The Long Journey Home- - Star Control 2-inspired roguelike from Daedalic Entertainment

[CreamyBlood]

"Your saves and option settings are not affected by the update."

Heh. Heh-heh.

 

[MRY]

Worried that these kinds of patches might be too little too late -- some trolls pushed it down below 70% positive, and the game only broke 50 simultaneous players like once in the past two weeks. :/

 

[MRY]

Went to check in on the game, and it seems my optimism, while fabulous, was somewhat misplaced. Despite some big get-out-the-vote pushes, it lapsed back into Mixed on Steam, simultaneous players is almost never breaking 50 any more, and the most popular positive review since the nerfing patch begins "It is not hard enough!" Steamspy puts it at ~27k owners. The one silver lining is that it maintains a strong GOG lead review -- a rapturous 5/5 review -- and the third review is 5/5 too. That should give it long legs on GOG, a site that is likely to appreciate it more than Steam, anyway.

All said, I think it's somewhat disappointing that it didn't break through, but if you figure 27k owners with $25 in revenue a pop, that's almost $7million. Not exactly something to sneeze at for a game with a tiny budget, a tiny team, and no PR.

 

[Jimmious]

All said, I think it's somewhat disappointing that it didn't break through, but if you figure 27k owners with $25 in revenue a pop, that's almost $7million. Not exactly something to sneeze at for a game with a tiny budget, a tiny team, and no PR.

Yeah almost 7 million. Only about 6 millions and 325.000 shy of that

*It might be that you either miscalculated with 270k owners or you didn't write that in your comment

 

[MRY]

Oh. Added an extra zero. Well, $700k is pretty great too!`

 

[agris]

What's an order of magnitude between friends.

Your company's QMS would have caught that MRY!

 

[MRY]

What if Primordia has only sold 17k copies. Or 1.7 million!

 

[Jinn]

I honestly think that if they would have changed the planet landing mini-game into something with some more substantial exploration/rpg elements, this game would have done a lot better. Perhaps the biggest criticism I've seen on steam forums, etc, it that it is too "hard" and repetitive. I have to agree with the later.

Besides that, I really enjoy the game as a whole and look forward to getting back to it someday. It's always sad to see a developer try something new, make some slip-ups, and kind of get shit on in the process.

 

[Infinitron]

What if Primordia has only sold 17k copies. Or 1.7 million!

 

[Zombra]

Well, I said I'd wait until it hit $20, and today's Daedalic sale finally went there.



I'm still wavering though, seeing that dark red Mostly Negative Everyone Hates This Game on the sale page makes me pause. oasis789 and MRY, please remind me why I shouldn't wimp out and should get the damn game.

 

[Jimmious]

Wow the reviews are mostly negative... Is it because it's hard??

 

[MRY]

Since I was mostly cheering for this game in hopes that it would spur a new Star Control, which now has been spurred, I no longer feel as obliged to do so. I haven't played the game and can't vouch for it. You might check out the leading GOG reviews, which tend to be a little more elaborated than Steam ones. Conveniently, they are 5-Star (for the first), 1-Star (for the second), 2-star, 5-star, 3-star. So it's a good range. https://af.gog.com/game/the_long_journey_home?as=1649904300

The game has sold 25k copies, so clearly it did something right.

 

[MRY]

Since I was mostly cheering for this game in hopes that it would spur a new Star Control, which now has been spurred, I no longer feel as obliged to do so.

talk about counting your space chickens before they hatch

To quote Sherwood Anderson's famous short story "The Egg," "One unversed in such matters can have no notion of the many and tragic things that can happen to a chicken." To paraphrase the Arilou, my ignorance is my armor.

 

[MRY]

Also, its player base seems to have grown a lot thanks to the sale, so there may be some updates forthcoming.

 

[Iznaliu]

The game has sold 25k copies, so clearly it did something right.

I don't think that is any great achievement for a game with the level of media coverage it received.

 

[Zombra]

I'm underwhelmed after the first hour. Asteroids and Lunar Lander are fun enough, but even the reduced price of $20 seems steep for a two-pack of 38-year-old games.

That leaves the atmosphere and writing, which I was looking forward to. The wonder! The mystery!

It started off fine, with the discovery of space station with an enigmatic glowing stone, which I swiped. Not amazing, but fine. Then my crew said, welp, we'd better start collecting minerals and fuel to patch our ship and keep us flying. In a movie, this would be the establishment of a boring status quo as a contrast for the fascinating drama about to unfold, but here the boring status quo is the story. This is a tale about a team of workers digging for rocks and analyzing gas clouds, where any drama is a distraction to be avoided if at all possible.

But ... aliens! There are aliens, right? The intrigue! The comedy! The horror of meeting life forms like ourselves, but so unalike!

A ship flew up piloted by a cool looking mantis person. She immediately asked if I wanted to help her find some new slaves, no hello, no what is this strange ship, no welcome to our quadrant bipeds. This slave thing sounded like a bad situation to get into, so my crew politely declined. She said, and I quote, "Be that way," and flew off. This was the first contact between humanity and an alien race from a distant galaxy. "Be that way." My crew, no doubt deeply affected by this moment forcing them to reevaluate mankind's place in the universe, suggested that I start looking for minerals.

Planetside, I met a cute little puppy-rat-dude. He had nothing to say but was willing to respond to a few questions. Asking about his race, I learned that they don't like spaceships but do like warp gates. Then he bought a cactus from me for 20 credits, a currency I had never heard of before that moment, and which I then used to buy some fuel for my ship. Then I flew away.

Feeling there must be some drama with the aliens somewhere, I hailed another passing mantis ship. After a few desperate attempts to talk about anything that could lead to a plot hook, I was informed that my faction reputation had been penalized for bothering them too much. They flew off.

The thought occurred to me that this would be a good time to leave the house in real life and go buy some groceries, which I did. The ten words I exchanged with my cashier were deeper and more interesting than anything I had seen up to this point in TLJH.

So ... what's left?

 

[MRY]

inb4 git gud

[EDIT]

The sale is going great. Simultaneous players broke 60 today, compared to a peak of 27 last month, 59 the month before, and 60 the month before. I suspect it'll go even higher, maybe even breaking the 100 ceiling this weekend. I'm hoping that the sales surge gets Daedelic to revisit the game. Notwithstanding my point about spurring the new Star Control, it seems like this game deserved better than a rating in the bottom quartile on Steam and a mere 22k copies sold, which is what Steamspy is claiming at the moment. The game it "enhanced" was Out There: Omega, which sold 66k copies and has generally positive ratings, despite being a ported phone game with pretty basic graphics.

 

[Zombra]

Most of this is stuff already covered in my review but try a few different runs with different seeds. Obviously things will be much harder if you randomly start in slaver or pirate space than elsewhere. If you're learning the basics, you will want a party that supports that: Pilot, Engineer, Mission Planner, Astronaut. Don't be too fancy with the ship and lander either just go with the balanced set. And Story Mode is always an option if you find the learning curve too steep for your liking.

I'm concerned you missed the thrust of my post. I had zero problem with the difficulty. I'm good at Lunar Lander I guess. My issue is that there was no drama, no pacing, no sense of discovery. Encounters with aliens were less thought-provoking than a cab driver yelling at me in real life. They're just kind of there, flying around, not caring about me and my crew doesn't care about them. I appreciate the concept that my party aren't "chosen ones", I really do, but the fact that absolutely no one in the game world finds the situation novel is a huge buzzkill.

Based on my brief experience, I decided that $20 was too much. Refunded and will maybe try again when it's bundle fodder or much deeper in the bargain bin.

 

[Zombra]

In the TLJH-verse, humanity is just a backwards species in a crowded universe, so the aliens generally aren't too excited to meet you. Your first contact is their tuesday.

Yeah. I get why it makes logical sense, but ... it seems like the writer had this cool idea and wanted to make it foundational to the world, but didn't consider whether it would be compelling or fun to be a part of. When everything in the galaxy is "meh, nothing special", that has an effect on my enthusiasm as a player/audience member.

"Let's make a movie about boring people!" may be a clever reversal of the usual over-the-top heroes, but without a definite plan to the contrary it will produce a boring movie.

 

[MRY]

100 simultaneous players! Looks like people are finally warming up to the game.

[EDIT: You laugh, Infinitron, but per Steamspy it went from <22k copies to >31k copies from being on sale. I'm sure some of that is noise, but it's still a huge.]

 

[thesheeep]

MRY I don't get your obsession with this game.
It just seems to be an extremely odd experience with roguelike elements and arcade gameplay (!!!!) mixed into ... something.

 

[MRY]

I love SC2 and for years had an idea for a similar game to TLJH so I feel a certain quasi paternal attachment.

 

[MRY]

Weird. It's now back to 22k copies

 

[LESS T_T]

Weird. It's now back to 22k copies

 

[circ]

Had this lying on the desktop for a while, figured I'd actually give it a try because the vid seemed semi-interesting, in that Starflight kind of way, although I guess this is more Star Control. Then 15 minutes later I'd had enough of the interface and controls and said fuck this.