INTRO:
Indie developers may be known for thinking out of the box, but thinking of everything and everyone is beyond most of them. In particular, they are not able to consider the specific worries and preferences of everyone that might play their game. This limitation is understandable, but is still disappointing.
When Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime was promoted, it was touted as a co-op game. Indeed, the gameplay would be impossible without two characters in motion. Prior to its release, there were concerns that it would be unplayable to anyone who could not get a partner to help.
Fortunately, the developer has implemented features that makes single-player experiences as enjoyable as multiplayer ones.
PREMISE:
The game takes place in a fictitious sci-fi universe filled with anthropomorphic animals and diminutive humanoids. With the creation of the Ardor Reactor, the literal power of love has been discovered and freely disseminated throughout the universe. For a time, it seemed like a universal utopia of harmony is possible.
However, there is always yin to any yang; the “Anti-Love” manifested right where the Ardor Reactor was, and shattered it into four pieces. Using the same network that channelled the power of love, the Anti-Love shattered civilizations and caged their peoples, ostensibly deriving something from their terror.
All is not lost. One of the scientists who worked on the Ardor Reactor is aware of a need for a contingency plan involving weaponized love, and so has developed a prototype space-ship that uses the first mobile version of the reactor. He activated the ship, and conveniently, there are trained crew that are available to operate it; these are, of course, the player characters.
The ship and its crew would then go out into the overrun parts of known space, rescuing as many people as they can in their search of the parts of the Ardor Reactor while blowing up many enemies.
NO MOUSE:
There are no control inputs that use the mouse – at all. In fact, the game simply begins with a message that the game is best played with the gamepad. Players who are peeved at developers who cannot make a computer version of game that utilizes the mouse might want to be forewarned here.
That said, there could have been some designs that make use of the mouse and the gameplay could have benefited from these. These complaints/suggestions will be described later.
THE CREW:
The crew are moving about in what is practically a 2D platforming level; this is the interior of the ship. The player controls one of the crew; in multiplayer, each player only ever controls just one crewmember. In single-player, the CPU controls the “pet” crewmember; there will be more on this later.
The crew moves about in the interior of the ship just like a typical player character in a typical 2D platformer. Indeed, the interior of the default ship may even seem like a platforming level of very low challenge (which is not necessarily a good thing; there will be more on this later).
Gameplay-wise, the crew is implemented with the intention of having them operate one of the stations in the ship. Each station is connected to a device on the exterior, which will be described later. When a human-controlled crewmember is controlling a station, the player’s control inputs are changed to those for the operation of the station.
MOVING WITHIN THE SHIP:
The crewmembers of the ship always have traction with the interior floors of the ship. Gravity within the ship is also fixed, regardless of the orientation of the ship. This is not much of an issue to the default ship (the “Gumball”) and one of the unlockable models (the “Banana Split”), because the orientation of their interior is always fixed anyway.
However, this is different for one of the ship variants, which will be described later.
THE SPACE-PET:
The space-pet is a CPU-controlled crewmember that is only available in single-player mode. This crewmember is loaded with decision-making scripts that are mostly effective in most situations.
The space-pet can be directed to operate most stations; the only one that it does not seem to be able to use is the helm, which is perhaps just as well because this is a station that requires a player with actual intuition.
That said, the space-pet has some advantages over human players. Firstly, the space-pet is reliably efficient at moving about the interior of the ship; this is always the case regardless of the model of the ship.
Secondly, the space-pet is quite good at aiming turrets at enemies. It is even efficient at using the flail-type weapons (more on these later).
SPACE-PET TARGETING PRIORITIES:
Its aiming priorities are mostly reliable. It will shoot down any enemy munitions that are close to the ship first, before targeting any further away. It will also target weak enemies first, if only to remove them earlier; this is a wise decision, because the volume of enemy fire is an important factor in surviving battles.
It is also good at leading shots. This is most noticeable when it is using the rapid-firing guns. In fact, it also knows when to saturate the area ahead of the turret with shots.
The scripts also include knowledge of weak spots on enemies that have them. This is most notable in the second boss fight, in which the space-pet will shoot at the boss’s weak spots even if the new player does not know about these.
Its targeting scripts also avoid overkill. For example, the space-pet is aware that enemy projectiles can be shot down with just a single hit from any weapon. Therefore, if it is using turrets with the rapid-fire guns, it will change its aim shortly after sending shots at incoming projectiles.
If it is using beam turrets (more on these later), the space-pet calculates firing paths that can hit multiple enemies, if there are no higher targeting priorities. If it is using the flail turrets (more on these later too), the pet would use paths that hit multiple enemies on each swing. If it is operating the shield, the pet would prioritize angling the shield to protect against any attacks from an enemy that is very close; after all, attacks from such an enemy would quickly reach the ship.
Unfortunately, the pet’s scripts become untenable if the volume of enemies and enemy fire becomes considerable. On the other hand, human players are likely to perform poorly in such a condition anyway; it might be wise for one of the crewmembers to pilot the ship out of such a mess, if possible.
GETTING TO THE STATIONS:
Most stations are situated just beneath the hull of the ship. Using these is as simple as moving a crewmember into it. In the case of the helm, which is usually situated in the middle of the ship interior, moving a crewmember into it does the same; the player can have the crewmember go away by hitting the jump button. This is silly, but it works and does not pose a significant hindrance.
CONTROLS FOR STATIONS:
The controls for the stations are simple; the player rotates the device around the circular exterior of the hull with the directional inputs.
That said, the analog stick on a controller is best used for these inputs. The keyboard version is not as smooth, because obviously the keyboard is not made to enact the motion of orbitals.
However, there are attempts to improve its intuitiveness. The keyboard inputs have different effects depending on which device on the exterior is being controlled, where the device is on the exterior, and the orientation of its business end, in the case of the turrets.
For example, in the case of the turret on the bottom of the default ship, the left arrow key causes its barrel to rotate clockwise, whereas the right arrow key causes it to rotate counter-clockwise.
For another example, in the case of the turret on the left side of the same ship, the left arrow key does nothing if the barrel of the turret is already directed exactly to the left. However, if the barrel was pointing upwards, pressing the left arrow key causes it to rotate counter-clockwise, i.e. towards the horizontal. If the barrel had been pointing downwards instead, the left arrow key also rotates it towards the horizontal.
It can take a while for a keyboard-user to get used to this orientation-dependent control scheme, assuming that he/she does not have hand-eye coordination issues. However, after the player has gotten used to this perspective-dependent control scheme, the game is not terribly difficult to play with the keyboard.
COULD HAVE USED MOUSE FOR OPERATION OF STATIONS:
Considering that the keyboard-based control inputs have been scripted to consider the direction of the directional inputs relative to the orientation of the devices, the same scripting could have been applied for the design of mouse-based control inputs. Unfortunately, the developers did not implement this.
COULD HAVE USED PETS’ SCRIPTS FOR MOUSE CONTROLS:
There could be the argument that the game simply could not support the inclusion of mouse controls. After all, there do not appear to be any icons that are used for selection of things, much less any icon that can be used for mouse cursors.
Yet, there are the scripts for the pet’s targeting of enemies with the turrets. These would have required the drawing of a line between the target and the turret for the scripts to calculate the degrees to which the pet should rotate the turrets. This could have been used to implement a mouse-controlled targeting icon, which in turn would have made a human player more readily competitive with the pet. Similarly, this could have been implemented for the controls of the other exterior devices.
MOVING THE SHIP:
Complaints about less-than-thorough optimization for computer-centric controls aside, the gameplay is otherwise designed according to practices that have been considered feasible, at least in the past.
Firstly, there is the matter of moving the ship. The thruster for the ship has to be aimed opposite to the direction that the player wants the ship to go to. This is the basis for the classic Lunar Lander games. Although such a design might not be pleasant for players who have poor grasp of physics (specifically Newton’s Third Law), this was a design that made Lunar Lander challenging, and perhaps convincingly so to players who want believability where it is promised.
Of course, being a game that has a sci-fi setting about love-producing reactors and “anti-love” entities that turn constellations of stars into cyborg monsters, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is not exactly trying to be believable.
Fortunately, there are other better reasons for the implementation of such a control scheme to move the ship. These are due to the upgrades for the thrusters; these will be described further later.
TURRETS - FOREWORD:
The turrets are the player’s main means of dealing with the opposition. They have unlimited ammunition, thanks to the power of the portable Ardor Reactor. There are four of these turrets, each one covering a section of the ship’s surroundings. The turrets have generous arcs – more than 180 degrees – but they obviously cannot cover every angle.
Therefore, the player needs to have crewmembers move from one turret to another; this is also the case in multiplayer.
TURRET GUNS:
The turrets are armed with rapid-firing guns by default. These are generally not enough for the later levels in any campaign (more on campaigns later), because their damage output is too low to quickly eliminate the enemies that appear later. Furthermore, the number of shots and the rate at which they fire out shots are not enough to deal with the increasing density of enemies.
Therefore, they can be upgraded to have better firepower in the form of more guns, instant-hit beams, and/or metal flails. There are even hybrids of these three main types of upgrades; these can be obtained after the player upgrades the ship to be able to support more gems for its exterior devices (more on gems later). It is up to the player to decide which combination that he/she likes; I personally prefer the beam-firing ones, if only because of their instant-hit properties.
The means to upgrade them will be described later, because these are also the means through which the engine and shield can be upgraded.
SHIELD:
Sci-fi ships tend to have “shields”, i.e. an enveloping esoteric force field that somehow blocks or mitigate incoming attacks. The one in this game works more like a real shield than the typical sci-fi one.
To elaborate, the shield of the ship is not an all-enveloping thing. Rather, it is actually a device on the exterior of the hull. A crewmember must operate it in order to change its orientation, preferably putting it in between the hull of the ship and incoming attacks.
Like Gun Turrets, the Shield can be upgraded into different and generally more potent forms; this will be described later. This is just as well, because the original shield is not effective against certain types of attacks, such as green fireballs. Furthermore, when the default shield is being rotated around the exterior of the ship, it is disabled. Thus, the player has to anticipate attacks before they land.
ENGINES:
The space-ship – whichever that the player would pick – would only ever have just one thruster. Like Lunar Lander, the player has to direct the thruster at the direction opposite to the direction that the player wants the ship to go to.
The ship is faster than any Anti-Love entities, which means that it is possible for the player to have the ship escape from just about any encounter as long as whoever is at the helm is adept at piloting.
The default engine does not do much. The upgraded versions are much more useful; these will be described later. Some of these versions also happen to need manual direction of the thruster – hence the Lunar Lander schema.
YAMATO CANNON:
Last, and perhaps least, of the devices is the Yamato Cannon. The Yamato Cannon is the least controllable of the devices, mainly because it automatically rotates and cannot be manually directed. The most that any operator can do is push the button to trigger it; in the case of the space-pet, it will immediately press the button when it reaches the station.
That said, if the player can time its triggering carefully, the Yamato Cannon can inflict considerable damage. All variations of the Cannon release gratuitous amounts of ordnance into the space around the ship; this can be useful in clearing the level exits (which will be described later).
LOVE REPAIRS:
Amusingly, there are planetoids with trees that are growing “love capsules”, for lack of a better word to describe these goodies. Almost every non-boss level has one of these planetoids. The “fruits” of the trees can be shot at in order to release them. The fruits automatically float towards the ship, which is convenient. The fruits, of course, repair the ship.
The only problem here is the space-pet’s targeting. The space-pet will always shoot at these fruits, if the ship is missing any durability. It will not estimate how much would be recovered from the fruits that are released.
If the ship is badly damaged and the player is playing on the default difficulty or lower, a defeated big enemy might yield repair power-ups that automatically float towards the ship. This is a very forgiving game design.
GIFTS:
In non-boss levels, there are gift-boxes that are floating about; these are presumably things that survived the Anti-Love invasion. The Anti-Love entities do not appear to be aware of their existence.
These boxes are of course opened via shooting at them. Their contents will not be damaged in any way and automatically float towards the ship. They will eventually reach the ship, no matter what; they even pass through opaque solid obstacles.
GEMS:
The most common contents of gift-boxes are gems that can be installed in the stations to upgrade the devices that they are linked to. There are three types of gems: metal, beam and power. The gems are packaged in even smaller gift-boxes prior to being revealed. That said, the type of gem that is yielded from a box is random; it is up to the player to make do with whatever that he/she would get.
The effects of the gems when installed into stations will be described later. Rather, how they can be installed would be described.
Gems require crewmembers to carry them over to the stations. Doing this in battle can be risky, so the player might want to do this during downtime. That said, carrying a gem to a station and installing guarantees an installation, though of course this takes a while. Alternatively, the player can just throw the gem at the station; installation happens anyway.
Indeed, wily players would do a jumping throw to increase the horizontal distance that the game can move. On the other hand, there is still a chance that the gem would overshoot the station.
LOCATORS:
The other kind of contents that gift-boxes can yield are locators. These reveal the locations of any remaining friends that the player has to rescue. These will require a crewmember to use the radar station to update the level map of course.
FRIENDS:
Other than finding the pieces of the Ardor Reactor, the player’s main objective in the gameplay is to find Friends who have been imprisoned. The reason for the “Anti-Love” having imprisoned them is implied to be the power of Love that has somehow been invested in them. Despite having what are practically superpowers, these Friends are meek and easily terrified – hence their imprisonment.
Of course, to release them, the player destroys their cyborg cage; they will be fine. After their cage is destroyed, they float towards the ship, giggling in glee; nothing can stop this. Each Friend that is rescued will restore some of the ship’s durability.
The player needs to rescue at least five Friends in order to successfully complete any non-boss or non-warp levels (more on these later). The player will want to rescue more, mainly to get permanent upgrades to the ships and to unlock ship variants; there will be more on these later.
SINGLE-GEM UPGRADES:
The effects of the single-gem upgrades will be described first, before describing the double-gem upgrades.
Power gems, as their name suggests, increase the potency of the default properties of the devices that are associated with the stations. The rapid-fire guns on default turrets increase in number. The thrusters impart more thrust. The force-field shield becomes wider.
Beam gems impart beam-based upgrades. A turret replaces its rapid-fire guns with a beam projector. The thruster retains its thrust, but also gains a beam projector that has to be charged by moving about for a while; this beam projector can require considerable finesse to use. The shield is replaced with a force field that can reflect any projectile that does not get through it.
Metal gems usually impart brutal physical characteristics unto the devices. A turret replaces its guns with a flail; the flail takes time to reach its intended target, but it inflicts considerable when it hits an enemy. When the gem is used on the thruster, the thruster retains its thrust-power, but leaves behind caltrops that can harm pursuing enemies and destroy their non-energy-based projectiles.
When a metal gem is used on the shield, the shield turns into a spiky plate; the plate is always ready to block incoming enemy attacks. More importantly, it has no restriction over what it can block. The caveat is that the spiky shield is notably slower to move than other shields.
GEM COMBOS:
Initially, only one gem can be installed into any station. The player’s options are really limited in this case. However, eventually, the player would unlock a permanent upgrade that lets two gems be installed in a station.
The order in which the two gems are installed do not matter. Therefore, for every type of station, there are six possible combinations of gem pairs. Each combination is quite different from the other combinations.
Firstly, there are the two-of-the-same combos. These are extensions of what the single-gem upgrades do; they are not too difficult to understand. For example, stacking two beam gems on a turret arms the turret with two parallel beam projectors. For another example, stacking two metal gems on the Yamato Cannon turns the device into a brief whirlwind of sawblades.
The other combinations are more esoteric, and appear to be unique to them alone. For example, having a beam and power gem combo for a turret arms the turret with a rapid-firing pulse laser, which is easy and reliable to use because it is practically an automatic-fire instant-hit weapon.
Generally, it is in the player’s interest to upgrade to two-gem combos as soon as possible, especially the engines and shield. These increase the survivability of the ship. However, players cannot pick what gems that they would get from gifts, so the player would have to make do with whatever he/she gets.
On the other hand, the ship would eventually be fully tricked out. This is when the player would begin to get excess gems. There will be more elaboration on how to deal with these later.
“ANTI-LOVE” MONSTERS - OVERVIEW:
Shortly after the “Anti-Love” corrupted the Ardor Reactor, entities powered by Anti-Love begin to appear. Most of them seem to be biomechanical in nature. They are the main source of danger in every level.
The Anti-Love entities are ultimately limitless in number; new ones will be continuously spawned (and de-spawned) to sustain the pressure on the player. Therefore, offensive measures must be taken in order to whittle down their number, lest too many of them accumulate (especially if the ship is forced to stay in one location for a while).
The threats posed by the entities can be generally inferred from the sizes of their blips on the mini-map. Small ones are there to harry the ship, but they are not likely able to inflict heavy damage. Medium ones can be nasty if the player is careless, and big ones are best avoided if the player is not prepared.
ON-SCREEN HOSTILITY:
Enemies may chase after the ship across the mini-map, but they can only use their attacking scripts after they appear on-screen. This means that the player will not be attacked by anything that the player cannot see on-screen – at least in the regular levels.
Bosses are an exception. They can make attacks while they are off-screen. Therefore, the player will have to depend on other indicators to know when they are doing so, such as audio cues.
Enemies also have to appear on-screen before they can be damaged. The ship’s gun-fire cannot travel beyond the current screen; the space-pet will not shoot the ship’s guns at enemies beyond the screen either.
SPAWNING:
In most non-boss levels, enemies spawn off-screen, outside of the mini-map’s range. These then try to track down the ship; this is easier said than done in their case, due to lousy pathfinding on their part. That said, if they manage to do so, incoming entities can be seen on the mini-map. However, if they cannot appear on-screen within one minute, they de-spawn.
In levels that have no physical outer boundaries, they spawn at the edges of the level and enter it from the outer boundaries. These are levels where the ship is almost always harried by enemies.
FLIES:
The most common of the entities are fly- or bee-like things that hover some distance from the ship. These fire slow-moving projectiles that can be shot down. These are the easiest enemies to deal with, but there tend to be at least two of them if the player is fighting any.
There is an orange-red variant of these that is much more troublesome. These are the fastest enemies in the game, and they are able to jink aside quickly; they often require the player to operate different turrets, because they can jink into quadrants that are not covered. This one does explode when it is shot down, though this harms enemies more than it does the ship.
SMALL FRIES:
There are small enemies that travel in swarms; the player often encounters five of them or more. These have very short-ranged attacks and are very easy to kill, but of course there are many of them. If the crewmembers are skilled enough, he/she might be able to kill them by ramming the ship’s shields into them.
WALKERS:
There are enemies that scuttle along the asteroids, derelicts and caves in the non-boss levels. These enemies cannot fly, but they compensate by being a lot tougher than most other enemies.
These walkers patrol across whatever surface that they are walking on, usually along one direction unless something prevents them from scuttling along that direction any further. However, if they can attack the ship, they will stop in order to stay within range.
Most of the early-game walkers can simply be shot to bits; the player can even ram them if the shield has been upgraded with metal gems. The later ones are more durable. For example, they may have force fields or impenetrable shells on the top of their bodies, so the player has to position the ship such that one of its turrets can shoot at its unprotected legs.
One of the walkers also happen to be practically an undead cyborg. Destroying it only disables it for a short while; it eventually returns.
SPECIALISTS:
The medium-sized blips on the mini-map represent “specialist” enemies, for lack of a better word to describe them with. Few of these medium-sized enemies are copies or variations of each other. Each one does different things.
For example, one of these appear in the third campaign; they resemble triangles with eyes. Their capabilities are seemingly unclear until they charge up and release streams of energy projectiles in a radial pattern around them. This is apparently an enemy that is designed to trouble players whose strategy is to circle the ship around enemies.
BIG ONES:
They are also huge enemies; the presence of these enemies is usually indicated via a zoom-out of the screen. This also means that more enemies can begin attacking from further away, due to the aforementioned limitation of needing to come on-screen before they can do so.
That said, these huge enemies have huge hitboxes, and few of them have impervious portions on their bodies. Concentrated fire eventually takes them down, though all of them are damage sponges. As for the ones that do happen to be impervious, these can be handled by having them fly into the shield of the ship, or ramming them with the shield instead.
As for their attacks, most of them fire or release slow but powerful munitions. Some of these can be blocked by force-field shields, though the metal shield is much more reliable at protecting the ship from their attacks.
HAZARDS:
The infestation of Anti-Love in known space has caused things to go topsy-turvy. The consequences include fields of red-hot asteroids (later revealed to be the excretions of particularly large Anti-Love bugs).
Most of these hazards would not make much sense to players who have trivial/theoretical knowledge of space debris. Of course, the game never was trying to be believable.
That said, the player will have to rely on his/her own skill at observation to learn what these hazards would do. For example, the spoke-like Anti-Love fields expand and contract rhythmically, though the player can force them to retract if the ship’s shield comes into contact with them.
Some of these hazards have traits that make them just as much of a boon as a hindrance. For example, globs of water prevent projectiles from penetrating their surface from the outside, but does not prevent any of these projectiles from being fired from within them.
Speaking of which, most hazards are dangerous to enemies too. The most notable of these are the base defences that were meant for the security of what are presumably the transmitters of love power. These guns have been corrupted by Anti-Love, but their shots hurt the Anti-Love entities all the same.
Hazards that have been introduced in earlier levels will reappear again later. Indeed, the non-boss levels in the last campaign have mixes of hazards that can be difficult to deal with, if the player is unlucky. That said, the converse can happen; the player might just pass by a hazard during its harmless phase when trying to shake off pursuit and they activate just after to destroy the pursuers.
ICE SHIELDS & MINIATURE SUNS:
The third campaign introduces the complication of ice shields. Some enemies spawn with ice shields that render them invincible to any harm, except fireballs from the miniature suns that are found within the levels of this campaign.
The fireballs are generated through shooting at the miniature suns; conveniently, the fireballs are always directed at enemies, which is something that the space-pet is well aware of too. The fireballs shatter the shields, rendering them vulnerable; incidentally, the next fireball to hit these enemies usually destroy them outright.
That said, the miniature suns are serious collision hazards. Colliding with them can greatly damage the ship, more so than collisions with other things.
BOSS LEVELS:
Boss levels are locations with the pieces of the Ardor Reactor. These pieces are the sources of the Anti-Love corruption, and they so happen to have picked rather strategic places for their hide-outs. There are living constellations of stars in the fiction of this game, and they so happen to be at these places. Shortly after the ship enters their lairs, the Reactor pieces possess the constellations and turn them into cyborg monsters.
As mentioned earlier, the bosses can make attacks while they are off-screen. However, the camera will reorient itself such that the player can have a good idea of where the bosses are. The mini-map also shows their general direction. This is important, because most bosses can move around rather quickly and attack from a direction that is different from that earlier; the first boss, in particular, is fond of doing this.
Yet, the first boss is also the easiest, mainly because of how it always points its head towards the ship. The crew just need to man the right turrets and angle the shield at the best moments to block its strikes.
The later ones are more troublesome. All of these have means of blocking the player’s shots. Therefore, the player has to put some effort to work around their protection, be it smashing apart their ablative shielding as quickly as possible or hitting exact weak spots. Many of these bosses also have attacks that can occur from multiple directions, so the crewmember that is operating the shield would have its hands full.
CAMPAIGNS:
The playthrough is partitioned into a sequence of “campaigns”. In the case of a new playthrough, there is only one campaign available at first; the other campaigns are subsequently unlocked after finishing the previous ones. Typically, the later campaigns have more complicated compositions of enemies and more hazards.
When the player selects a campaign, the player must commit to that campaign’s levels, e.g. the player must resume playing that campaign later after having left the game earlier. If the player leaves for another campaign, progress in that campaign is lost and the ship is reset.
The only reason to replay campaigns is to save any Friends that were not saved in previous attempts. That said, the player does get to keep any upgrades that have been unlocked from saving Friends.
After the successful end of a campaign, i.e. after the boss of that campaign has been beaten, the gems that have been installed on a ship is mysteriously removed.
LEVELS:
Each campaign has a sequence of levels. If the player has yet to complete a campaign, the player has to start that campaign from the first level. If the player has finished it, the player can pick any level to start the campaign from. Again, the only reason to do so is to save any remaining unsaved Friends. Furthermore, selecting a level to replay would have the player using a ship that has yet to be upgraded with gems (unless the player picks the powered-up variants of the Gumball, of course).
Whenever the player starts or restarts a level, the level is procedurally generated according to the primary scripts that have been given to that level. For example, if the level is to be composed of smaller caverns surrounding a large cavern, it will be like that. However, different attempts at that level may have different numbers of smaller caverns, and their contents (and hostile denizens) might be different.
Therefore, the player should not expect every attempt at a level to play out the same way – for better or worse. Indeed, if the player is unlucky, an attempt at a level might be stymied because the Friends that the player needs to rescue are placed behind a series of dangerous obstacles. On the other hand, the player’s next attempt at the same level might be easier because there is an alternative route to those Friends.
LEVEL INTERLUDES:
In between levels, there is a pocket dimension of sorts that the ship goes into; the player character’s scientist ally would fill it with supplies to restore the ship with. Four boxes with large health pick-ups are guaranteed, thus guaranteeing a full repair. In addition to these, there is a gift-box that yields a gem.
One of the boxes includes a “Remover” tool. The tool is only ever available during level interludes, and the player can only have one at a time on the ship. If the ship already has one, the box with the tool will not spawn.
As its name suggests, the Remover removes the gems that have been installed on a station. The gems pop out, thus allowing the player to place the gems elsewhere. This is convenient, hence the limiting design that has just been mentioned.
PERMANENT UPGRADES:
After every non-boss level, the number of Friends that the player has rescued is counted and added to the player’s tally of rescues thus far. This tally is used to determine how many permanent upgrades that the player has obtained, typically through a threshold meter.
If the player has earned an upgrade, the player must select an upgrade in order to progress; the player cannot hoard upgrades. Furthermore, the permanent upgrades are segregated according to the “ranks” that the player has earned; the ranks are practically the number of upgrades that the player has earned. Therefore, it is inevitable that the player would have to select the lower-ranked upgrades first before being able to get the others.
The permanent upgrades can greatly change the player’s experience, generally for the better. The first of these and perhaps the ones that the player would want are the additional gem slots for the stations.
The later upgrades – if they can even be called these – are different ship variants. These will be described shortly.
SHIP VARIANTS – OVERVIEW:
There are three major models of ships: the Gumball, the Banana Split and the Jelly Roll. These handle very differently, and will be described further later.
The next three models of ships are variants of the Gumball; these already come with gem slots installed. These would be useful if the player intends to replay specific levels of a campaign without starting from the first one.
THE BANANA SPLIT:
The Banana Split has a symmetrical and simple layout; the devices on either the left or right hemisphere of the ship are linked together with a single ladder. Furthermore, the Banana Split has 20% extra health.
Its setback is troublesome, however. It has internal force fields that prevent more than one crewmember from being in either side of the ship. This means that the crewmember on either side of the ship has to handle the devices on that side of the ship alone. Furthermore, the Yamato Cannon and the shield stations are within these sectioned-off zones, meaning that when either device is operated, the turrets on the same side of the ship will be unmanned.
THE JELLY ROLL:
The Jelly Roll functions very differently. Firstly, it has a bouncy hull that nullifies any collision damage from hitting hard things in the environs; this does not prevent damage from colliding with enemies or clearly spiky obstacles, but such collisions are rarer than those with rocks or walls.
Secondly, its thruster is not a device that scoots along the exterior of the hull. Instead, it has a fixed mount, meaning that changing the direction of the thruster also changes the orientation of the interior.
This can seem to be a problem because the development of the player’s skill with the default ship greatly depends on the interior maintaining its orientation. Indeed, getting used to moving crewmembers about in the Jelly Roll can be very difficult.
Fortunately, there is some effort on the developer’s part to mitigate the frustration of adjustment. For one, the interior of the ship is symmetrical.
For another, the directional control inputs for moving a player-controlled crewmember through the interior of the ship are relative to the camera. For example, if the ship is upside-down from the perspective of the player, pressing the control input to move right will move the player character towards the right, relative to the camera instead of the player character.
However, this scripting does not work well if the ship is oriented in an oblique angle. The determination of the outcome of the directional inputs can become ambiguous, requiring some trial and error or just reorientation of the ship – either of which takes time.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
If it is not obvious already, Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is yet another indie game with 2D visuals. Specifically, it is the kind of indie that uses sprites that are cobbled together from discrete components, or artwork that has been split apart and recombined together with animation rigs.
The crudeness of such a visual style is most notable in the designs of the bosses, most of whom have articulated bodies. The ones that do have recognizable limbs animate in rather bizarre ways. The least impressive is Ursa Major, which does not come off convincingly ursine or even comical (at least to a jaded person’s eyes).
The biomechanical appearance of the “Anti-Love” monsters make it difficult to consider them as organic due to obviously rigid body parts, or cybernetic since they have undulating parts. Most of them are flying things that slide about the screen. Their attack animations are more significant than their movement animations, however, which is just as well because it is easy to know which ones are about to make their attacks.
The best visual designs are those for the crewmembers and the ship. The player-controlled humanoid crewmembers have hilarious poses and they also dance when passing by other crewmembers. The space-pets have similarly entertaining animations, especially when they move about the ship and climb ladders; they are convincingly as adorable as the developers intended.
The “space” in this game is intended to be very much cartoonish and not intended to be believable. Everything moves about sluggishly, as if space is composed of gel instead of void. Everything also has bright colours and next to no shadows.
The game relies on particle effects a lot, specifically for weapons-fire. Anti-Love ordnance has obvious colours and particle effects that are distinctly different from those of the player’s ship, such as sickly green for their energy projectiles. Therefore, it should not be difficult for the player to see incoming shots.
SOUND DESIGNS:
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime may have sapient characters, namely the anthropomorphic animals. However, no one has any legible voice-overs. In fact, the only character that communicates in a language – a certain Professor Rabbit – utters repetitive gibberish. The crewmembers do not speak at all. The Friends do little more than scream in terror while they are incarcerated, and giggle when they are released.
On the other hand, the developers never were trying hard to convey a comprehensible story.
As for the Anti-Love entities, only the bosses, i.e. the corrupted constellations, ever express any emotion. The non-boss ones lack any emotion, much less personality, which is perhaps intended because they are as creepy as they are comical.
The sound effects are mostly for combat. Every weapons-fire has its own distinctive noise, so the player should be able to notice incoming shots. Most of the sound effects are expectedly sci-fi.
SUMMARY:
Personally, I was expecting the game to be much more frustrating than I thought it would be, considering that the game was intended for couch co-op play. The lack of mouse-based controls for the computer version of the game really reinforced the impression that the developers made something that they would want to play, but not necessarily everybody else.
Therefore, it is heartening to know that the developers have indeed thought of means to fine-tune the game’s challenge. Having enemies only attack when they are on-screen and requiring them to have wind-up animations make it easy to know when to move crewmembers in order to respond to their actions. The space-pet is also mostly reliable, which is a rarity in video games with CPU-controlled allies.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is of course quite short. However, for its price-point at this time of writing, it is perhaps of reasonable value. More importantly, this is game that would not wear out its welcome too early, even for a jaded player.