SpaceVenture

I am a fan of the old Space Quest games, and i backed this game on Kickstarter. It took some 10 years to be released, i am glad the game came out at all, albeit a bit buggy. I know the team behind it (the Two Guys from Andromeda) had some serious personal setbacks, so i'll forgive them for that. The game does have the Space Quest vibe to it, so i'll say it's a worthy successor. I played the Kickstarter release to som extend, now i restarted with the Steam version, because it has had several updates. Some puzzles are a bit frustrating, and i had to look up some hints, but overall i am enjoying it. I even reinstalled the old Space Quest games again for nostalgia. I still have a couple of the originals, but i also re bought them on G.O.G.

I didn't follow the controversy surrounding this game much, so this review is written according to the state of the game as it is currently. At the time of this review, SpaceVenture is a solid old school adventure game that nails the feel of the old Space Quest games, and I'm writing this as someone who played all of the old Space Quest games this year, so my memory is fresh and not skewed by nostalgia. The game is not without its issues though. The controls are clunky, there is some jank but nothing game breaking, there is some unevenness in the art style and there are a lot of unnecessary minigames including a full Five Nights at Freddys clone (I can't imagine why the authors thought spending time on that would be a good idea, if I wanted to play a horror game I'd play a horror game and not a comedy point&click adventure). However fortunately none of these deter from the core experience.

I want to like this game, I really do. I love the original SQ games and have a huge soft spot in my heart for the Two Guys. Unfortunately, this game (even today after all the bug fixes) is a buggy mess that is inferior to pretty much every SQ game out there. I've lost progress so many times due to the engine glitching and soft-locking me, and the game isn't even long, it takes like 4 hours to beat if it doesn't glitch and lose 30 minutes of your progress. There's no auto save and the actual save mechanic is clunky and sometimes when you load, things have changed from when you saved. I mean, I guess it was only $15, but like, I still feel like it's overpriced?

the story is good, it's funny, great characters... but i still can't recommend it. the puzzles are clever, but the mechanics of the game are not intuitive. this makes it very difficult to finish some of them without a specific walkthrough on what to do, or where to click... plus, this game has been out for years, and there is no cloud saving ability. and there are several game-breaking bugs that make it too frustrating to play. i couldn't even finish the game because of this. very disappointed. UPDATE: bugs fixed by developer!

like most people, grew up with sierra/lucasarts adventure games, and space quest will always be near and dear to my heart. however, this just doesn't hit the mark, it's clunky, if there's a story here it's half baked, repetitive, boring gameplay (cmon, we've moved on from "find X things" adventure games haven't we?). ah well, at least it did finally get released. just go back and play SQ if you're looking for something to enjoy. personally i'd rank those 5, 4, 1, 3, 2, 6.

It would be very rare I would 'Not Recommend' a game to others. I'd just stay silent. I really, REALLY wanted to like this game. I loved the Space Quest series. And this game has the spirit of Space Quest... just. But it is SO rife with bugs, missing dialogue, and confusion in the story. For example, on multiple occassions characters act like they know each other when they've never met. Or you get a new quest, to go somewhere, but the dialogue that introduces the quest doesn't play. Why am I going to X? No idea. Reload the game and the dialogue plays this time. It'd be okay if that happened occassionally, but its pretty consistent. Don't even get me on the immobilization bugs or when the animation for a story-progress action just doesn't play and you need to reload. How this game had seven-odd playtesters and still shipped like this is beyond me.