Beyond the Chiron Gate

Have played Beyond the Chiron Gate and it's precursor Seedship on mobile for a long time. I can thoroughly recommend this for a fun text adventure game about exploration. Especially on something like a tablet or Steamdeck on the couch for a cozy gaming session.

I really wanted to like this as I appreciate seeing a nice little game, but after playing longer the RNG has really pushed me away. There's a very heavy reliance on RNG and not a lot of ways to control, you have to buy a lot of upgrades to really get info about where you're going, and earning any of the survivability/crew upgrades are exclusively chance based, and frequently earned by deliberately pushing yourself into a dangerous situation so you can then roll on a sub-50% chance that's in the middle of a chain of events that is already messing you up. You lack control on who gets damaged by anything most of the time, meaning that you can't try to sideline a damaged crew member while healthy ones take the lead. The RNG has also a very serious impact on the whole campaign - if you're really unlucky with finding traces of aliens, you're gonna have a hard time buying any of the upgrades that help you find more aliens, so a run that didn't get much of anything at the start will end up entirely reliant on flying blind to get more. Meanwhile a run that gets 200 xenology on the first system is pretty much already won as you can easily just immediately visit homeworlds of spacefarers and earn hundreds more points. In general there's a lack of control and very punishing RNG (there's several instakill events that lack any kind of clear signs that you're gonna run into them), and while the game isn't hard it gets a bit annoying to just keep rolling dice that don't like me without much way to control it.

At the time of writing, first review for this product on Steam. I have the mobile version, I was playing it for at least a few years, absolutely loved it. Worth it. Even Seedship was good too, they are both simple yet addicting.

Beyond the Chiron Gate stretches the limits of what a text based game can be. It is like a novel, a science fiction game and, if you have a good imagination, you can see your astronauts as they take risks to discover the secrets of the Gate. You set your own difficulty level. Land on high gravity planets? Expect injuries. Burn through your volunteer astronauts with risky choices and you won't discover what you need to know about the Gate. I have many more hours on this game as I purchased it on Itch.io and still play it as it reminds me of the some of the endings of Alpha Centauri.

I liked the soundtrack, and writing is good, yet the game is too easy in my opinion, replayability could have been better if the players won't be able to finish the game with their very first playthrough... Also I would liked it more if it had a few static images that could work as a visual aid when random events happens to the crew members. Overall a decent game, but for such a short game I think it's slightly overpriced, Vampire Survivors costs $5 and have 100+ hours worth of content, this game can be completed in 2.5 hours (if you are lucky) and it costs $10 bucks ($9 with the launch discount), $5 bucks would suit it much better imo.

The RNG is so unfair I feel like I can't do anything. Nothing like Seedship in that way.

I played seedship on my phone YEARS and years ago and loved it, but it definitely fell off of my radar due to general repetitiveness. I think Chiron Gate has definitely addressed a lot of those concerns, making the game more complex. I'm an achievement hunter, so I appreciate the addition of goals for players here. I think at the end of the day, if you're the kind of person to see a game's ending once and then drop it, this game isn't really for you, but if you like to set goals for yourself and like to do some trial and error in your games, you'll really like this.

I remember asking John (the developer) to consider putting this game on Steam. Lo and behold, here it is! And it's great! Thanks John!

So many cool science details and sci fi ideas!

Исходя из того, что вы, вероятно, вышли на эту игру в поисках "чего-то такого" - думаю, можно рекомендовать. Здесь сплошной текст (разумеется, английский) и пиктограммы. В первую очередь игра ориентирована на любителей астрономии, которые ощущают разницу между пульсаром и красным карликом, но такие познания совсем не обязательны. Человечество обнаружило врата ушедшей цивилизации. Каждый заход в них отправляет в случайную систему, но "срок годности" врат ограничен, и главная цель игры - найти способ стабилизировать их. Так что собираем команду из шести классов (каждый отвечает за "свой" тип ивентов, корабль сначала вмещает только троих), ныряем в неизвестность и пытаемся наисследовать в очередной системе как можно больше, пока не закончились топливо или члены экипажа. Вернувшись домой, на очки исследований покупаем апгрейды, и все заново. Текстовые ивенты... Специфические. Можно обвинять игру в том, что их не слишком много. Когда вы высадились на очень жаркой планете, то ждите сообщения, что отказала система охлаждения скафандра. И в зависимости от состава вашей команды будут варианты решения проблемы - с указанием вероятности успеха. Рандом есть, никуда не денешься. Но все же мне как обывателю представляется, что галактика и есть скопищем относительно похожих друг на друга кусков камня и газовых гигантов, и на этом фоне разнообразие ивентов можно считать, хм, типа как реалистичным. К тому же, временами вы будете находить и разные формы жизни, и заброшенные космические корабли древних, и даже живые цивилизации. Все же интересно, что там под очередным скучно описанным камушком; иногда встречаются неожиданности. Члены экипажа прокачиваются, что дает улучшение к вероятности успеха в ивентах. Корабль апгрейдится, но не совсем очевидно - апгрейды надо добывать как раз "броском кубиков" в ивентах. В целом игра кажется довольно короткой и не такой уж сложной, когда поймешь, что именно надо делать. Небольшой проект для тех, кто обладает хорошей фантазией и интересом к исследованиям. Из чего-то схожего можно рекомендовать Colony Prospector (менее научная и более странная).