Redshirt Review

There are a lot of bizarre games out there. Redshirt, developed by celebrated indie developer Mitu Khandaker, could be one of the oddest I've played yet. It all stems from the core concept of the game; you play as a member of an intergalactic space station, but rather than blasting aliens or flying futuristic rockets, you’ll spend the majority of your time with Spacebook, the ship’s social networking system. Seriously, that’s essentially the whole game. It may sound like a slightly silly prospect, but beneath the odd exterior is an interesting people and resource management game that provides a clever look at how people use social media. Unfortunately, the game as a whole is somewhat lacking.

Redshirt is an easy game to adjust to. After all, Spacebook is essentially a stripped down version of Facebook, only populated with aliens, cyborgs and box-people. A relatively simple UI makes communication a breeze; which is thankful, as you’ll be spending a lot of time communicating with your fellow space men and women. As with real life, you have the option to post messages to individuals, make general comments about life or even set up events. You don’t get to actually dictate the wording of the posts, but there’s a real strategy to posting the right things at the right time.

You see, the aim of the game is to escape from the space station within a certain amount of time. There are numerous ways to get out, but they all require you to either make the right friends, or make enough money. Yes, there is an actual aim to all the socialising. Which gives you a half-decent reason to play Redshirt through to the end. With an end goal in sight, you can begin to shmooze the right people (which is an actual in-game trait, by the way), and set your character on the path to success.

The game begins with you as the lowest of the low, a literal level zero with few friends and fewer aspirations. The first port of call is to get yourself up the career ladder; a tech-tree like system which allows you to climb all the way to captain’s assistant. Redshirt features an RPG-like skill building system in which certain activities, such as going to work or taking part in events, grant you boosts to certain skills. These abilities are required to advance up the branching career tree. Well, you can play it straight and aim to become a jack of all trades. The other option is to use Spacebook to buddy up with the folks in charge. Your partner, after all, probably won’t care if you don’t have the required skills for the job, especially if you’re paying for her/his outings.

That’s where the strategic element of Redshirt comes in; Spacebook is about more than simply making friends with extraterrestrial beings. It’s ultimately about manipulating people, using the means you have at your disposal to get something out of them. If you know who’s in charge of a certain promotion, then you’re likely to try every trick you know in an effort to get them to like you. You’re only given a certain number of action points per turn, a turn being a single day of life on-board the station, so you have to think each decision through and weigh up the positives and negatives.

I found that actually developing my skills became a very minor part of the game. It’s far easier to grow a strong relationship with the ‘hiring manager’ of the job you’re after and acquire the promotion through them. This means that a key part of the game is practically removed from the gameplay experience. I rarely chose an event based upon the skill boosts it would grant me, but rather the increase or decrease effect it had on both my character’s happiness and physical well being. The most important element was who I chose to invite, as this would determine the degree to which they liked me (and would therefore employ me). Of course, you can choose which path to take, be it social or vocative, but it seems to be a lot easier (and more fun) to manipulate your way to the top.

Keeping balance of your character’s well being is an important element of the game, yet one that can frustrate at times. Happiness in particular is often hard to keep track of; you may have made your character the most jovial and spirited man on the space station, but single events can crush all your efforts in one fell swoop. ‘Away missions’ are short segments which see your man and two crews of fellow space men and women take to a foreign planet on peacekeeping missions. They’re not interactive, and you have no control over the events of these missions. This is especially annoying considering they can have disastrous results. If members of the missions die, and they almost always do, then your character takes a huge hit on their happiness. A trait that has numerous negative effects.

The mechanics of Redshirt are questionable, the turn by turn cycle can start to feel like a drag after a prolonged session. There’s not a whole lot of variety in the gameplay on offer here. Thankfully, the game features a wonderful collection of sci-fi and general geek culture references that should please any fan of intergalactic action. The constantly updating Spacebook feed is a hotbed of humorous and cool comments, all made by your friends. References to Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, Monty Python and various other nerdy media forms are all brilliant to spot and enjoy. There are also some genuinely funny popular culture references, generally with an amusing spacey twist. It’s not enough to redeem the tiresome base game, but it’s a neat addition to the whole package.

Redshirt is an unusual game, that much is undeniable. It may have familiar elements of resource, people and time management games, but they all come together in a theme that’s wonderfully original. Sadly, the execution of the core game mechanics have been handled poorly, I would go so far as to say that it can get a little boring during normal play. Even if you really invest in the digital people you’re interacting with, there just isn’t enough variety in the gameplay to have a truly enjoyable experience. This is an interesting experimental game, and also an acute demonstration of human manipulation. If nothing else, Redshirt will make you appreciate the power of your online actions.