It was supposed to be a short test run – a quick flight to Alpha Centauri and back. But when mankind’s first experimental jump drive goes wrong, a misfit crew finds itself trapped on the wrong side of the universe. The only way back… is through.
As a huge Star Control fan, I was really excited to be asked to come in and write this epic space RPG. I designed the races (some from scratch, some based on existing art that needed personalities), came up with the crew, designed most of the quests, and wrote a good couple of novels worth of script for the fifteen or so different races. Comedy space priests, grasshoppers equipped with laser guns, marsupial privateers, and the horrors of space that are making the suns themselves go dark.
What made this one particularly interesting was that while Star Control was largely a linear adventure, The Long Journey Home’s universe was procedurally generated each time, with different races and opportunities based on your crew, your discoveries and so on. That made it tricky to write so that everything held together, and one of my favourite things about it is that there’s a consistent galactic story to discover regardless of who you meet. My favourite thing about it though is the crew banter, adapting to your quests, items and their own evolving journeys of self-discovery.
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