rymdkapsel is something else. It’s a strategy game set in space. You control little rectangles and give them orders. They can build more rectangles (and squares too!). They get attacked by triangle-looking things that fly. Did I mention that the resources are also in the form of various shapes?
While playing, you’re tasked with expanding your little “station” by way of ordering minionsto do various tasks. When you first start off, you’re supplied with a limited amount of each of the three types of resources: blue cubes, purple squares, and yellow pyramids. Each resource is used in building new rooms and corridors for your station. Every room has to be attached to a corridor in some way. Corridors are relatively cheap to make, and you’ll need them to get to the four monoliths in each corner of the map.
You start off with a few minions, who can each be given a single task. If a minion is placed into the “construction” group, then that minion will work on building new rooms and corridors whenever the player places a new one. You’ll probably want to start off the game by building the basic resource-gathering rooms. The blue cubes are generated out of thin air and the purple squares are harvested from the various pools of them scattered throughout the map.
The yellow pyramids, however, require a bit more effort to earn. First, you must grow food in a “gardens” room, then, a minion (or two, or three) must be tasked with “food service”. These minions will then bring the green trapezoids (well, I think they’re trapezoids) into the “kitchen” room, which then turns the raw food into the yellow pyramids for use in other rooms, like the quarters (which gives you two more minions) or the weapons room.
The weapons room is essential for protecting the base from attack. Every round (yes, the game plays in rounds), a series of attackers will come in and attempt to destroy your minions. If all of the minions are destroyed, you’re gone. The weapons room, when minions are assigned to it, allow the minions to wield weapons to defend against these attackers. I tried to clump together all of my weapons stations, but still failed in the later rounds, as there were simply too many hostiles for my minions to deal with.
I found that the rounds started progressing a little too fast. As I got farther into the game, the rounds got progressively shorter, and more aliens attacked the base. There’s actually a monolith that can help out with this, as it slows down the rounds. I started going for this monolith first after my first play session.
Your ultimate goal is to survive as long as possible. The game does give you some minor “goals”, but your major goal is to just survive. There are four monoliths in each corner, each containing a separate ability to help you out in the long run. One of them improves your extractor’s efficiency, with another improving your minion’s walk speed. Once you reach a monolith, you can assign up to three minions to research it. This takes quite some time, and I had to withdraw those minions several times due to incoming hostiles. I’ve yet to complete a game in which I’ve researched all of the monoliths, but I was close!
rymdkapsel is a fantastic game overall. It looks stupidly simple, but it’s just so addicting. Highly recommended.
cublikefoot 