Star Control TimeWarp: Legacies
I logged into Facebook, checked my groups and I realized that it’s been a while since I looked at the Star Control groups. I read some of the comments and someone mentioned Star Control TimeWarp. The first thing I thought to myself is “I can’t believe I completely forgot about TimeWarp for so long.”
Star Control TimeWarp is an open source sequel to Star Control II. It is not canon or official by any means, but is an interesting Star Control clone because the graphics of the ships have been replaced with cleaner 3D looking sprites and ships can turn at sharper angles. It also contains a bunch of fan-made ships. At the moment, it hasn’t been updated since 2005 and it seems that the project is basically dead. Not many people are very aware of its existence unless they read the old topics on the official UQM forums. As a result, the game isn’t a full-blown adventure, the AI isn’t the best and the menus aren’t exactly friendly. It’s only worth downloading for people who want to try out the 4 person melee. The fact that people who are skilled in programming and game design were inspired to make a tribute to Star Control is amazing. It gives a new meaning to “cult following”.
There are actually two versions of TimeWarp: The regular TimeWarp and TW-Light. The video above is from TW-Light, which is derived from the original TimeWarp.
This version of TW-Light has an adventure plot called Legacies, hence the subtitle. The story continues after the ending of Star Control, where the Sa-Matra is destroyed, bring chaos amongst the green and black Ur-Quan races. The victorious New Alliance of Free Stars set out to destroy most of them. With the defeat of the Ur-Quan, it’s time for the player to begin exploration and colonization of other worlds.
When I played, I started off as a Supox Blade, flying around in space fighting other ships. Whenever a ship is destroyed, the player can collect starbucks (currency in the first Star Control) and buckazoids which are worth less than starbucks.
Unfortunately, I had a difficult time with the adventure mode; I kept dying and I could never gather enough starbucks to repair fast enough or get any new ships.
The best part about TimeWarp is the combat since it is 4 player melee free for all instead of just 1 on 1. It ran on my Windows Vista desktop just fine, and there is a compiled version for Windows and the source can be compiled for Linux operating systems.
