Play With Vidal: Deep Space Missions With "NeMiT"

Vidal Tripsa plays some of Second Life's most promising games

Title of Game: NeMiT
Rating: * (out of 5)
Genre:  Puzzle
Summary: Delve deeper into Necronom VI's systems to explore its mission and on-board cultures.
Price to Play:  L$0
Estimated Play Time: 2 hours +
Where to Play: Desperation Andromeda (direct SLURL teleport, Mature sim)
Developers: Darien Caldwell & Oni Haran
Web Resources: Space Colony Necronom VI Ning (Warning: Adult content)

Inside the frigid, space-cold walls of Space Colony Necronom VI lurk horrors and factional conflicts which have seen this science fiction setting become home to many an enthusiastic role-player. The station has, despite its Adult-rated content, become a well-known example of science fiction design on the Grid. Around two months ago its creator, Oni Haran, embarked on a mission to flesh out his space colony and its backstory, offering its dark and dangerous inhabitants a new depth to their home. NeMiT is what resulted.

NeMiT is a HUD-mounted, mission-based gaming system which offers Necronom's visitors a new perspective on the environment as they explore it. Starting with an easy-to-follow tutorial, accessible from Necronom's landing deck, I was introduced to an interface which will be familiar to any video gamer. The health bar-styled panel, sitting top right of my display, would allow me to pick up fresh missions from designated boards scattered about the craft. Touching a target board would prompt my drop-down HUD with a brief mission scenario. As well as giving me incentive to really think about my surroundings and where clues might lay, I dare say the NeMiT HUD also sought to alter my impression of the station. I felt more like I was consciously playing a game while wearing it, relishing the prospect of credits earned for what I might accomplish. Sadly, this enthusiasm waned once I tackled the serious puzzles.

As of yet, the NeMit missions appear to be quite light in number, and are tricky to find. One selling point of the system is that it benefits those who spend a lot of their time aboard Necronom VI; they will soon notice when a new mission board pops up, however it can be hard for recent arrivals to find them. This in spite of a scoreboard upon which point scores in the thousands are logged. Due to the difficulty in acquiring new missions, and some frustratingly ambiguous puzzles in those missions that I did find, I was left with little incentive to shoot for a high score of my own.

I feel that the system's creators have birthed a solid and uniquely appealing interface in NeMiT, however I'd hoped that the puzzles and quests it fosters would have sustained that same sense of fun and quality. I'm afraid that enigmatic puzzle cubes, dispensed in 'no build' areas so that they must be taken off the station for play, did in fact leave me wanting to play somewhere entirely elsewhere.

Space Colony Necronom VI can be boarded at Desperation Andromeda, and its NeMiT HUD obtained from the bridge. Its steward is Oni Haran, with the game having been coded by Darien Caldwell from a prototype by Yuifan Yohkoh.

Vidal is the Extropian author of Vidal's Dolly Realm, and is keen to explore games out on the Second Life Grid. If you have a suggested game for her, please feel free to send an SLURL and brief outline of the game to [email protected].

Comments

[Oni Horan]

thanks for the mentionof the system, i can assure you that its hardly finished yet.
I encourage you to check back in half a year or so, hopefully i have finally had the chance to expand it properly by then.

[Otakuwolf]

I agree, indeed the missions system is a lot fun thing and is a very innovative idea instead most of the sims around that are just "Roleplay places", and as Oni himself sayd, some of them are really great ways to socialize because some require to be in "more than one player" doing them; however the puzzles are too much complicate in a certain sense, are well thought but i think are even "too much well thought" (To make an example, the mission 9, you have a cube and a code to enter pressing the faces, a cube has 6 faces, so you have 6^6 combinations = more than 46.600 possible combinations, how can you guess one without some kind of hint ?).

I think Oni did a great job with this thing, because it will surely add more interest and fun in the game and in his sim, plus the multiplayer missions give you some extra to socialize and know new people doing them, however the puzzlegames may require a little more of "clues" to be playable by most of the people.