Salvaged

As night turns to day and so last week turns to this week please give it up for the return of Opposable Games’ tyrant on the typewriter – Daniel! Yay! Thank you to Thaddeus for his insights last week; without you buddy Salvaged would be called VR Sci-fi Chair Simulator 2015.

Today we’re going to be looking at the characters under the Player’s control – the salvage agents. As you’ll know by now, Salvaged is played form the perspective of Alex Pieterson as she gives orders and direction from the command room of her ship. These men and women are effectively the Player’s weapons throughout the game.

So where do these agents come from? In the Salvaged universe there exists a group of people willing to put their lives on the line to make a living. Some of them are heroes, some of them are villains but all that truly matters is getting out alive and getting paid. Salvage agents are lining up to be hired and the larger your sleeping quarters the more you can hire. Some are more skilled than others which they reflect in their personal price tags and some have different attributes based on their weight class: Light, Medium or Heavy. As the Player begins to form a squad of agents they’ll be able to adapt their play-style accordingly – ‘ do I want a fast moving team or a slow but powerful one or anything in between?’ Remember: you are the commander and they’re your agents.

Each agent in Salvaged can be upgraded by purchasing skill points. These skill points affect obvious stats such as the agents’ health and speed but can also be used to customise an agent’s proficiency with certain weapon types. Want an agent who’s a surgeon with a shotgun? Chuck in a skill point. Want an agent who can turn a flamethrower from ‘is it hot in here?’ up to ‘kids on swings in Terminator 2’? Chuck in a skill point! We’ll talk more about weapons in due course but with a wide variety of skills to choose from the Player will able to create a bespoke squad in their own bullet-riddled image as they move from room to room.

Agents move along a system of ‘nodes’ in each room. The Player, as the commander, is able to decide through which nodes each agent will move. Using this node system the Player is able to create attack plans and strategies as they encounter a room and the horrors lurking within. Each agent also has a ‘Stance’ they can take whilst breaching a room to add another layer of strategy to the game. Should my agents take an attacking stance in which they deal more damage but are more exposed to enemy attacks? Or should they play defensively? Or should my squad do both? The decisions are the Player’s to make but be sure to make them carefully; your agents are only made of flesh and blood.

Like they say: the road to Hell is paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit.