Astronaut: The Best

I've watched Astronaut: The Best's development over the years from afar. When I was first introduced, my understanding of gaming and the gaming world was rather limited to AAA titles and popular IPs. While not necessarily a bad thing, I missed a lot of nuance and variety that can be found in the indie space. Astronaut: The Best is a wonderful roguelike with hilarious procedurally generated astronauts that you are tasked with directing and managing (or destroying). The story contains humorous dialogue with witty character remarks and interactions, and has quite a few choices which provide opportunities for multiple playthroughs. There's magic, tabloid news, television spectacles, and a mystery whose threads will take some time to fully unravel.

This is the kind of game where each person who plays is going to have their own story to tell about something wild or hilarious that happened. My first time to space, the pilot used an escape pod because he forgot to find someone to babysit his kids! The other astronauts did not make it back from space that day. The game just kinda sucks you in with intrigue after intrigue. I kept going because I wanted to see what would happen next. I can't wait to see what hi-jinks happen during my next mission!

After spending hours trying to get a decent score and a team for a space launch, everything got destroyed by a lvl. 1 Maverick trait that triggered two bonus screwups for untrained stats and instantly killed my pilot before launch. How fun. I heard that they were going for Papers please vibes, but the whole game seems to enjoy giving you situations with guaranted punishment no matter the pick. After a few too many it just becomes more of a gut punch then a challenge. The concept itself and gameplay is fun though, could be great with some polishing.

This game is not a bad game; it's just not for me. I would say it's more of a visual novel with preset, branching narratives than a roguelike with a procedural story that is advertised as being very different every time you play. It's very samey, and there's actually not much of a reason to replay missions because so much of the dialogue and story is the same every time. It feels like a punishment to have to reread all the same long paragraphs of text you've seen before just because you failed previously, clicking nonstop to gather all the information you just gathered before in some of the mission types where you have to investigate. The stats are all really grindy too, and it's frustrating to train your character so hard but have everything left up to luck in an unexciting spin wheel, that even at "100" percent odds can still fail, and has happened to me. All training does is boost your chances of winning the spin, but you can only train so much, and often you will need two or three stats really high to even stand a chance, which is very hard to accomplish with the stress system and limited time. It's less of a fun challenge and more of a nuisance. It can be silly at times, but the occasional funny wasn't enough to save it for me. Sorry for mostly griping, but I just had to let my thoughts out. I'm glad that a lot of people do seem to like it.

(Note: I played through and completed the whole game while it was in beta.) Okay, so usually when games make claims like "it's fun to fail" I tend to think that's nonsense. I'm a very competitive person, and I'm not above save-scumming to get the result I want. But I never save-scummed once while playing Astronaut the Best. The writing is so genuinely funny, and the things that can happen as a result of succeeding OR failing are so absurd, that I just fully accepted each weird, wonderful playthrough as my own story. Of the five missions, #3 was my favorite (Spacewolves!) but as you go on, there's some pretty cool world-building that gets layered into the personalized procedural goodness. I really like how the game blends all the different forms of storytelling. Why can't there be more games like this one?

The writing was delightfully weird and funny. And while I haven't given the roguelike mechanics enough time to settle in, I'm charmed by the execution so far. Definitely recommend!

Need a change of pace after your mind has been flayed in Baldur's Gate or something fun to tide you over before the next WoW patch then give Astronaut:The Best a try. There is a learning curve but the game does seem to do a good making it fun to fail. I'm looking forward to continuing to put some time into an enjoyable game with a good sense of humor. I'm sure I'll get my moneys worth.

Takes Kerbal Space Program's "failure is fun" motto in a very very different direction

This game is absolutely WILD. I had played a bunch of the beta, and can confirm that the full title is just as out there. There's no other game that's going to get you weird stories to tell your friends quite like this one. For instance: that time I agreed to let a TV producer's daughter become an astronaut and she immediately decided to try to rob a bank. Or the time a serial killer killed one of my astronauts, thus securing her a position on my mission team, only to immediately burn up in space due to being a vampire. It's a management sim and a comedy game, which there aren't nearly enough of. Great if you like really surreal, offbeat humor. Absolutely highly recommend!

First words in space "Wow I didn't think eating sunbeams would be this cool in space, hey kids do drugs!", -Space ship proceeds to fall apart on impact and all astronauts die. 10/10, would buy this game again!