Alone in Space (by RetroVem)

Fun, but way too short.

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Alone in Space (by RetroVem) is a modest science-fiction adventure built around isolation, investigation, and the unsettling experience of being stranded aboard a spacecraft after a mission goes wrong. Developed and published by RetroVem, the game follows Alexander, captain of the Santa Maria, who was supposed to investigate the Proxima Centauri system and its famous exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b. Instead of reaching his destination as planned, Alexander finds himself dealing with a mysterious incident aboard the ship. What begins as an attempt to understand the immediate situation gradually becomes an investigation into the vessel, its crew, and Alexander himself. The game places considerable importance on exploration. Players are encouraged to examine rooms, interact with objects, and search for details that might explain what occurred aboard the Santa Maria. This approach suits the confined setting because the spacecraft becomes more than a collection of corridors connecting objectives. It effectively serves as the game's central mystery. Paying attention to apparently minor details can reveal additional information, while certain interactions contribute points to the player's …

RPG Maker strikes again! "Alone in Space (by RetroVem)" is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. Notably, the "developer" couldn't work out how to use RPG Maker to make a JRPG (the only thing it can do, and it's terrible at it). Instead, we have a really badly done, apparently incomplete, but definitely garbage JRPG looking top down "adventure" game with reams of utterly cringey high school anime club dropout fan-fiction writing. The plot is a basic, sad fan-fiction about the survivor on a crashed spaceship. I guess we should be grateful this isn't one of those e-books about the authors imaginary girlfriend. As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. Th…

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It's really not the greatest. I understand this is probably a beginner's project, but it's utterly boring in my opinion and overly unclear. For most of the play-through I found the game difficult to navigate, not entirely sure where I was supposed to be going. While I did manage to get the two (plus the secret) endings and a full score, there still were multiple parts that were unclear and kept me stuck (not in a fun puzzle solving way). The dialogue also has little to give, a lot of it feels rather repetitive and doesn't add much to the overall experience. There were too many loose ends and no explanation for the majority of the plot, the only thing I could get was [spoiler]the captain is falling in love with the ship's AI, and perhaps that is all there is to it, but the concept is not built upon at all and leads to the story falling flat.[spoiler] [spoiler]Also the "it was all a dream" ending doesn't help and really makes the game feel like the developer lost interest. I understand losing interest in a project, but when the players can recognize that the developer didn't want to do this anymore it sort of brings down the whole story.[spoiler] Now there is admittedly some potent…