Universe - Have Space Suit - Will Travel

Written by MenhirMike

I made my way back to the Pfallenop cluster and ran into Snorglak again. I could trade the narcotic carvite with him, and he said that we’d need to finalize the trade on Wheelworld. There was a short arcade section where I needed to dock with his docking clamp (not a euphemism), and it took a moment and some bouncing off the clamp for me to realize I needed to press the right mouse button to engage the clamp, and off we went.

I must have hit eighty-eight miles per hour with this baby.

That explains what the excursion was for, and one could argue that the setup was there: We don’t have enough fuel in our PTV to get to Wheelworld from Pfallenop ourselves. We meet a trader with a big ship that wants to trade, but we have nothing to trade for. We are left alone and find something to trade, and we arrange a trade that gets us to Wheelworld. The game doesn’t hand hold us to the solution and lets us figure it out ourselves. That’s great, isn’t it?

No, not really. Because there’s a big difference between “not handholding” and “not telling us anything at all”. We are getting the carvite because there’s nothing else to do. We don’t even know that Snorglak wants it or that the hermit has it. We just happen to do “random” stuff and get lucky that the hermit has something that Snorglak wants. At least the inventory description mentions it’s legal to trade on Wheelworld, which is the hint that we should go back to Snorglak.

It’s arbitrary and adventure gamey and it’s frustrating here because I can see the pieces all being there to make this work, someone just didn’t write the right kind of text to put them together. I really hope the game tightens its writing up again and that this section is just an outlier.

The artwork is still absolutely stellar. Even interstellar.

Snorglak brings us to Wheelworld. The next dialogue has quite a few options where we can either hand over the carvite, try to renegotiate, or even renege on the deal. The end result is always the same: Snorglak shoots us with a stun gun and takes off with the carvite. He does that even when we just hand it over in exchange for the ride to Wheelworld; this feels like an odd design choice. I guess he’s just trigger happy and wants to mark his territory.

The landing bay has an impenetrable force field that prevents us from leaving. There’s a control panel on the other side of the force field, but I can not find any way to interact with it. With nothing else that seems to work, I jump into my car and bring up a map of Wheelworld that has several landing bays to choose from.

There is a lot to explore on the map.

I took a step back and listed my goals:

• I am supposed to find Malinaa to get shelter

• The manual has the story of Healer Yura and how Boris is going to get back his stolen hand

• The encyclopedia mentions the Media Bar, a pursuit of multi-media consumption of information and other stimuli

The Wheelworld map looks very promising with many locations and interesting descriptions for them, which should make searching for Malinaa pretty engaging. I’ve decided to explore a bit and sadly found most places and landing bays denying landing permission. In fact, only four landing bays are accessible.

The first one is the one that I’m currently in (Bay 789c) with Snorglak’s ship. Another one (Bay 2h) is completely empty, save for the same kind of impenetrable door and force field. The third one (Bay 40e) has a maintenance robot working on a ladder pit. I push the robot in because I can and grab a cable from the toolbox.

Just applying the lesson Snorglak taught us about being trigger happy.

The fourth landing bay (Bay 1h) has an open pathway - I finally get to see Wheelworld! On the outside is a location called the Arcway, which is depicted on the cover of the Joyriders Guide to Paralela. I picked up a flask of alcoholic liquid on the side of the road and made my way up to Kaleev Way, which houses a shopping center and arcade. The only thing I can seem to do here is using a vending machine with my ID card, which gives me a bag of HAPPY CARV™ because it’s been a while since I carried around some drugs.

Is this the Media Bar the manual talked about?

The next screen has a bank terminal and a way to get downstairs to a parking lot, but I can’t use anything here. I exit the screen to the south and find myself on the Arcway again. Since I still hadn’t found any clues toward Malinaa I headed back to explore the various landing pads again.

While looking at the sky in landing bay 2h, I had a vision of Neiamises having his brain transferred into the finished golden robot. That’s a bit random, but it looks really awesome!

It’s fitting that the vision of a golden robot is triggered from within a place that can be called a Metropolis.

I ended up discovering another exit in the back on the Arcway that brought me to an elevator to a lower level. Unfortunately, the elevator breaks in the middle of its descent. Fortunately, the cable that I borrowed earlier gets me safely down to the ground where I find a tramp. Talking to him leads to some philosophy about how we’re all lost and all that, but he’s willing to trade the booze for his help. Afterwards he says that it’ll help me overthrow the Emperor - wait, where did that come from? Boris only talked about getting back to earth without mentioning the Emperor at all.

Maybe the artificial eye can see straight into my soul?

My unfortunate trading partner was evidently a high level employee in a weapon’s factory because that’s what the high security ID card he just traded says. Neat, I hope this will unlock more of the Wheelworld!

But first, I had to find a way to progress again. The way up was blocked because the elevator is still stuck. I’ve tried to pick up the cable and see if I can throw it upwards to climb the ledge, I tried to jump, I tried to use the metal pipe or a rock to hit the controls, I tried pulling the controls in the hope that Boris pulls himself up, all to no avail.

Climbing back down, I found another exit concealed next to the tramp. I think I had less issue finding the plane manual in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade than I had finding exits in this game. There is a monorail bridge here, with no apparent way to proceed either. I tried jumping on the monorail, I tried picking up the cable from the elevator from the bottom, I tried using the metal pipe - nothing.

I heard that North Haverbrook has a monorail as well.

I did eventually find a way to get up the elevator, and it’s once again a doozy. I can use the cleaning droid as some kind of hoverboard to fly up. WHAT?! Nowhere in the description of the cleaning droid does it mention that it has flight capabilities, or the carrying capacity to lift up Boris weight. This makes me wonder if they realized the potential dead end late in development and quickly had to come up with something, and a flying robot skateboard is arguably really groovy, dude! Groovy or not, it’s pure trial and error.

I went back to my PTV to check which new destinations I’ve unlocked with the tramp’s high security ID card. To my disappointment, the answer is “None”. I’m still limited to the same four landing bays, and I can’t go out three of them because I can’t disengage the force field even with the new ID. I made my way back to Kaleev Way to see if I can use the ID card on the synthetic carv vending machine or the bank terminal, both to no success. But I did spot a lit doorway behind the bank terminal that I didn’t see earlier - as much as I complained about hard to spot exits in the game, this one is on me. I was so focused on finding a way with the bank terminal earlier that I just didn’t look close enough.

The doorway is the brightest thing in a bright location.

I find myself inside an Arcade, where I can play a version of Space Invaders - I hope it’s not tied to some sort of puzzle like Space Quest 3’s Astro Chicken, because it’s not a very fun version of Space Invaders. Next to it is an alien named Tharon T’Huk, who is a volunteer with the security forces and sees us for who we are: A decent sort of fellow, not like the subversive mutant scum around here. He used to be nobody, but now he is a respected Alpha Class citizen and encourages me to work on becoming one myself. The writing is laying it on a bit thick, but it keeps painting the picture of an authoritarian Empire.

One could joke that Universe has a better game hidden inside of it.

I offer to buy Tharon a drink (Gh’Nalrh Brandy, I wonder if the apostrophe adds to the taste?) which he gladly accepts. Talking to him again only gives the choice of offering him another one. I tried that a couple of times, and he must be really good at holding his liquor because he doesn’t get drunk. The solution is to add the synthetic carv to the brandy.

The game bugged out for me here. Talking to him again restarted the dialogue from the beginning and caused Boris to buy another bottle of brandy, replacing the one that I combined with the carv. And it was not possible to get another bag of synthetic carv, the vending machine only hands out one per day.

I had to reload the game and try again. The second time around, I was able to give him the spiked drink and steal his volunteer security badge after he passed out. This was the first game breaking bug that I’ve encountered. From a technical perspective, the game has been solid and I hope this is the only bug like that.

I’d consider myself a Sigma Class citizen. For a more serious PSA, the University of British Columbia developed a stir stick to detect spiked drinks in seconds, which I hope will become readily and cheaply available. Adventure game protagonists are often sociopaths, let’s not be one in real life.

Making my way back to the PTV finally pushes the plot forward: I see a bunch of Jet-Packers running off with the hand of Healer Yura and pick up the chase. There is an arcade sequence where I learn that my PTV does have the phasers that the manual mentioned. I get to ram and shoot a bunch of flying thugs, until I end up in the same landing bay with an injured Jet-Packer who gives us Yura’s hand. During this dialogue we learn that Baron Kaleev hired the gang to steal the hand in a plot to replace his own hand with one that gives him magical powers.

I’m getting some Sega CD scaler vibes here, but it’s absolutely no Space Harrier.

Healer Yura gives some more insight: He attributes his healing powers to his belief in the Universal Creator, which makes me realize that the game never really goes into the topic of religion in the region. Boris mentions Silphinaa and Malinaa, to which Yura can only give us bad news. The security force found out that they were helping us and took both of them to a prison ship. But no worries! Yura tells us about a dream in which the Universal Creator told him to expect a person fitting Boris’ description. He gives us a fragment of a star chart and tells us to follow him.

I prefer the people that I see in my own dreams. I will not elaborate.

The manual told me about meeting Yura and the game tasked me with finding Malinaa. But there was no indication on how to get there, and the actions I did were once again very arbitrary. Nothing of the stuff that I did in this session was done because the game gave me a hint that I needed to do them - I did them because they were the only things to do.

Landing on a busy spaceport without knowing where to go is fine - the universe doesn’t have to revolve around the protagonist. But a well written game would have me go out and find some clues. Whether it’s an NPC conversation, or a discarded scrap or paper, or some terminal telling us about some commotion - these things would clue my protagonist in to where to go and what to do next. But unless it’s really well hidden and I completely missed it, Universe does none of that. I somehow met Yura because I did a bunch of stuff that had no relation to anything as far as I can see, and Boris seems to have no agency here.

Does he want me to lend him a hand?

Back to the game, I follow Yura to the next screen and finally get to meet Baron Kaleev. He summons two droids to chase us while blocking the path to the PTV. Boris automatically runs away to the elevator screen, where we jump down to the stuck elevator while the droid blocks my way back. I make my way to the monorail and now I can jump on it to escape to the spaceport. We stop at a bridge where Boris is supposed to jump off.

Pixels are dangerous. If I don’t hunt them, the protagonist dies. Truly the apex predator of the adventure game genre.

I say supposed because the first couple of tries, I couldn’t figure out how to get off the train. You only have a few seconds before the train starts up again and drives through a tunnel, fatally decapitating Boris. The correct place to jump to is the pillar on the right and then make my way to a locked door in the bottom right. There is a little air vent here, where my cleaning droid once again came in to save the day - the droid has been the puzzle solving MVP so far, with four puzzles solved thanks to it. This is sadly the end of the line as it malfunctions and breaks down for good.

Feels like Portal’s weighted companion cube all over again.

This session was frustrating and exhausting. Writing and editing this post took a bit because I wanted to document the frustration of trying to figure out where to go, what to do there, and why to do it at all, without annoying our dear readers too much.

The opening shot of the Wheelworld, the landing bay with Snorglak’s ship, and the navigation map were all amazing and made me think that I arrived at the meaty middle part of the game. What I found instead were inaccessible places and a handful of screens with very little to do on them. The puzzles haven’t evolved from the earlier chapter of the game and in some ways are worse because there’s no real reason why Boris is doing what he’s doing. If the game would’ve given me a hint like “Yura is hiding because there’s a member of security here” it would’ve tied it somewhat neatly to Tharon.

At least the appearance of Baron Kaleev and daring escape by jumping on the monorail upped the stakes again - the pacing and tension was well done at the end. To add another point of praise, Boris has a lot of custom animations with plenty of animation frames.

With this positive note and Boris standing in the Wheelworld Spaceport, we’ll finish up here in the hope that the next part of the game finally has some real meat on its bones. Or at least artificial meat. Just something to properly sink my teeth into.

Session Time: 3 hours 00 minutes Total Time: 7 hours 15 minutes