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Reviewed April 3.2005 by Dave "!FT!Marauder" Kratky
Publisher Cornutopia Software
Developer Cornutopia Software
Genre Very open ended arcade space combat/trading sim
Requirements

DirectX9, Windows 9x/NT/XP/2000
We Recommend

Download it. Try it. Buy it. It really is a darned good little game.

Test Machines

AMD 64 3200+/1gig DDR/MSI Radeon x800 Pro 256 meg/Creative Labs Audigy 2 Value/Windows XP Home
The Good

It's tiny, runs like the devil on any comp, is VERY open ended and quite addictive. Music is excellent, and I like top down games.
The Bad Don't like not being in the high score list if I choose to be able to restore my save games on death. (Hey, I'm lazy.)
Downloads

Demo (Purchase to unlock!)
Replay Value

Virtually infinite, it's extremely open ended.
Cost

$21.00 USD for download version. $37.50 USD (incl. shipping) for CD version.


Ah, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the little guy, especially when it comes to making video games. I've always longed for the old days when games were small and fun, and most of all: different. It seems to me that in the last few years most game companies are all about finding that next bandwagon and jumping on it. World War 2 Shooter? Hell yeah! Not like there weren't 20 of them released last year, we should make one too! Sometimes it's nice to take a break from the multimillion dollar, hundreds of people involved, hollywood-like atmosphere of today's games. It's like a breath of fresh air sometimes to go back to simpler times and that usually involves either getting yourself some emulator software, or looking around for independent developers who are still in it for the love of games, and aren't afraid to make something a little different. A good example of this is Starscape, which we bought and fell in love with way back in late 2003. Viva la little guys.

I received an email a while back from Mark Sheeky of Cornutopia software. He'd seen my review of Starscape and wondered if I would be interested in doing a review of a little game he'd released called Lost in Flatspace. I downloaded the game from his site a few days later and... Wow. Once I played around with the controls a little bit, I got totally hooked on Flatspace.


Premise

In the distant future, the planets in the universe have crumbled into nothingness, all that's left is the people, debris and space stations. Against this background appears... You. Your ultimate goal in Flatspace is to hunt down the components for a "Galactic Hyperdrive", but the game is pretty much totally open ended, so play it as you want.


Gameplay

Flatspace is an arcade space combat/trading game. You fly your ship on the X and Y axis looking down on it from above. If you've ever played Asteroids, the control scheme and battle is rather similar, although on vastly larger scale of course. The galaxy is divided into sectors that you travel between using your Hyperdrive. When you use your hyperdrive, it's got a recharge time so you will often get jumped or find yourself in the middle of a firefight before it recharges and you can jump out again. I've died a few times by catching a stray shot, so watch yourself out there.

There are a wide variety of missions and gameplay available, largely based on the career path you choose to pursue. You can be a trader and do risky cargo runs across the galaxy, sign up as a police officer, or be a pirate (arrrrr matey!) and prey on the aforementioned characters. If you so choose the game will also pick a class randomly for you. My personal favorite was the Bounty Hunter, as there's nothing like hunting down scum and bringing them in dead or alive for the cold hard cash. In my case dead or alive often means dead, my favorite type of prisoner.

Space Stations that are scattered around will give you missions, ranging from courier and taxi jobs to bounty hunting and mining. There's quite a variety even within mission types. For instance, some bounty missions require you to simply hunt down and kill a character, some require you to bring them back with you, alive. All of the AI controlled ships in the game actually exist and are actually playing the game as you do (more or less), and playing in a vast and living universe makes for a very interesting game indeed. Some ships will ignore you, some will help you in a fight, and some of them will try to kill you and loot your corpse. You can radio for help when you get jumped, and just like in real life: Sometimes you get the good guys, sometimes you get more sharks. As I mentioned a few sentances ago I've even sometimes died by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once I jumped into the middle of a huge firefight between police and pirates. I'd saved just before, and I was curious as how exactly the game engine worked... Was it really a living universe? I jumped in a few times to the same sector after waiting a few more minutes each time, and the situation I wandered into on the other end was different every time, as the battle progressed. As Mr. Spock would say: "Fascinating."

When on space stations you can also repair your ship, buy new ships, weapons and equipment (more on this later), and hire crew. You can also purchase trade items if you're going to be working on the trading aspect of the game. Frankly I didn't get into this part too much, as I was enjoying killing things too much.

There's two different types of game to choose as well. If you want to get your name into the hall of fame, you must choose death is permanent. If you die, your save games are deleted. Undead characters may reload their save games on death, but are not allowed into the high score listing. Due to the fact that I die quite frequently in this game, especially when I first started playing, I have to be undead. All it takes is one small mistake in battle and you're one dead SOB. An excellent example of this is me forgetting to buy more counter measures, and getting a missile launched at me in my next sortie into space. Woops. Dead. The undead system is one thing that I wish had not been included in Flatspace, as I'd really like to be able to get my scores saved.


Graphics/Environments

Flatspace features all 3d graphics, from an above head view. It's actually quite pretty for this type of games, with lots of explosions, weapon and particle effects. Textures on spaceships and stations are fairly simple, but have a good bit of detail and look nice. The starfields in the background are very pretty, and fighting in asteroid fields, nebula or other cluttered areas is quite the experiance.


Sound and Music

Excellently done. The music is a sort of dream trance/space/ambient mix, with a rather old school demo sound to most of it. It goes perfectly with the game, there's a tune for the intro, space stations and more music fades in and out as you enter new zones in the game.


We need guns. Lots and lots of guns.

Your initial ship is chosen for you based on your profession, and can be upgraded as you have the money. The Flatspace site claims that the game boasts over 100 different ships, and from what I've seen so far I believe it. The number of ships and equipment upgrades are simply mind blowing, from different types of laser/energy weapons and missiles to mines, counter measures, different types of engines, armor and even repair droids. (A REAL life saver when you're out in the dark somewhere and you have an accident or have your engines shot out.) Just working on getting a bigger and badder ship could keep you occupied for weeks. The missions you can take on will depend quite heavily on how you've got your ship rigged out. A huge slow ship with lots of cargo space, but short on weapons isn't a good choice for a bounty hunting mission for instance.

Combat is hectic, and it's a darned good thing that there's a training mode. Learn your keys, and practice in here until you can at least hold your own for a bit. Enemies are relentless in their pursuit of life and happiness, generally meaning they're going to kill you, take your cargo and spend it on their happiness. The controls in the game will take a while to get used to, but once you learn what everything does they're quite simple, just unlike anything I've ever seen before in a game. When you get attacked you won't have much time, or room for mistakes, so some competance is good. ;)

One interesting thing about the ships in Flatspace is the ability to equip fighters and turrets to some of the larger ones. I haven't managed to get myself a carrier yet, but I've been told that fights between turret and fighter equipped enemies can be quite tense.
Bugs

The only thing we found during play testing was once the help overlay got stuck on, but saving and reloading the game got rid of it. Nothing was found that detracted from gameplay in the least. The game has been patched on a regular basis as well, which is very nice to see. :)


Conclusion

At $20 you can't beat Flatspace for value. It's an addictive little game, with a unique type of gameplay. I've been playing it on and off for quite a while now, and I'm not even close to exploring the entire universe or getting bored. There are some very frustrating moments in the game, as the player is basically no better than the AI players in the game, and death sometimes seems a little too easy. It's not as flashy as a high profile game from a larger developer, but the fun is certainly there. I would like to see more of a story, but when you do that you tend to cut down on the open endedness of a game. It's an amazing accomplishment for one guy to come up with a game like this. Flatspace is a highly recommended game, and we're going to be keeping an eye on Cornutopia to see what they come up with next.

Overall Rating (4.5 frags outta 5)



Interview

Mark Sheeky of Cornutopia software was kind enough to provide us with a copy of Flatspace to review, as well as taking the time to answer a few questions for us!

Q.
Age?

A.
32

Q.
Where do you live currently?

A.
Cheshire, Northwest England.

Q.
Marital status?

A.
Single. The relationship parts of my brain are full of science.

Q.
Last movie seen?

A.
On the big screen, The Incredibles. On TV, Murder Inc.

Q.
Favorite type of music/artist?

A.
All types from classical to metal. Music has always been important to me.
Favourite songwriter probably Kate Bush. Also like Queen, Electric Light
Orchestra, Jean-Michel Jarre, The Beatles of course.

Q.
Favorite video game of all time?

A.
On the C64, Airbourne Ranger or Project Stealth Fighter. On Amiga, Frontier
Elite II or X-COM. On PC, Half Life.

Q.
What games are you currently playing?

A.
I review games weekly for bytten.com so I get to play mostly low budget
indie games (whether I like it or not, humph). The last one was a playable
but very shallow game called Gink in Trouble. The only objective was to fall
off a series of platforms at the correct rate. The last AAA title I played
was Halo 2 on a friends X-Box.

Q.
How did you get into programming games?

A.
I started when I was 10 or 11 on an old computer called a Dragon 32. On the
C64 I made a few really simplistic games, and in 1991 on Amiga started
making simple shareware and freeware ganes. I didn't get any good at it
until the late 1990's. I got a couple of Amiga games published but got
ripped off by the publishers every time so I sold the Amiga and switched to
PC. My first title under the name Cornutopia Software was a turn-based
strategy game called Arcangel which was like one of my favourite games,
X-COM (known as UFO: Enemy Unknown in the U.K.). I couldn't find a publisher
though so a few games later in 2002 I decided to try and sell my games
online myself.

Q.
Is this your full time job, or a side line for you?

A.
It's a full time job for me. I've been gradually bulding the business up but
I still earn below minimum wage at the moment. Making money in the indie
game sector is about the hardest thing to do but at least I'm making
something unlike many of the developers I know.

Q.
Leather or Lace?

A.
Liquorice

Q.
Startrek or Starwars?

A.
Startrek. The new Star Wars films are just too bad for any sane adult to
enjoy. Actually Enterprise is (was?) awful too, primarily because Scott
Bakula sounds like Daffy Duck when he's acting angry. TNG rules. Perhaps the
new Doctor Who will userp both contenders.

Q.
If you could say one thing to everyone on Earth, what would it be?

A.
Fumulucks!

Enough with the personal stuff, let the game (inquiries) begin!

Q.
Have you worked for other companies in software development, or is
Cornutopia your first endeavor into the field?

A.
I've always worked for myself with regards to game development. I've only
collaborated on one game, Hilt I on Amiga in 1994, so all of my games are my
own work too. Most of my other jobs were temporary factory things although I
did work for a year in a computer sales office before I got fired for being
rubbish at it.

Q.
Is Flatspace the first game you've developed?

A.
Ooh, No. Flatspace was close to the 40th full game I've developed since I
started writing shareware under the name of Scorpius Software on Amiga in
1991. All of my Amiga games are now freeware (well in fact 90% of them
always were and deserved to be!). Most of the games currently on the
Cornutopia site pre-date Flatspace too, but Flatspace was the first game of
that type (space trader). Hilt and Blade were simple rogue clones though so
it might explain the random/freedom elements in Flatspace.

Q.
I have to say that when I look at FlatSpace, the general premise reminds me
a bit of older games such a Elite and Wing Commander: Privateer that I
played many, many moons ago. Did you get the general idea from any other
games and genres?

A.
I had written a rogue-like game before on Amiga and I like Nethack a lot. I
also liked Elite and I thought it might be psosible to cross the two. Around
that time I got to review Starscape or Bytten and thought that it might be
possible to make a top-down space exploration game. So the rundown of
influences include Nethack, Elite and Elite II: Frontier, Grand Theft Auto,
Starscape and Cosmic Pirate. The control method came from some of my space
shooter games including Roton.

Q.
What inspired you to make a game like Flatspace, specifically. Did the idea
just pop into your head, or was it a gradual project you developed?

A.
Long story. I spent over a year working on my first big game Arcangel and it
was a seriously wasted year. After that I swore that I'd only make games
that took a few weeks to make so I made a few typical indie-casual game type
games including Bool and Radioactive. After a few months, and once I had
started selling online (up until the end of 2002, I was still aiming for
retail publishers) I thought it might be possible to make a game with a lot
of depth and playability but without the graphics and level design that
really takes the development time up. I work alone remember so it's vital to
keep the workload low or I would be working on one game for several years,
by which time the hardware and standards had changed. I began brainstorming
for ideas that would have lots of playability with few graphics and a
top-down space shooter crossed with Nethack and Elite seemed to fit the
bill.

Q.
I'm very impressed that you did the coding, graphics and music for
Flatspace... How do you have the time to do all that, and on a side note,
have you considered brining in other people to help with your projects?

A.
Like any art form (and programming is) you get faster over time, but it
still takes a lot of intense work and dedication. I tend to draw up a strct
schedule for development and stick to it even if it means 12 hour days. I
find the most time consuming aspect of a game is the look and graphical
effects because they take a lot of experimentation in 3D programs, art
programs and the program itself to get exactly right. The programming isn't
too hard providing you know explitictly what you want to do, so it's really
important to plan everything and stick to it. Andrew Williams, my friend and
collaborator on Flatspace was most useful duirng the planning stage because
we used to bounce ideas off each other. I made sure I had almost every
aspect of the game worked out before I programmed it. I've only worked with
someone else on one other game, Hilt 1. I don't have plans to collaborate
again... for starters I don't think I could afford it and secondly it makes
the development time longer not shorter.

Q.
What was the development time like on Flatspace?

A.
About 9 months.

Q.
What was going through your head the day you released the game?

A.
Panic. I released the game on December 22, three days before Christmas. The
17Mb upload was barely enough for my meagre dial-up modem so it took several
attempts just to get it there. Then I discovered a could of bugs and
(foolishly) decided to fix them there and then instead of waiting for the
next version. And only then was my Internet account suspended due to
bandwidth overload so I had to quickly find a new priovider. All of that and
I had Christmas shopping to do.

Q.
During development, did you ever have any late nights when it felt like you
were never going to get the @*#&$(@* game done?

A.
Lots, like any developer, although I tend to stay motivated because I make a
plan and stick to it. Usually it's a long climb to reach a certain point in
the game, so slow and steady wins the day.

Q.
Have you found that the majority of your customer are purchasing the
download version of your games, or the CD-ROM versions?

A.
Download. The CD version comes with some printed starmaps, and you still get
the key for the download version but the printing and postal costs make it
more expensive so people tend to go for the download version only.

Q.
Did you considering trying for a distribution deal with a publishing house?
(If yes/no, why/why not?)

A.
Yes but couldn't find one. I didn't look too hard though. I don't trust
publishers. On Amiga, five publishers out of the six I dealt with ended up
selling the game and not paying me anything. I've got one distribution deal
in the pipline but it's U.K. only.

Q.
The question that I inevitably ask of everyone I interview: People are
looking at different games to purchase. What do you think will draw them to
Flatspace?

A.
Quite simply, value. I think there is more depth and playability in
Flatspace that just about any indie game out there. Currently at Bytten
we're doing our indie game awards and the amount of games there that have no
replay value or depth is staggering. We've reviewed over a hundred indie
games and 90% of them are little more than one screen of block sliding.
Flatspace is a whole universe that is different every time and contains some
things it will take months of play to discover.

Q.
Any future plans for more adventures in the Flatspace universe?

A.
Yes. I'll be starting work on a sequel at some point this year. Flatspace 2
will be a similar sort of game, a top-down space trading game with a strong
emphasis on player freedom, but there will be a plot, and some important
changes. Some new stuff and some removals of things in the current game,
like there will be difficulty levels for example to make it easier on
beginners. Sometimes unfair deaths can occur that I want to stop, and there
will also be new equipment and ships, and the ability to play a 'classic'
Flatspace game too. Work on the original game will continue too. If the
retail version gets the go ahead then I'd like to produce a special update
that will incorporate some of the balancing changes, and make that available
to registered users. A multiplayer palm version is being developed by
ExtremeAI too which will make Flatspace one of the very first games to use
the new handheld version of the Torque 3D engine.

A few quick questions about the gaming industry as a whole:

Q.
Do you think that the large gaming companies take away, or contribute to the
gaming comunity and it's creativity as a whole?

A.
One can't really lump all large companies in one boat. EA is a notoriously
bad employer within the game industry and Microsoft's Windows XP as an
operating system is frankly rubbish, although their gaming arm is quite
friendly to small developers. Nintendo and Sony are good at encouraging new
ideas too. Ultimately it boils right down to who the manager is.

Q.
What's your opinion on straight online distribution for software, do you
think it's the way of the future?

A.
Probably. Consoles are starting to include online access as standard now,
enabling them to get their games directly via the Internet. The British
government recently announced a massive investment in digital cinema
projectors, and it looks like movies will one day be shown on the big screen
via electronic distribution instead of old fashioned celluloid. One day our
hi-fi's will have Internet access to get their music too. I would say that
digital distribution will continue expanding for all types of entertainment
for a decade at least. There will probably always be books though.

Q.
Any words for other people thinking of getting into the independent game
development business?

A.
Don't quit the day job because you'll need a safety net. Also, make worst
case (and best case!) contingency plans. Don't spend more than 12 months on
any one game because it will never be worth it.

Q.
What's on the horizon for Cornutopia Software?

A.
My last game Taskforce: The Mutants of October Morgane is out now and I'm
busy promoting that. In late April I'll be releasing a twitch space shooter
called Gunstorm which will harken back to my Amiga days, and I'll be
starting Flatspace II after that for a possible release at the end of the
year. I've also got a text-based game creator system that I'll probably make
public at some point. In non-game stuff I want to record some of my
electro-pop songs with a singer friend Steven McLachlan. When I'm not making
games I'm making music or artwork and that will probably continue ad
infinitum. My music and pictures can be perused on my personal site
www.marksheeky.co.uk.

Q.
Anything else you'd like to add?

A.
1. Edward de Bono's philosophy is flawed.
2. Mark Hamill is a good actor.

I think that's everything.

Mark


 
Screenshots
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