by If you took bits of the Shadowrun universe, combined it with the Privateer setting, then threw in Legend of Grimrock movement, you’d end up with something a lot like StarCrawlers. Oooh….now I want to go play Legend of Grimrock II again. My God, I could listen to that theme all day – it stacks up against the likes of Halo (I’m not linking that. If you don’t know Halo, I can’t help you) and Trine in terms of soundtrack.
If you haven’t played Legend of Grimrock or its sequel, the astonishingly cleverly named Legend of Grimrock II, stop reading. Go to Steam. Play both. Wonder why the sequel is named after Grimrock at all. Revel in two of the best dungeon crawlers of the last decade and possibly of all time. Wonder why these puzzles are so hard. Come to the conclusion that Legend of Grimrock II is one of few “perfect” games anyway (along with FTL) – simple in concept, sublime in its execution, and utter ecstasy to play. Return.
Oh! Right. StarCrawlers. Yeah, it’s okay. I mean, it didn’t do itself any favors by making me think of Legend of Grimrock: in a fairly bizarre design decision, you can freely look around a 3D environment, but only move in four directions. It doesn’t work well, but you definitely need to keep in enabled to see things in corners. Still, it has a certain charm, and I can appreciate the unique blend of space RPG and dungeon crawl. You are given a series of missions by the local barkeep that require you to travel (well, be ferried by your partner) to wrecked starliners and retrieve information for megacorporations to earn money and level up. At least in my playtime, each level had at least a couple unique-but-not-unsolvable puzzles to solve – like finding the name of a cat to use as a computer password or a suspicious arrangement of empty cans for a combination lock. It’s still in Early Access, but I’m definitely interested in playing more once I have the time – and because of that, it goes to Tier One.