Disclaimer: I received an advance copy of Planet RIX-13 free of charge from developer 9 Eyes Games Studio and publisher Sometimes You via IndieGamerChick as part of #IndieXmas2018. The game was received with no promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game and media be shared through standard social media channels. This review of the game are my own words, free from any outside influence.
Planet RIX-13 was (is?) the last game I received as part of the #IndieXmas2018 campaign and it was a pretty great way to finish up this wonderful couple of weeks that I was a part of. The game also releases on the Switch platform on Wednesday January 16th, so that makes this article doubly awesome, so thank you for reading it! And also please be warned, that there are spoilers of sorts, so y'all've been warned.
At its core, Planet RIX-13 is a point-and-click science fiction adventure game with about as little story as you could possible get while still offering a compelling narrative that is discovered throughout the course of playing the game. All you are told as you start the game is that while attempting to land on the planet, your ship malfunctioned and crashed. You then go about exploring various laboratories on the planet with no clear goal, other than, I guess, to find a way off of the planet. I do not recall there being context for being on the planet, if it was to restock the science laboratories there, if you were actually on the planet to begin with and were returning after a mission, or if you just happened to come across the planet a la No Man's Sky. The fact that I cannot recall there being any context other than the "Your ship crashed on the planet," makes me feel like I missed something dreadfully important. But really, if I did happen to miss something early on in the game, it did not detract from my enjoyment. If anything, it amplified my brain's ability to start creating lore where non existed in the first place.
I mean, there was nothing overly exciting about the game at first other than discovering that I was intelligent enough to uncover documents and items scattered throughout the various locations on the map and figure out what items were to be used where. I found a bottle of poison in a pile of garbage that I did not drink. I found computer parts that I put into another computer in another lab. I even managed to kill myself due to radiation poisoning as my Geiger counter that was integrated in my suit went off the chart as I approached my crashed ship. All things pretty cool in creating things to do, but not necessarily, awe inspiring. Then I came across the room below.
That pile of stuff under the red painted eyes on the wall looks a lot like that previous pile of garbage I searched through earlier and finding the bottle of poison. But this red paint, and the way it is smeared on the walls and dripping down the sides of the cabinet look a lot like, yeah, that is probably blood. So that pile of garbage is most likely a crumpled body. Even if it is not a crumpled body, that is what my brain sees and you cannot tell it otherwise. Sorry 9 Eyes Game Studio, it's a crumpled body now. Which means there was a crumpled corpse holding a bottle of poison. Why did these people kill themselves and draw eyes on the walls in their own blood? Did I know any of these people? Wait. . .where did my character come from again!?
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| Lots of Sloshing Going On Here. |
This was when my brain went into overdrive lore creating mode, and I was getting some serious Dead Space vibes, as in if Dead Space were to be made into a pixelated point-and-click game, this would be it. At least in my head it would be. Even the suite of our unnamed space-lad could be reminiscent of an outfit in the Dead Space universe. I think it might have even been around this time that I realized that there was no music in the game, or at least during the actual game play. There were some ambient sounds, and sound effects while walking around (which differed depending on the surface being walked upon), and this just amplified my appreciation for this game. However, some tunes by Jason Graves would not go unappreciated in this setting.
As is the case with most point-and-click adventure games that I play blind, there was one instance I got stuck. And it was not that the puzzle I was trying to solve was overly complicated (here's lookin' at you The Way Remastered), it was just that my brain was trying to make things a lot more complicated than they needed to be. My only real complaint (after finding out about the solution to the puzzle was not so much a solution as it was to look more on a particular screen that I only briefly explored) about the game and its mechanics was moving around on the map screen. Moving around on the planet consisted of exiting a location which brought up a map screen and you selected where you wanted to go from there, which seems pretty straight forward. However, I could not for the life of me figure out how to get to, say, the Radar Station on my first attempt. From Laboratory B02, you would ting that it might be as simple as moving one location to the right and up, but for me, it seemed like I would have to move two locations to the right, then to the location below that, then hit up. Maybe it was the order that the locations were discovered and not their location on the map? Whatever it was, I became a little annoyed when I could not immediately select the place I wanted to go to.
In the end, I probably spent about 30 minutes more than I needed to escaping from Planet RIX-13, which came out to just around two hours (which I have come to understand is still an hour longer than most people. But I like to explore, to look around and take in the world I am playing in (not a fan of fast traveling in either Skyrim or Breath of the Wild, if that gives you any kind of indication), so a two hour game point-and-click adventure puzzle game seemed just about right.
Now only if 9 Eyes Games Studio would either follow up Planet RIX-13 with a graphic novel showing what happened on the planet that lead to the events in the game. I would read that, and I'm only luke warm on graphic novels. Because I really need to know what happened in the room in Laboratory 1 where the doors are moving, but you cannot enter.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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| This Can't Be Good. Right? |
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