Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://ularis-badler.itch.io/archrebel
Price: Suggested $2
Blurb: “Archrebel is a sci-fi turn-based strategy war game, strongly inspired by the classic Rebelstar released in 1986. In Archrebel, players control a few dozen units on a grid-based map, performing actions limited by a classic action-point system similar to the one found in UFO: Enemy Unknown.“
If you do social media (I don’t, but a lot of you do), this is the link: https://x.com/UBadler
Paging through pages and pages of lesbian/furry visual novels on itch.io in the “Linux” games section – because that is apparently all that qualifies as Linux gaming – I finally found something I am excited about. I went panning for gold and finally struck out. Based on Rebelstar, a game I could not figure out because I thought it was rock guitarists…
To my mind as a kid, it looked like a guitarist and a drummer and a stage. I tried to get the drummer to be the drums man. The other gun looks even more like a guitar!
Moving right along… (https://zxart.ee/eng/software/game/tactical-combat/rebelstar)
So it was only when Rebelstar II and Laser squad released a few years later that the penny dropped. It bit me like gambling addiction; if I had more TV time, I’d probably have played it more. Alas, the ZX Spectrum connected to the family TV and you would have to compete with said family for time. That the game was genre defining is not even up for debate, and it played in glorious 48K of memory. I bought the UFO games twice, once on stiffy disk and once on Steam… So it was a no-brainer for me to pick up this demo. I also expected it to be tiny, but more on that later.
Now obviously, the game does not look like the picture above in all eight of the Speccy’s colors, but there was an attempt made to keep the feel of the original. I have heard people say it is in the vain of the commodore 64; NO it is not, the commodore 64 had fat chunky blocky graphics to start, and it also never got the game: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/rebel-star/
Installation
I downloaded the huge demo, because of Unity, and unzipped the file. I set the execution bit on the only executable file, and launched the game from my terminal. Bad idea. I knew it was going to lag, Unity player and all, but it took ages to run. However, running the file via the file manager, it was twice as fast. Lesson learnt, so you don’t have to. I still feel like the game used the on-chip graphics instead of my dedicated Nvidia graphics, but I’m sure that will come.
Gameplay
The game was happy with 1920×1080, but not so happy with 4K. Some people may be upset about the graphics; to them I say, just hold on, the game is only in v0.13!! (Yes it is this polished at 0.13.) However, I do not mind at all. This game is supposed to be played in your mind, like reading a book. (If you ever played caves of Qud, you would understand). That is also not the only thing they (CoQ and this one) have in common, the demo is huge; from what I can tell there’s a few hours worth to be played! I am ten minutes in (OK maybe more) and already I am willing to give it the thumbs up.
The only issue I have with these types of games is the font. Dammit Jim, we are in 2024 not 1948. The Speccy had something like 192×192 resolution, we have ten times that and more!!! Why does the font need to sucketh this much?
As you can see from my screenshot, everything has a health bar, even the grass and trees and rocks, so it makes me think destructible terrain is in the works, that would be really awesome! For now, we have pretty much Rebelstar, with updated graphics and sound and missions. As this game is not done, I will not discuss the graphics and sound in their own section. From what I have heard so far, I can gladly say the sound is top notch. The robotic voice is perfectly ‘retro-futurism’. The colors drive home the alien planet and the missions… need work. Let me explain what I mean. You start out with your squad, on a rescue mission, to rescue Bravo Team, armed with pew-pew pistolies and no extra bullets? While Bravo squad is armed with assault rifles? You soon run up against the planet’s native inhabitants, who are pretty resistant to your “defence pistols” and you are retreating faster than you advanced. There is also an enemy faction / rivals on the planet that you need to watch out for. It is just after you get pushed back by the bulletproof “Zerglings”, that you discover the planet also has “Hydralisks”. (I am using Starcraft terminology here as the unit names in the demo will have no meaning to our readers.) These “Hydralisks” do like 32 damage, and your units have 28 health, so if they get in range and spit acid, you have lost that unit. Just like in the UFO series of games, the further you have to shoot, the less accurate you become. This creates tension (you have limited bullets) and the risk / reward mechanic comes into play. You do find other weapons, and you can see the Warhammer influence here with the chain sword that you find early on. You also have mechanical units, like robot sentries, etc.
While the game is very heavily retro-inspired, it does improve on some of the mechanics, but I would love to see rubber banding for selection, to move your squad all at once when there are no enemies nearby (‘travel mode’ as the game calls it). The game does feature some really satisfying “number go up” hit markers when you actually manage to shoot an enemy, and it is great.
If you are interested, go to itch.io, download the game, on the download page click: “just take me to the downloads”, and try this game out! If you like it, I suggest buying it now while you can get away with paying $2 USD. I have a feeling this game will follow in the footsteps of keeper RL or Dwarf Fortress.