vostok inc

Apparently, it was more than FIVE YEARS AGO that I last played and completed this. That’s not possible. The Switch itself is only 18 months old, right?

Well, Toby off of the ugvm Podcast mentioned he’d started playing it recently, and that reminded me what a great game it was, and so here we are.

I won’t go into all the details of the game itself because I did that last time. What I will say, however, is that on this playthrough I struggled to get started. You see, there’s no main menu on the start screen, so you just go straight into your last save. Which was from five years ago, on level 51, with the game completed. It took a while to find the setting to New Game+ it (which only carries over your achievements) – they’re in the options if you’ve arrived here via Google struggling to find it yourself – but then I was away.

This time, I didn’t finish it until I was well into the 70s in terms of level. And had more money than it seemed practical to spend. Not sure how that happened.

You know Cookie Clicker or Cow Clicker or Clicker Heroes or that paperclip clicker? Pointless but somehow addictive, right? And you know that little known twin-stick shooter Geometry Wars? Great, yeah? What about those tamagotchi thingies? Lovely.

Now bung them all into the same game. That’s right, the same game. A single game with all these elements in. There’s no way that can work.

But it does. You develop planets in a solar system in classic clicker style: buildings generate money each second, which you use to buy more buildings. More expensive buildings, and upgrades to buildings, generate more money per second. You keep this up, increasing earnings through ever higher powers of ten.

But while doing this, you have to fly from planet to planet to develop each. And you get shot at on the way and oh look – it’s a twin-stick shooter now. Shooting enemies and asteroids provides more money, although it’s the developing planets that really gets you the big cash.

Use some of your money to upgrade your ship’s weapons and abilities, and then take on the boss before expanding your business empire into the next solar system.

Oh yeah, and while you’re whizzing round the galaxy, why not rescue some executives? They inhabit your ship and – providing you keep them fed and entertained virtual pet style – they’ll give you a money generating bonus. They’ll also give you a minigame each to play should you have some time to kill while waiting for money to build up. They play out on a replica LCD screen, and are simplified variations of Flappy Bird, Galaga, R-Type and even Doom. They’re hardly full of depth, but they’re fun (and hard!) little diversions.

Then, before you know it, 20 hours have passed. Oops.

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