Frontier Runner

Frontier Runner is a 2D retro browser/Flash style game with a sci-fi premise. Gameplay, well, it's a lot like Star Control 2 but not the cool SpaceWar! inspired spaceship combat, it's just the bit where you go down onto the planet surfaces in the llittle lander thing. Instead of a huge galaxy map to explore, you kind of hobble between systems and put up with dialogue that's really nowhere close to StarCon 2. The static art images are decent enough but lack any cohesion which makes me think they might be stock art or something. The game starts with narration, and the narration is terrific... that is to say, it's a terrific demonstration of why it's important to hire actual voice actors for video games. In this case it seems the developer just tried to do it themselves, and it shows. Likewise for the writing. There's a lot of technical flaws here, the game is badly optimised. There's no working full screen mode, resolution and controls are locked which dumps this below acceptable standards for a modern PC game. The concepts here are fine, and there's a lot of very clever ideas (because they're largely ripped off Star Control 2). And that's the problem... they're also not as good as Star Control 2. It's great that the developer has made this free, but then, Star Control 2 is released under open source license as "The Ur-Quan Masters" (don't pay for the Stardock version, it's unacceptable for them to be charging money for an open source game!). So if you really want to play this kind of space exploration game, and don't have any money, get that instead. The developers did a noble thing by releasing this game for free, that shows belief in their product and is a great service to the gaming industry. I hope they can go on to get hired by professional development companies who can make full use of their talents without compromises.