Space 1889 is a rather unique role-playing game from Paragon Software based on the paper and pencil game of the same name by Games Design Workshop. The game takes place in an alternate nineteenth century in which Thomas Edison invented space travel.
The game begins in London where your party is planning an expedition to Egypt in search of King Tutahnkamun’s lost tomb, but ranges throughout the solar system of this wildly imagined version of history. Each segment of the overall quest yields important clues and items to further you upon your way to the ultimate reward, immortality.
In addition, many useful items and skills can be acquired from completion of the numerous optional side quests. Complete as many of these side quests as you can, as they are rarely a waste of time.
Character creation is fairly straightforward with the player choosing the abilities, gender, skills, and profession of each character in the party. Care must be made in the choice of skills since little opportunity of learning new skills or even improving existing skills will occur later in the game. Fortunately, with a party of five members all the important skills can be covered.
The game is oriented toward puzzle solving and interacting with the various individuals you will meet in the course of your travels, including historical figures like Jules
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Verne and Thomas Edison. Combat is minimized, which may be a good thing since I considered the interface for it to be rather awkward. Anyone who has played either of the MegaTraveller games will find this system familiar. Those who are new to this system, as I was at the time, may become frustrated at the limited control they have over the actions their characters take. In brief, you must pause the combat to issue orders to your characters then re-enter real time where your party will execute their commands. You retain direct control of one character, but it is easy to lose track of the conditions of the other party members. I can’t help thinking that a turn based combat system would have been vastly simpler. Ship to ship combat is handled in a similar fashion, but since you only have one ship to keep track of, the effect is less aggravating. Still, combat is something better avoided if possible since repairs tend to get expensive, particularly at the beginning of the game when funds are somewhat scarce.
I did not comment on the graphics or sound until now because in my opinion the storyline and playability are vastly more important. That said, the presentation of the game is a top down view reminiscent of the first BattleTech game, though somewhat improved for early VGA systems. The sound, like the graphics, is neither exiting nor detracting. Much more than that I cannot say since I usually played the game with the sound turned off.
Overall, I would say this is a game that is definitely worth a look. The game more than makes up for relatively minor flaws in the combat system with an interesting storyline and a unique universe to explore. Four out of five stars.
