2012 In Review 002 - Dreg Sector

[Gizmog]

Pre-Thoughts:
I know I liked some of Willy Electrix's previous games. Don't believe I ever played this one. Castle on the Night Land was great, and something in those same lines only sci-fi based could be fun. I've heard this discussed a lot, saw some threads and I believe it's some kind of a Privateer-like? Fleet and Ship management, maybe some interspace commerce. I know it has a very distinctive graphical palette and style, like almost all of Willy's games do. Some people love it, some people hate it, I'd definitely fall into the first camp. Time to see what all the fuss is about.

Thoughts during game:

Ahhh, kidnapped parents. Perhaps it's more of a Pirates! like. A good omen!

GREAT soundtrack. Chose a bomber and this galaxy map is giving me goosebumps.

God, these battles are slow. And in dire need of sound effects.

Ragequit! I really wanted to like this... trying again with fighter?

Post-thoughts:
God, I hate to not like this. It's possible that I'm choosing my initial fleet or equipment poorly, but the battles are so painfully slow to get involved in that I hate to spend any more time on it than I already have. Some sound effects might make it seem like more is happening, but speed is the real solution to the problem. I love the aesthetics of the galaxy map, of the battles, of pretty much everything EXCEPT for the textboxes. The neon blue on dark black gives me an awful headache, and there is *SO* much text to go through. Couldn't you have broken the text up into seperate menus or boxes or something, anything but this impeneterable chunk I'm lookin at. I think simplifying some of this information could help if you really wanted to stay true to retro, or there's a ton of ways you could split things up, possibly even into menus, to keep it from getting in the way of knowing what the hell you're trying to do. I'm including a screenshot of Pirates! for the NES, because it did a really good job of giving you relevant data in a way that wasn't cramped or cluttered, but still offered room for some flavor.

I really do hate to say those things. This could be a FANTASTIC game, if it weren't for so many seemingly small things that get between the player and immersion in the game. I never like to tell anyone to tone it down, or be less ambitious, especially when they already did the hard part, but I feel like Dreg Sector is trying to do too many things for its own good and could greatly benefit from a modified interface that tried to cut down, or at least reorganize the information being passed to the player. I would advise people to try it, because they might be able to see past some of this stuff, maybe I'm easily distracted or petty or something, and if you can get past it, there's gotta be a hell of a game hiding in there. I just can't find it.