Distress: A Choice-Driven Sci-Fi Adventure

Distress: A Choice-Driven Sci-Fi Adventure

Light Machine · 2018 · Adventure, Indie, Casual, RPG, Visual Novel

PC
6 user reviews100% · 6
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$5.99
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About Distress: A Choice-Driven Sci-Fi Adventure

A fading distress signal from a space station that’s gone silent. A metropolis filled with dark secrets, death lurking in every alleyway. Welcome to Nova-8. Step into the boots of Demetria Barton, one of the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunters, and lead her team to a mysterious city in search of answers and riches.

Distress is a branching visual novel inspired by the likes of Silent Hill, Snatcher, and Mass Effect. Trapped in a city filled with deadly creatures and a ruthless militarized task force controlled by a shadowy administrator, you’ll have to use your wits and make tough decisions in order to survive. You’re responsible not just for your own life, but the lives of your crew as well. Make your choices. Live with the consequences.

Good luck, captain.

Features:
  • A 100K word branching sci-fi horror story with over 100 endings written and designed by Javy Gwaltney, the creator of The Terror Aboard The Speedwell, You Were Made For Loneliness, and The Right Side Of Town
  • Beautiful art from professional illustrator and cartoonist Ian Higginbotham.
  • An electric, synthwave soundtrack by composer Erandi Huipe (The Right Side Of Town).
  • Free access to all current and future post-launch content.

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

Recommended Feb 14, 2020
Distress marketed itself as drawing inspiration from Mass Effect, Silent Hill and Snatcher and in some ways I can see that but in other ways it falls a tad short. It can certainly have some creepy vibes from the monsters you encounter that make me think of Silent Hill but sadly we don’t see much of them or interact much with them much. The game has a rich lore you get introduced to, lots of planets and colonies mentioned but it is mostly in passing. You don’t actually get to go to these planets, get any flashbacks to the lore, or interact with the colonies. I keep going on about what the game doesn’t have but let me mention what it does have. It has a solid story to it that I think has a lot of potential for prequels. It has a great vibe to it, I love the unsettling locations and the bits of mystery and suspense the game is able to create. The cast of characters are all interesting and make me want to know more about them but sadly not much info is given. The soundtrack is great and puts me back into 80’s era sci-fi which is my childhood and I love. The choices you get to make are decent but do have one big flaw I dislike: false choices. Some choices mean your death and the end of …
5 found this helpful
Recommended Jul 1, 2020
This is an amusing sci-fi visual novel. My first playthrough ended in the vacuum of space due to an improvised weapon performing a bit too well. Next playthrough went a bit more smoothly and showed that this visual novel has a plethora of choices with vastly different outcomes. If you like a bright, comic art style and quirky characters then I would recommend this game.
2 found this helpful
Recommended May 28, 2020
Writing is decent in Distress. Good graphics. Nice cast and personalities for this sci-fi visual novel. Feels like there are meaningful choices as things you decide affect the station as a whole. Could use better foreshadowing of what those new events will be. My main annoyance was that the characters only have talking poses facing one direction - which means that a right-facing sprite will often stroll in from the right side of the screen... Again, that's just the idle poses; there's a good spread of action poses for each character. Combat boils down to choosing among different tactics and it flows well. I'm glad I was able to keep my crew alive. Would be great if there were Steam Achievements to keep track of such things ;)
2 found this helpful
Recommended Oct 29, 2019
Enjoyable writing, loads (and I mean loads) of choices, and character depth that unveils itself naturally through multiple playthroughs as you see the characters put through an ever surprising wheel of stimuli. It’s like choose-your-own-adventure version of The Expanse with a playful and humorous edge. I love the focus on dozens of unique playthroughs instead of one impossibly long one, so instead of competing with my dozens of gaming and reading obligations, it can complement them in between.
2 found this helpful
Recommended Sep 3, 2020
I was pleasantly surprised with the story and how your choices can increase the time it takes to play through or decrease it. the longer the more you learn about the narrative as well. the downside? well after playing for 100 minutes I've gotten multiple endings and am left longing for more. the characters well pretty well developed for how short it is. That's the downside to the game, im not a great gamer and i blew through multiple endings quickly. for the price i still recommend it, its a nice little distraction, but dont expect a long story arc or hours upon hours of gameplay.
1 found this helpful
Recommended Apr 30, 2019
Nice Game :) after some trying i found my favorite Way. Infiltrate the station throug The Myrmidon. Descend into the metro. Don't intervene. Let the mysterious woman out of the pod. Follow the stranger's lead. Help the stranger. Help Lenore destroy Nova-8. Hear her out. Tell her to stick it where the sun don't shine. Surrender. Focus fire on two, while Nyles zaps the others. Go! Stop her once and for all. Promise to hide Lenore. Maybe.
1 found this helpful

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