William's Wargames

I decided to give Star Drifter a shot, as a hybrid CYOA and Solo RPG. There are quite a lot of mechanics to the game in the vein of an RPG, and it feels far less like creative writing than other games in the genre that I have attempted to play.

One can play through a whole adventure in the span of around an hour and a half.

The main goal of the game is to become a glorious hero by doing valiant deeds, seeking alien civilisations and blasting them to bits. This is represented by ‘Star Points’ that you can accumulate through the course of a game, of which once you have accumulated ten – the game is won.

The mechanics of the game are fairly straightforward – if you have fuel you can move one hex and trigger one random event, whether that is combat, exploration or discovery. Statistics in the game are symbols, which show you which column on a resulting table to roll on/against for attacking, piloting, etc.

The main engine of the game is the event system of which there are hundreds – and as your notoriety level ramps up these get more and more extreme.

My little pilot got into some interesting adventures – exploring abandoned space hulks, being discriminated against in space cantinas, meeting a friendly renegade captain who gave me better guns, and running a small smuggling operation.

There were times when I felt the odds were totally stacked against me – being ambushed by fighters and an advanced warship while limping along trying to find a repair base and no hope of evasion, for example – but I managed to win my trial game by sacrificing my life force to an ancient alien to tip me over the balance of 10/10 star points.

Overall while I found the game entertaining and certainly worth the £2.28 I paid for it, I’m not sure I’d eagerly get back to it soon.