looking up what you need to do, but the true enjoyment comes from the emergent story.
I would love to discuss if a game with this design could be viewed as “good” or “worth the money” in todays age. In my mind, I love this design. Everyone today loves to watch videos, and twitch and whatnot, once someone googles a “how to beat starflight in an hour” people would rage the game is poorly designed and flawed, I would think. I would love to talk on this point.
I can see this rant is getting long… I’ll cut it off here, and try to make some plans around my wife to find some time to dump into Starflight, and maybe see if I can finally beat it on DOS. I won’t cheese it though, I plan on getting all the information I need from the aliens, and I won’t look up the locations of all the goodies 😉
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