Something is entertaining about a game with tons of moving parts. Of course, you have to enjoy juggling to appreciate the juggling act.
Dead in Antares, from developer Ishtar Games and publisher Nacon, is an interesting turn-based survival management game that has RPG roots. The game is driven by story and character development, as well as player choices, while instituting a hefty dose of exploration, survival management, and the occasional turn-based fighting moment. While these pieces and parts go together well, the trick to making a good game from them is balancing them out. In a way, I think that Dead in Antares does pull off the balancing act, but in another way, the game might have benefited from shaving down some aspects and keeping effort focused squarely on what the player will be finding themselves doing the most during gameplay, which is survival management.
Now, to lead the gameplay, the story sets up a crew sent out to find resources to save a dying Earth. While searching, the crew gets drawn into a wormhole and crashes onto an unexplored and somewhat hostile planet. At least hostile to human beings. They must survive the planet, find resources that will keep them going, discover vital resources for saving Earth, and find a way off the rock before it’s too late.
The story strongly leads the gameplay in Dead in Antares. There is a ton of dialogue, almost visual novel-like, and the player gets to know each character that they run into during gameplay. Each character is defined by strengths and weaknesses, and the player must take into account these attributes, as they relate not only to story progression but also gameplay success. Every branching decision that the player makes affects the outcome of the crew’s situation and progress. Again, very visual novel-like with a sprinkle of Knights of the Old Republic on the side.
How that decision-making specifically ties into the gameplay is methodical, as the survival management portion of this experience is a strong second in comparison to the story. As the player is introduced to each crew member and takes notice of the crew’s strengths, weaknesses, and specialties, they must assign certain crew members to a specific duty. This could be engineering, communication, or a bevy of other duties to keep the crew alive and kicking. These duties expand as their camp expands and more survival success happens.
There is so much complication and decision-making that must be thought through in this specific gameplay element that it stands out strongly. For example, if a player assigns someone with no communication/engineering experience to help get the satellite/antenna up and running when the crew first crash-lands, that will delay opening the area map for the crew to explore. If a player assigns an officer to maintain water cultivation and keep the bad stuff out of the water, someone who is not qualified, then the crew has the potential to drink bad water. All these decisions include up or down stats for relationship building, again, something straight out of KOTOR. There is a lot to take into consideration with this element of the gameplay, and Ishtar Games really pushes hard with the survival management portion. How hard do they push? Let’s talk about that.
Beyond just assigning duties to crew members and trying to gain some sort of maintained survivability, the game also goes deeper into this portion of gameplay by forcing the player to help out each crew member. This means maintaining their food and water consumption, making sure they get enough sleep, helping keep their stress at a neutral level, and making sure they’re healthy as a horse. This also means picking the best and most capable crew members to go exploring the world around them and making sure they don’t get hurt or killed in the process. It’s like a super-dangerous game of The Sims, but with incredibly minute details for the player to worry about. In a way, that is impressive because survival management can be such a workload to juggle when trying to maintain some sort of balance between crew members and mission. It’s a lot and near overwhelming at times, but rich with detail and thought, as you can see how far the devs went with making this a worthwhile gameplay experience.
Outside of the survival management, which again is incredibly lush with details and mechanics for the player to juggle, the game also throws in turn-based fighting and exploration. Starting with the latter, the exploration of a very wide-open map begins when the previously mentioned satellite/antenna is set up so that the crew can scope out their surroundings. Once that happens, crew members are assigned to explore the lands and the possibility of potentially running into baddies, which shifts this survival management into a turn-based fighting experience. While this is certainly a sideshow of sorts to the overall gameplay, it still somehow fits right into the scheme of what Dead in Antares is about and what the devs are trying to accomplish through their story.
Action aside, the elements leading to said action are quite connected to decision-making and how things are going overall. Helping to build relationships and better crew and crew member situations through exploration and typical RPG elements helps to make the rest of this game connect. I am amazed by how deep this game goes with what it is doing and how much detail was put into the gameplay process, because it mostly turns out excellent.
So what doesn’t turn out excellent? The only downfall to this much story, character development, survival management, exploration, and turn-based fighting is how overwhelming it can be at the forefront. As someone new to the “Dead in…” series, I didn’t expect the game to hit this hard and deep, depending on the player balancing and making note of all the little details to help the crew survive. Honestly, and this might be more about my pea-sized brain, it was a lot to take in. For the uninitiated gamer, this title should lead them into the waters and let them slowly walk into the scenario before releasing the sharks to create the chaos. Even the tutorial was a lot to take in. Of course, that’s the game. It’s chaos right out of the gate, which plays well within the story. For those players who have played the previous title, they will feel right at home, if not impressed with upgrades to gameplay. Again, for the uninitiated, it felt like a lot to take in all at once.
Of course, don’t let that knock fool you. The game is well-organized, an impressive juggling act, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Even when you lose in the game, you will start to understand how to improve and push forward the next time. For a game built on stakes, it is relentless in keeping the players locked in on them, even amid all the chaos and details. It’s an overall impressive game.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Dead in Antares, from developer Ishtar Games and publisher Nacon, is an impressive game that is led by survival management, player choice, and paying attention to crew members’ attributes and stats. The gameplay lies within its details and depends on players making a logical decision on how best to keep the crashed crew alive in the game. It can be overwhelming for those uninitiated to the series, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
