2017-03-04 05:18:35 (edited by Jabberwocky 2017-03-04 05:21:23)

Note: Voyageur is available for IOS and Android. It is a paid game, $3.99 in the ITunes app store.

Description taken from app store:

The Descent Device: faster-than-light travel at speeds no human should go; an alien mystery. But it only goes one way, falling from star to star towards the centre of the galaxy. Voyageur is a literary RPG where you take the helm of a trader-vagabond vessel, looking for adventure, wealth, and answers in an infinite galaxy full of procedural cultures and civilizations.

Assemble a crew of misfits to travel with you on your one-way trip to sail on seas of liquid methane, descend into the clouds of heavy-atmosphere worlds, and unveil the secrets of the alien life that created the Device.

Voyageur's world is full of diverse cultures and societies, inspired by contemporary science fiction authors such as Iain Banks, NK Jemisin, Ann Leckie, and Cixin Liu.

A product of Failbetter Games' Fundbetter initiative, it should appeal to lovers of interactive fiction and literary gaming, including Fallen London, 80 Days, and Sorcery!.

This game is a little bit of several things, and not too much of any one thing. On each planet, you're given the option to do a few things that range from buying more supplies for your ship, required to travel onwards, recruiting officers to add to your crew, or seeing a bit of the culture of that planet. There's very basic trading from which you can make money. You can be attacked by pirates, but your options are limited and there's no real combat to speak of. The most interesting part of the game, at least for me, are the bits of information you pick up along the way. For example, I discovered some kind of revolution happening in one region and was given options to either ignore it or help out in various ways.

I've only finished one playthrough of the game, but at the end, i was given a piece of information that hints at a wider mystery to be solved. Since the game is procedurally generated, I don't think there's a deep narrative outside of that one alien mystery the description mentions. However, I think the game rewards multiple playthroughs as I've been told that I've unlocked more options for my next run. I'm also starting out with more supplies and money than I did the first time.

Accessibility: I played this on an iphone. I have no trouble with getting anything done, although it could be a little more smooth with voiceover. The most frustrating thing is not being able to scroll pages with 3 finger swipes, and not everythig is always available on the screen. However, there's never that much content at any given time, so swiping left and right to get to the beginning or end isn't that bad.

Screen layouts for those that are interested.

There are 5 tabs across the bottom of the screen. If you're exploring the screen, you may find the image just above the text name of the tab. From left to right they are: location, depart, market, character, and crew. More details next.

Location (image reads, globe showing Europe and Africa). At the top is the name of the planet you're located on. Taking up the main part of the screen is a description of the planet. Below this is a list of actions you can take. It might be as few as one option to re-supply your ship. Finally, there's a display of how many supplies and money you have.

Depart (image reads, rocket). From here, choose the next planet to travel to. You're told a brief description of that planet and how many supplies it takes to get there. You'll be told if you can't select one because it's too far away, or maybe you have too much cargo and you need to sell some off before you can leave.

Market (image reads, band of American dollars. Or something like that). You're given at most, i think, 4 or 5 things you can buy from any planet. I find it easiest to swipe by headings which will take you from one item to the next. Below the items you can buy will be anything in your cargo hold that you can sell off. A little more about the cargo hold area because it confused me at first. Swiping right from the name of the item, the first number is the price you'll sell it for. The next number is the difference between the buying and selling price. So if you bought something for $10, and you can sell it for $30, it will display $20 here. But don't worry, if you just want to know if you're making a prophet, it will also tell you if selling will be a "prophet" or "loss".

Character (image reads silhouette of 1 person).). Information about your character. Self explanatory.

Crew (image of 2 people). Information about your crew.

Lastly, a link to the web site: Voyageur web site

2017-03-04 06:51:49

Hi,

Will pick this one up as soon as I can. haven't been in the frame of mind to be playing any games lately but this has sparked my interest.
Thanks Jabberwocky for shareing it with us.
grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2017-03-04 08:36:15

I confess I've never really got on with Fallen London owing to the complex layouts, but this sounds really unique and just my cup of tea.
Actually it is very similar to an idea for a game I had years ago about going planet to planet, so I'll certainly pick this one up and give it a try when I can.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-04 11:53:23

Hi.
Thanks for sharing this, and a big thumps up for the awesome description of the game. I'll give it a try, but it's difficult to tell out from the description if I like it or not.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2017-03-04 15:03:13

I forgot to write about this! I've been playing on android for a while, and it does seem quite interesting. My first game ended quite quickly but I ended up getting extra benefits for my next playthrough, and this one's going on much longer. I don't really know how much story there is, or whether stuff happens when you reach certain points, or if it's all seemingly random. It's quite clever though how stuff sometimes happens and comes back later, but that doesn't seem to happen too often.

2017-03-04 21:01:44

I'm actually loving this, indeed as I am somewhat familiar with Ian M Banks' writing I'm seeming a lot of similarities, especially the ancient alien races and interesting cultures and worlds like methane seas etc.

I've not found a crew thus far though, though I assume if I meet anyone who wants to come along I'll get the option t location big_smile.

I'll be interested to see where this goes.

the only thing I'm not entirely sure of, is some of the descriptions in  market tab. Eg, if I'm told that something is exceptional quality and has a %20 higher base price, does that mean I'm getting wripped off?

then again I tend to buy things that are either marked as inexpensive or as having a distance bonus, though again I don't know if I buy cheap goods whether they sell cheep or not.

The only thing access wise I'd like to see are some better labels for things.
The tabs with their images are okay, but the buttons on the start screen are a bit irritating, indeed the first game I tried I ended hitting a button which took me back to the start screen by mistake (I think it's somewhae at the bottom right and is just labelled button).
I also don't know if all those images on the start screen are options to save and load and such.

? ither way, very nice game and I'll be interested to see  it goes and what happens to my ship big_smile

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-04 23:34:17

SLJ. Yeah I struggled with how to describe the game. That's partly why I pasted the game description from the app store, but I also wanted to give people a good expectation of what it's about since it's not free. If you have any questions before you buy it, I'm happy to answer.

I haven't started my next playthrough yet, but I'm curious to see what happens. I think it's intended to be a light game with interesting discoveries happening now and then, and it works well from that perspective.

Dark, I agree about the labels. I didn't even think about whether the game could be saved or not.

I'm not entirely sure about the market either. The ones that are marked as higher prices in conflict zones makes sense, but I don't know about the rest. I've figured out what's cheap for things like food substitutes and pastes, but I've been hesitant to buy military grade equipment because I don't know if I'm buying it cheap or not.

As a side note, I started on Fallen London a few years ago and found it confusing as well. I didn't stick with it for very long. I've recently created a new character, and I'm enjoying it a lot more this time. The app doesn't work for me, so I've only been playing in the browser. It got me curious about their second game Sunless Seas, but I see it's written in Unity and only available through Steam, although they're releasing an IOS app later this month. Continuing my digression, I found a blog last night from a developer making a Unity plugin for making Unity's GUI accessible to screen readers. It's not finished yet, but they seem committed to the project at least. Anyway, it makes me cautiously optimistic.

2017-03-05 17:25:54

@Dark: I think if you buy one with exceptional quality you are paying more, and in theory might be able to sell it for a bit more too. As for crew, I believe yes, it just happens kind of randomly, there'll be an option that should let ou know somehing's about to happen. It won't, necesarily, say the word crew though. I could go into detail but I don't really want to spoil it. OK, it's nothing spectacular but it's a bit more atmospheric.

2017-03-05 21:03:27

@Jabawoki, I briefly aHmmm, thought I already replied to this topic.

@Jabawoki, I briefly tried both the website and ap versions of Fallen london. The website went okay though viewing the item stats was a bit weerd and I was a mild bit confused at the game, it's something I need to put more time into.
I did think the ap version on Ios might help, but sadly it was actually more confusing not less, which is a shame, though i suspect there is a good game in there if I put the time in.

As to Voyageur, I did find a crew. Also from what I gather, given that special items acquired from events tend to show up as %50 higher base brice, I assume the exceptional quality items are probably both more expensive yet also potentially more prophetable, just as the items marked as "inexpensive" are likely the opposite.

It seems making a prophet is actually quite easy, the only question is how much of one. My stratogy that I've been using is buying anything marked as either exceptional or coming with a distance bonus and selling only when i get a prophet of 80 or more, while if I need to buy an inexpensive item, either due to not having the cash or just having some extra space I try to make a prophet of 50 or so.

Generally though it seems propheting is quite easy in the game really, one reason why having stuff stolen by pirates isn't too bad.

I do wonder though how long the game lasts, since some of my traits are increasing but I am not sure how much progress goes, whether there is a natural end or whether to take one chances to make a given planet my home, then again I'll probably wait until I have some traits up to ten before doing that.

the only thing I do wish the game had were a few more ship upgrades and encounters to make the later game different from the earlier game, since other than crew and the two ship upgrades, and a couple of events relating to galactic sites I'm not really sure how much I'm exactly progressing here, still I do enjoy the game and will be interested to see where things go, especially with  different factions etc.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-06 22:37:25

Well I did finish a game, though I'm not sure if I actually finished beware! spoilingspoilers of spoilage below!

I took tenier at a planet and started a new game from the same world, however I'm not sure how much I got in terms of bennifits since the "legacy" trait vanished the second I chose a new option, on the other hand, it didn't seem I was progressing that farsince I already had a full crew and lots of currency and had advanced several traits to ten (including sites of the galaxy which was at 15 and understanding ladder and alien signal), but nothing seemed to happen, unless I didn't hang in for long enough.

I do think the game should have a "distance from galactic core" or something similar to tell you if your actually making progress an ending or standing still.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-07 00:39:25

I am wondering if it's possible to get to the core or if it's just an endless amount of descent paths and systems.

2017-03-07 01:40:24

I am not sure, since while you keep your items, most of your traits are reset which is a shame since the traits seem to be the important thing but a lot of them I'm not sure if they progress the plot or not.

This is why it would be nice to know there were more things to do if you played on until you got higher traits, or if there was an over all progress that finished if you played for long enough and went through enough systems.

As I said I hung in until I several traits to over 10 but nothing seemed to happen, indeed the only trait that some sort of checks at higher levels seemed to be sights of the galaxy which acted almost as a score keeper.

This is odd, since I would've assumed the understanding of the various factions would've helped with your progress a little more.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-07 19:29:15

Does anyone know if the game's being updated still? That could explain the different understandings and things, maybe stuff's still being added in.

2017-03-14 21:09:17

I got an official ending to the story. I'm not exactly sure what triggered it though. I came back from an expedition, and I started getting options where members of my crew wanted to talk to me about discoveries they were making. Maybe because I picked up curious samples on the expedition? Or maybe it was certain traits getting high enough. The game is clear when you reach this point, that certain actions will end your story.

Now I'd like to do some shorter playthroughs and see if I get more options I didn't get before.