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60 Parsecs! review

60 Parsecs is a humorous story driven game by Robot Gentleman, it is the follow up to their 60 seconds game. (I am deliberately leaving out any story info bar the basics so as to ensure there are no spoilers!)

Set in the cold war era your space station is just about to be hit by a nuke and you have 60 seconds to grab what supplies / crew members you can and get into the escape shuttle. This part of the game was delightfully frantic and your decisions at this stage in the game can greatly effect the rest of your playthrough. This in and of itself is enough to encourage multiple play throughs to discover the best combinations.

Watch the 60 Parsecs! game trailer below:

Once you have escaped via your escape pod is where the game begins in proper form. Your task as captain is to keep your crew and yourself fed, in good health and sane as well as making choices about the situations the game throws at you which can vary from who to use to fix a problem or what item to use. The game is entirely turn based and once you have made your decisions its time to end turn and see how they pan out.

In each turn you have a chance to craft items such as soup (you’ll be making a lot of soup!), first aid kits, duct tape (used for fixing everything!) to name but a few. Each turn you are also presented with a scenario by the ships computer and must respond. Scenarios range from ‘this is broken, what / who will you use to fix it’ to there’s an alien outside what shall we do? Choosing the right person / tool for the job will greatly increase your chances of success and likewise choose badly and you will quickly find yourself surrounded by dead crew members. I should note that if you, the captain, die its game over.

View some 60 Parsecs! screenshots in our gallery:

Getting the balance of what to craft or upgrade, who to feed and trying to make the best decision each turn was extremely tough. It threw me somewhat as the cartoony art style led me to think that the game would be much easier than it is. Even though you have no pressure of time within each turn I felt the pressure mounting as my soup supplies started to dwindle, people were getting killed due to my poor decisions and I felt the end looming. I lasted a total of 17 turns on my 1st attempt which is pretty poor! Subsequent attempts see me keeping my crew alive for much much longer though I’m not sure if I’m any nearer to completing the game and presumably saving at least some of the crew.

In summary, 60 Parsecs! is deceptively hard to master and will keep you coming back again and again as you learn the best approaches to each situation. It’s humorous approach stops it from getting too heavy and myriad of crises you will be forced to deal with will have you scratching your head for hours. If you like story driven games that don’t have the time pressures of ‘live action’ games then I would definitely recommend it, on the flip side if you like your games fast and furious then its probably not one for you.

60 Parsecs! was reviewed using a digital code supplied by the publisher.

Publisher: Robot Gentlemen Developer: Robot Gentlemen Release Date: September 18th, 2018 Reviewed On: PC/Steam

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