...the game that stole my heart. Or perhaps my sanity.
There are games which you just fall in love with and they will not even actually challenge you; instead, they will just let you have a great time of pure, colourful playfulness. Then there are games which are a bit tougher and you need to get to know them first before you identify the patterns and begin to really enjoy them. THEN there are games that will just show you no mercy, they will punish your every single mistake and only the bravest and the most persistent will taste the sweet, sweet victory which is usually totally worth it.
And then there is Sword of the Stars: The Pit. A game which will steal hundreds of hours of your time. A game which will use said time to beat you up, tie your hands together with barbed wire, do unspeakable things to your private parts, shoot your dog (a cute, fluffy, cuddly puppy) in front of your very eyes and humiliate you over and over until they fill your entire mind in a bizarre mix of pure love and hatred, otherwise only known to women in their 20s and Stockholm syndrome victims. Basically, this is what a PC game designed by Satan would look like.
The Marine slowly climbed down the ladder leading to the 5th floor. He had no idea who could willingly infest their research facilities with giant fucking bats and rats and invisible cyberwolves (srsly, what the hell) and leave them nothing to eat but it did not really matter anymore. His wounds were festering and he knew he only had a couple of hours to find some really, really powerful antibiotics. For a moment, he felt dizzy and almost fell down. "Just one... more... room..." he muttered quietly.
And then there is Sword of the Stars: The Pit. A game which will steal hundreds of hours of your time. A game which will use said time to beat you up, tie your hands together with barbed wire, do unspeakable things to your private parts, shoot your dog (a cute, fluffy, cuddly puppy) in front of your very eyes and humiliate you over and over until they fill your entire mind in a bizarre mix of pure love and hatred, otherwise only known to women in their 20s and Stockholm syndrome victims. Basically, this is what a PC game designed by Satan would look like.
The Marine slowly climbed down the ladder leading to the 5th floor. He had no idea who could willingly infest their research facilities with giant fucking bats and rats and invisible cyberwolves (srsly, what the hell) and leave them nothing to eat but it did not really matter anymore. His wounds were festering and he knew he only had a couple of hours to find some really, really powerful antibiotics. For a moment, he felt dizzy and almost fell down. "Just one... more... room..." he muttered quietly.
17th floor with just a pistol and a first aid kit. Yep. You're fucked.
The Pit originally came out as an indirect sequel of some space-action-shooting-simulator-whatever that I have never bothered to try out. This time, though, you play as one of the several selectable characters (originally these were just the tough but stupid Marine, the crafty but whimsy Engineer and the versatile but fragile Scout) whose mission is to get to the bottom floor of a mysterious lab complex and save their kidnapped girlfriend / stop a deadly plague / save their sister etc. on the last floor. The story itself is pretty much non-existent. But trust me. It is the journey that matters.
The game can be described as a rogue-like game with RPG elements - the most important thing this means is that the game features PERMADEATH. In other words, once something kills you on any of the many floors, you cannot just load a saved position. You lose everything and you need to start all over again. And this fucking hurts. There is also a number of random elements such as the levels themselves (the level design varies slightly from playthrough to playthrough), traps and their effects (walking through a red door, for example, can blind you, heal you, cause hallucinations, teleport you etc.) and more, ensuring that the game never feels absolutely familiar and that there is always something to explore.
Besides the character selection, you can also select difficulty. The original choices were: Easy, Normal, Hard and Insane. It took me around 60 fucking bloody hours of my life to finish the game for the first time on Normal. I have no clue how someone can play it on Insane. But there's more! The authors have released two expansion packs, each of them bringing - besides else - a new difficulty level, because they actually got quite pissed off by the fact that someone has completed the game on Insane. The new difficulty level is titled "Seriously?!" and booooy it should be fitting. I have no idea how it can be more difficult than Insane. Maybe if you die in the game on this difficulty, you die in the real life as well?
Character selection screen - notice the cute little backstories and lots of items and skills. And there will be more. Oh yes.
Anyway, your goal is to actually avoid dying and fight your way through deadly monsters, traps, disease, poison and starvation to the bottom floor of The Pit, a huge underground lab complex. You always have incredibly limited resources with which you can do so - ammo is scarce, weapons and armour sets are nowhere to be found and when you DO find one, it will break rather sooner than later. First aid kits, food, antidotes, repair equpiment, everything needs to be looked for first except for a few items from your starting equipment. You can then search through various containers you will encounter or loot dead enemies and, eventually, you will also start to craft your very own items which is absolutely critical for survival. You will need to use your stealth, science, and weapon skills to the maximum. You will receive experience for successful skill checks and enemies you kill, enabling you to level up occasionally and improve your other skills such as lockpicking, hacking, psionic talents, healing etc.
The Scout limped from the now silent Armoury and carefully pressed herself towards the door to the Medbay. She desperately needed some bandages and painkillers. The door hissed open and she saw a crazed robotic surgeon standing over a disemboweled human body. It glanced in her direction and casually shot a surgical laser beam from its long fingers. It hit her in the shoulder and punched right through but not before she knocked the robot's head off with a well-placed shot from her silenced pistol. That was her last bullet. "Just a couple of bandages", she thought. "I can still make it. I NEED to make it." A short glimpse into the single supply container left in the room. It was empty. The Scout fell on her bloodied knees and cried.
Anyway, your goal is to actually avoid dying and fight your way through deadly monsters, traps, disease, poison and starvation to the bottom floor of The Pit, a huge underground lab complex. You always have incredibly limited resources with which you can do so - ammo is scarce, weapons and armour sets are nowhere to be found and when you DO find one, it will break rather sooner than later. First aid kits, food, antidotes, repair equpiment, everything needs to be looked for first except for a few items from your starting equipment. You can then search through various containers you will encounter or loot dead enemies and, eventually, you will also start to craft your very own items which is absolutely critical for survival. You will need to use your stealth, science, and weapon skills to the maximum. You will receive experience for successful skill checks and enemies you kill, enabling you to level up occasionally and improve your other skills such as lockpicking, hacking, psionic talents, healing etc.
The Scout limped from the now silent Armoury and carefully pressed herself towards the door to the Medbay. She desperately needed some bandages and painkillers. The door hissed open and she saw a crazed robotic surgeon standing over a disemboweled human body. It glanced in her direction and casually shot a surgical laser beam from its long fingers. It hit her in the shoulder and punched right through but not before she knocked the robot's head off with a well-placed shot from her silenced pistol. That was her last bullet. "Just a couple of bandages", she thought. "I can still make it. I NEED to make it." A short glimpse into the single supply container left in the room. It was empty. The Scout fell on her bloodied knees and cried.
As for the graphics - as you can probably see on the images all around, it is far from stellar. In fact, it is quite basic but with a really nice comic-book touch. Everything is easy to recognize, some of the animations are quite neat and at least you can be sure that this game will run smoothly even on a toaster. The sounds are not that great - music is rather non-existent, it is more about the overall ambience and ominous background noise, nothing to write home about.
The visuals and the audio are not, however, why you should give this title a chance. The real strength of this game lies in the intense experience it delivers using its not unique, but well-polished mechanics; the utterly depressing and yet SO THRILLING sensation of permanent death which is always just one wrong step behind you. The childish joy of exploration, of witnessing the authors' cruel creativity, of just finding a new gun with a full magazine which will get you through another three rooms, perhaps. The uncontrollable rage of dying to a single stupid mistake on the 38th floor out of 40. This all is provided in a surprisingly raw form as you get captivated by this increasingly difficult survival gem.
The Engineer was not exactly a risk-taker. Once he saw a fully-armed security bot Mk. II in the Control Room, he just threw a couple of handmade EMP grenades inside, waited for a few seconds and then went in carefully. After a quick, routine scan with a Motion Scanner to see if some of the objects in the room were not just camouflaged monsters, he smiled and walked to the security console stationed by the far wall. Just one quick adjustment and all security bots on the floor would be deactivated. But when he thought he had it, the screens shut down and two rapid reponse robots appeared from nowhere. "Oh no," he gasped before a machine gun salvo hammered him to the ground.
If you wish to know how much bang you get for your buck - this game is often featured in discounts on Steam or Good Old Games. And even if you don't wish to wait for that, the gold edition of this title is only around 12 USD. Plus, of course, the price of everything you HULK-SMASH while playing because of the pure, unfiltered frustration. The game should take you around 50 hours to complete on Normal (unless you suck like I did) which is really amazing given the current standards. It is also highly replayable thanks to its random nature and I think you can easily get to around 150 hours of playtime before getting actually bored.
What I can guarantuee is that if you manage to get to the end - and frankly, you probably won't unless you're a really hardcore gamer or get incredibly lucky - you will always remember it as one of your most intense and notable gaming achievements. Whenever you will read a casual game review whining about save points being too far from each other in Call of Duty 96: The Revenge of Zombie Osama, you will just quietly smile and shake your head. You will already know what difficulty is. You will be a survivor. One of the few who've climbed out of The Pit.