Atari has been experiencing one thing of a renaissance the previous few years. With the launch of the Atari 2500+, a console that performs all Atari 2500 cartridges however on HD screens, and the acquisition of porting specialists Digital Eclipse, the corporate has made it clear that it’s again as a correct online game producer. That is true on the software program aspect of issues, as nicely, the place Atari has been releasing a gradual stream of reimagined classics, together with qomp2, which we had loads of enjoyable with. Thus, it was with some enthusiasm that we seemed ahead to assembly with Atari at this yr’s GDC to get a have a look at Lunar Lander Past.
Jason Polansky is the Lead Producer at Atari who guided us by way of our time with the sport. The query of why Atari needed to make a sequel to the unique Lunar Lander has an attention-grabbing reply: developer Desires Uncorporated cherished the real-life sense of stress within the unique, particularly because it pertained to piloting and touchdown the participant’s ship. There was additionally a way among the many improvement workforce that there was loads of story potential to mine that the unique wasn’t capable of, particularly given the constraints of the unique Atari {hardware}. Thus was born Lunar Lander Past.
South African animation studio Bewilder dealt with the hand-drawn animation discovered all through the sport, which could be very daring and putting. Each time the participant will get a brand new automobile or visits a planet, an animation will play, actually serving to to promote the sport world as a correct setting and facilitate a robust sense of immersion. Desires Uncorporated could be very large on narrative and storytelling, so the cutscenes are all totally voice acted, whereas characters have distinct, fleshed out personalities.
The target of every stage is essentially simply to land the ship, however within the center there are different issues to do, too, serving to maintain issues attention-grabbing. Choose up gasoline and well being, full goals, and land your ship—the levels at all times felt full of issues to do. Piloting any of the 4 ships that may be unlocked can also be its personal problem. The completely different speeds and motion paths of the ships requires cautious piloting, and there’s loads of satisfaction available from nailing the movement of motion and having the ability to navigate with ease. The levels themselves, as least those that I acquired to go hands-on with, had corridors with full of splintering paths and pickups difficult the participant to gather them. It was all strong enjoyable that managed fairly nicely.
Whereas the levels and story are all manually designed, there’s one element of the sport which is procedurally generated, that are the varied pilots that may be recruited. These pilots convey with them completely different talents and buffs, together with extra environment friendly gasoline burn, higher dealing with, and so forth. When performed on the very best issue stage, Lunar Lander Past’s pilots received’t regenerate if a mission goes south, which is a pleasant nod to video games like Fireplace Emblem. This makes it integral to strategy levels with warning as a way to maintain round a pilot who has a extremely advantageous set of expertise (and retains the entire stress theme going robust).
One other layer of gameplay revolves round pilot stress ranges. As missions are accomplished, pilots discover themselves needing remedy as a way to keep on. There’s one model that permits the participant to get remedy with out expending sources, after which there are others that ask the participant to pay up, which decreases the downtime wanted to get a pilot’s thoughts proper. Once more, as talked about above, this sense of stress is a part of what drew Desires Uncorporated to the challenge within the first place. Taking the real-life feeling and reworking it right into a mechanic, nevertheless, was an attention-grabbing choice to make, as I felt prefer it was a pleasant means of including in technique to the sport. There are even segments of play the place the bodily sport world begins to alter because the pilot’s psychological state impacts their notion of actuality.
Lunar Lander Past is ready for an April 23, 2024 launch date. Followers who wish to purchase bodily are in luck, as there’s not one, however two editions that might be obtainable at launch. The usual version will come out for $29.99, whereas the collector’s version, which comes with an artwork guide and a steelbook case, will drop inside a number of days of that and prices $49.99. We’ll have a evaluation of Lunar Lander Past HD up round launch time, however within the interim tell us what you consider this reimagined Atari basic down within the feedback and on-line!