Captain Forever (web-based constructional space shooter)

[673f8514d7c92Kolya]

°retronCaptain Forever is the first (and free) part in a series of Flash games created by Jarrad Woods (Farbs). It has you constantly reconfiguring and upgrading your spaceship with the mouse while moving around and shooting enemies from your keyboard. Whenever you destroy the core of an enemy's ship you can easily attach any remains of his ship to your own in pretty much any way you like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IQBR6cyrs

I will readily admit that this is my type of game. It has glowy little space ships that can be built up like Lego bricks and many other details that make it lovable. From the faint reflection of a pilot's head on the monitor (I HAVE THAT HELMET!) to the radio signals and the way shots from your spaceship sound like musical notes and that you can export your ship configurations with a simple link (Try this giant battlecruiser). 
Access to later versions of the game costs $9 payable via paypal. These add more complex gameplay like cloning of ship configurations, mining asteroids and various new weapons etc. I'm not quite clear yet whether the promised adventure mode has been added yet. But I'll soon find out.

Game: http://www.captainforever.com/
Blog: http://www.farbs.org/
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Forever

[673f8514d8085RocketMan]

You've introduced me to some of the most whack and messed up games, which I will readily admit jive perfectly with my eccentric personality.  I dunno where you find this shit but keep it up

EDIT:  Actually this looks a lot like that Flatland movie

[673f8514d81edKolya]

Mmh, never heard of that. Just watched the trailer for the Flatland movie and then started reading on Wikipedia about tesseracts and other 4-dimensional shapes.

This is the soundtrack of the gametrailer in the first post. I love it so much.

[673f8514d835bRocketMan]

?  I didn't even know about this fancier version of the movie but the aesthetic is similar.  What I was making reference to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfglluny8Z0) was the fact that all the characters had visible inards like a beating heart and brain and stomach etc. kind of like how the ship has a broken heart.

... and yes.  Music =

[673f8514d844ashug]

First thing when I thought when I saw that helmet Kolya, all the pilot's missing is a cigarette xD

Addicting game!

[673f8514d854cKolya]

I just noticed that the Farbs behind Captain Forever is the same guy currently working with Jon Chey at Blue Manchu on their upcoming game Card Hunter.

[673f8514d8825Kolya]

Looking at the FAQ section of Card Hunter you may have noticed that last question:

Will Blue Manchu be doing other projects? Will you ever do games like Irrational Games made?
Yes, we hope to do other projects in the future, and possibly first-person 3D games. We have nothing to announce yet though.

Well I wish they would start with that, because unfortunately when I hear "card collecting" I feel a yawn coming up. And watching that launch trailer, I...I don't know. Is this comedy? A bunch of pseudo geeks battling it out in a board game while their geek girls with the big glasses make surprised and disappointed faces. Hello Jon Chey! The 90s are over. So is stone age. And this is the sort of thing that makes me feel good about having moved on. Oh well, it's probably supposed to be comedy. I'm sure the actual game will include hot babes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m60MJCvfxw

[673f8514d8995Kolya]

Long-term mining operation at work.
My ship is sitting at the fringe of an oxygen bubble here, shooting at a huge boulder that fills the lower right of the screen. Actually my weapons were too weak for the job but I wanted to see if the boulder would eventually accumulate enough energy to shake and explode. After about 45 minutes it did.
The water bottle holds down the space key to fire.

[673f8514d8bbfKolya]

Captain Forever is now available on Steam in a 3 game set that includes the variations Captain Successor and Captain Impostor.
Unfortunately the version named Captain Jameson - which later became The Dawn Star and included mining and oxygen bubbles didn't make the jump. Apparently farbs gave up on this build due to problems with the renderer and time constrictions.
However the trilogy on Steam now boasts a new faster renderer and a standalone game executable as opposed to the previous web based game. Still highly recommended.

There is also Captain Forever Remix on Steam which exchanges the lonely, scary, harsh and lonely appeal of Captain Forever for a 90s cartoon look and more approachable gameplay.

[673f8514d8d49JML]

Why would anybody not release a Linux version when putting a browser game on Steam. Zzz

[673f8514d8e46Kolya]

If there were standalone Adobe Air players for Linux, I'd agree. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Before you ask, it was always a Flash game.

[673f8514d8f5aFarbs]

Will Blue Manchu be doing other projects? Will you ever do games like Irrational Games made?
Yes, we hope to do other projects in the future, and possibly first-person 3D games. We have nothing to announce yet though.

Stay tuned 

[673f8514d9044Kolya]

Uuuaaaah!

When? What? Where?

[673f8514d9155Farbs]

 

We don't have an announcement plan yet, but I predict we'll kick it off and start talking publicly before the end of the year.

[673f8514d92b3Kolya]

Okay, so the project that Farbs teased above was of course Void Bastards.
And yesterday he gave the Captain Forever trilogy a major update, implementing multiplayer in the new game mode Captain Together.