1st of June, 2022
[Alone Among the Stars]
Rescue Log

Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada: a game about exploring little, wondrous planets at your leisure—I added the framing of a “rescue log”.

Planet 1: Palette #

Find 1

SEVEN_CLUBS 6 (plants/immobile life, near a volcano, spotted while resting)

I stopped on the shore of the lake in a dead volcano's caldera bowl. It's when I washed my face I noticed the colours underwater. The pond weeds—their leaves were like many—coloured stained glass filtering the sunlight, and after I plunged beneath…

I swim through shafts of dazzling light, great and small, that slowly drift through the water like an aquatic light-show. They blend and disappear and reappear like music according to the whims of cloud and wind.

Time to return to the ship.

Planet 2: Creakstem #

Find 1

SEVEN_DIAMONDS 3 (animals/mobile life, near a volcano, came upon it suddenly)

Find 2

KING_CLUBS 5 (plants/immobile life, floating in the air, spotted while resting)

A planet covered in giant flowers, so huge they barely move in the wind—but I heard them creak and groan as they slowly tracked the sun.

It happened suddenly when I landed. Enormous butterflies swarmed my ship, maybe because of how radiantly colourful it is. They crawl all over the canopy, many-eyed wings quivering in curiosity, gem-like probosces tinkling on the observation bubbles.

Eventually I gave up. Whole strata of butterflies peeled away as I rose above the atmosphere—only to be caught in the fluff of giant dandelion's seeds. I let myself drift for a while, floating above the cloud mesas, before I went on my way.

Planet 3: Mirror Maker #

Find 1

TWO_HEARTS 2 (ruins, under the light of the moon(s), arduous to get to)

Find 2

NINE_SPADES 6 (natural phenomena, deep underground, spotted while resting)

Find 3

EIGHT_HEARTS 3 (ruins, on a glacier, came upon it suddenly)

Find 4

TEN_SPADES 3 (natural phenomena, on a cliff face, came upon it suddenly)

Find 5

NINE_DIAMONDS 6 (animals/mobile life, deep underground, spotted while resting)

I finally found you. After a day's labour, the wreck, gleaming like a silver hammerhead under the light of the moon… buried under black sand I had to tenderly brush away from the ship's canopy. So much work, but worth it.

And as I rested in the excavation, in the shade of the wreck, I noticed the “sand” coalescing into shapes: a little replica of the wreck, hammerhead shape and all. And an escape-pod like blot to the south.

After that I found a trail of wreck fragments leading south. Following in the air was trivial, and suddenly we came across a glacier, deeply threaded with the black sand, crawling down the mountainside, a hammerhead escape pod half-crushed by its merciless progress.

On the cliff face high above, black rocks and dust mimicked the faces of the rescuees… tensing up in fear, bracing for impact, then wide-eyed recognition of their survival. They continued on loop, shivering rocks mindlessly realigning what they'd seen.

As clouds covered the moon I saw faint firelight under the cliffs—and the people huddled there saw me. They'd been missing for 200 years. I repaired their ship with technology that must've seemed so advanced as to be alien, and guided them to orbit.

Planet 4: Smotherstone #

Find 1

FIVE_DIAMONDS 2 (animals/mobile life, in a treetop, arduous to get to)

Find 2

JACK_DIAMONDS 5 (animals/mobile life, in the desert, spotted while resting)

Find 3

SIX_SPADES 3 (natural phenomena, on the snowy peak of a mountain, came upon it suddenly)

Find 4

KING_HEARTS 1 (ruins, floating in the air, arduous to get to)

Find 5

EIGHT_CLUBS 2 (plants/immobile life, on a glacier, arduous to get to)

A knotted lattice of gargantuan fossilised trees coats this planet like a cage or cradle. It took some doing, weaving between rock-like dead branches, but I managed to find a safe landing spot below—a perch full of white birds.

I took a moment to collect myself and get my bearings—I wasn't able to locate the planet's surface below, though—before I spotted a vast flying wing hovering above my landing spot, jaws along its body snapping hungrily, caustic saliva dripping in heavy stranded globs, but luckily it couldn't get through the tangle of branches to feast on my fuel.

Lightning coursed along the sky behind it in slow motion and it gave up and flew on.

After some tricky abseiling, I finally managed to descend through the branch layer, only to find the tree growing from a stone colossus floating far above the planet's true surface. Leafless branches coiled out of its shattered skull, anchoring it to the orbital tree.

Cold set in as I went down into the colossus' skull. At the bottom, embedded in icy water, in a shaft of cold light filtered through the branches above, sat a single seed. All this, a whole planet, choked of light by a single seed. I'm too late.

Planet 5: Armour Rain #

Find 1

FOUR_DIAMONDS 3 (animals/mobile life, in a steep canyon, came upon it suddenly)

Find 2

QUEEN_CLUBS 5 (plants/immobile life, in deep water, spotted while resting)

I landed on an iridescent pearl of a planet—perfectly smooth under a grey sky—only to have the ground crack under my ship. The whole false ground fell away, leaving smooth, iridescent mesas surrounded by canyons full of shards.

Giant armoured pillbugs rolled around the canyons, crushing the pearly shards into dry dust beneath their carapace. Luckily, they just bounced off the canopy of my ship whenever they collided with it.

It was kind of relaxing, actually: the pitter-patter of the pillbugs knocking against the canopy blended in with a growing rainstorm. When the rain was done, I looked outside to see red-leafed sprouts growing in a pale soil that must've been made from the pearl-dust mixing with the rainwater. A few pillbugs drifted by on a leaf twirling in a little stream. I collected a few samples—analysis suggests the red leaves might make a good tea—before leaving as the sun came out.

Closing the rescue log for today.

Post-play notes #

So this is a great little poetic game! Each time I play has a different feel—this time I stumbled into the “wandering rescue operation” thing on planet 3, but I've played it as purposeless wandering before.

The one issue I have is the order of events gets kinda muddled sometimes. The main way this happens to me is the first die result—“It is arduous to get to”—which you read before you even know what you're going to.

Lastly: the oracle entries and their dreamlike lack of enforced rationality—that you can go from a ruin in a prairie to a creature on a glacier etc.—says a lot about the sort of character and world the game is about without needing to have paragraphs of introduction.

On reflection I'd say the event-order thing isn't really a big issue. It feels like the dice and card mechanics are there to make events happen that you then fill out and respond to; rather than necessarily taking an active role, the universe happens around you and you experience and react to it.