Voyageur review
:: NOT SO DEEP SPACEPrice: $3.99
Version: 1.1.1
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Voyageur is a text-based, choose-your-own-adventure that's reminiscent of games like 80 Days. In it, you are the pilot of a space ship that is able to jump between planets thanks to the power of “the drive.” I really like the aesthetics of Voyageur and was enamored with it on my first playthrough, but subsequent visits revealed the seams of the game that show that it is a pretty small and repetitive.
Journey to the center of the universe
In Voyageur, there is no set goal for you to accomplish, though each playthrough does allow you to pick a past, which mostly just serves to determine what you'll start the game with. No matter what you determine your goal to be--whether it be trading, exploration, or something else--you'll have to accomplish it by hopping planet to planet, all the while making sure that you have enough money to keep your ship supplied and moving forward.
Although you are in space, the idea of moving “forward” still applies here, as a major conceit of Voyageur is that “the drive” that powers your ship allows for intergalactic travel, but only toward the center of the universe. From a gameplay perspective, I imagine this bit of story was invented to explain why players can't revisit planets after leaving them.
Feel the cosmos
All of Voyageur's adventuring is controlled through a series of futuristic-looking menus overlaid on a star map. This look, combined with Voyaguer's awesome ambient background noise, does a great job of creating a space-faring atmosphere.
On top of this, Voyageur has some really great writing. Everything from planet descriptions to the outcomes of your adventures you go on provide some rich details and colorful language that really liven up the menu-laden experience.
Small spaces
As great as a lot of aspects of Voyageur are, it's a little too light on content to feel like a deep space adventure. After an hour or two with the game, I started seeing a lot of repeated content being recycled over and over again. This was the case with the launch version of the game as well as the current one which added some content.
This repetition wouldn't be so bad if Voyageur was perhaps a little more difficult. In my time with the game, there would always be an initial difficulty hump to get over at the beginning, but from there the rest of it was a cakewalk. I had no trouble surviving or affording to buy things, which made the bulk of Voyageur become a quest for new content, which was extremely hard to come by.
The bottom line
Voyageur's biggest problem is that there isn't enough of it. For a game about exploring an environment as vast as space, the whole game becomes pretty familiar and feels really small after spending just a short time with it. As much as I love what is currently in Voyageur's package right now, they way it gets recycled makes it hard to recommend.