If your body is hurled into space from earth to 60 parsecs away, you won’t survive. Maybe as an Astrocitizen, you might but even then, it’s not certain.
Reviewed: PC
Platforms: Playstation 4, PC via Steam, Switch, Xbox One
Developer: Robot Gentleman
Publisher: Robot Gentleman
Release Date: September 18, 2018 (PC)
MSRP: $14.99
Review code provided by Robot Gentleman.
60 parsecs is a sequel of 60 seconds, a funny yet dark strategy game. It centers on you being the captain of a crew that escaped the Earth after it got nuked. Everyone’s lives is in your hands as you try to survive outerspace.
While playing it, I remember “Come Fly With Me” quest on Fallout New Vegas where you meet the REPCONN ghouls. This must be their adventure when they went to outerspace! However, those guys didn’t need food or oxygen. The dialogue and choices remind me of Dead in Vinland, another survival strategy indie game. However, Dead in Vinland had combat and 60 Parsecs is pretty casual. It only makes sense that this one doesn’t have combat. Lastly, the mad dash for supplies and materials remind me of Don’t Starve, the characters run in a quirky manner and it makes me smile just remembering it.
Robot Gentlemen, a developer from Poland, made 60 parsecs as a sequel. There was a hint in one of the endings to 60 seconds being a cliffhanger and that is where 60 parsecs probably continues. Additionally, I’m looking out for Stray. You can watch the video here.
60 Parsecs is most definitely funny, its catchy music wonderfully complements its funky cartoon art style. The story of 60 Parsecs is that you have become an Astrocitizen and the world is ending in the next 60 seconds. You’re about to scavenge items to bring to outerspace. In that timeframe, you should throw in a couple of crew members too. The character you picked at the beginning has their own Captain’s Goal. My favorite captain is Emmet Ellis and you need to make five successful Intelligence attribute decisions if you pick him. Emmet’s backstory is that he’s an overqualified chemistry teacher.
There are three phases. You start the game scavenging, picking up anything that will help you in the journey. How many you can pick up and how fast you can run depends on which character you pick. There are 5 characters so one person will be left to die, unfortunately. They are: Baby Bronco, Deedee Dawkins, Emmet Ellis, Maegan Mann, and Tom Thomson with Baby Bronco being the fastest with highest agility and Tom being the slowest. It’s worth noting that in the Voyager mode, each character has his own win condition, so that has its own challenges.
The second phase is when you’re in space and you begin micromanaging your crewmates. Crafting, eating and assigning crewmates to daily quests is what needs to be done. The third phase is finding a planet and landing on it. This is when you’re able to use the scavenging machine and hopefully by then, you survive.
There is definitely a lot of reading, and it’s not really boring because the dialogue is fun and comedic. It does get frustrating because there is permadeath. As long as you remember your mistakes, each playthrough is bound to get better and better. It was made as a casual game, a game that you play on your free time and doesn’t have a high skill cap to play as long as you read and pay attention.
After trying each character, I probably won’t play it again. It’s only because of personal preference. I like having combat on my games so setting a sequence and going to the next day doesn’t do it for me.
Even so, I recommend people to get it. It is pretty casual and perfect if you have short bursts of gaming time. You can pick it up and stop playing anytime.
I definitely won’t survive hurtling through space at 195 light years speed but maybe in a spacecraft with 4 other people, I might survive.
