Planet Stronghold Part 1: Meeting Joshua Nelson
Not all video game companies are large corporations. Plenty of independent game developers exist as well, and their games can be as good as anything from the big companies. Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time, was invented by indie developer Markus Persson of Sweden. Another indie developer of note is Celso Riva, an Italian developer who produces games under the Winter Wolves label. Several of them have won critical acclaim, and I’ll be tackling one of them in Planet Stronghold. Released by Riva in 2011, it’s a sci-fi role-playing game set on the titular world. Planet Stronghold, like most Winter Wolves games, is a visual novel—it combines text driving the story with fairly static drawings of the characters and their surroundings. Like most RPGs, there are a lot of decisions for the main character to make that affect the course of the story, and it also follows the lead of BioWare games like Dragon Age in allowing relationships with other characters, including romances. When I start a new game, our first decision is to choose whether to be a male or female character. The game has two pre-made characters for us, Joshua Nelson and Lisa Nelson, and whichever one we choose will be our character while the other won’t exist in this playthrough. There’s no difference between the two in terms of gameplay ability, but gender naturally has a big impact on romances—a central part of most Winter Wolves games—as well as some minor plot details. I choose to play as Joshua, and then we have to choose difficulty level. Difficulty level in Planet Stronghold does two things: it affects how many points we receive for character attributes when we level up, and it affects the strength and quality of our opposition in the game’s battle mode. There are five difficulty levels to choose from: Visual Novel mode (which completely removes battle mode and causes us to instantly win every fight), Easy, Medium, Hard, or Nightmare. As always, I want to play the toughest difficulty, so I select Nightmare. After a stern warning from the game about the challenge it poses, we begin the story. As Joshua Nelson, we’re a private fresh out of military training and have been assigned to the garrison at Planet Stronghold. We’re not completely sure why yet—Planet Stronghold is supposed to be a very prestigious assignment—but there are rumors of problems on-world. Regardless, we’re certainly happy to be here. As we start to explore, we’re greeted by a dark-skinned man in a red uniform. This is Tom Shatz, a lieutenant in the Planet Stronghold garrison and the highest-ranking military officer we’ll meet in the course of the game. I make sure to respond politely—the game gives us a polite option and two rather snotty options—and Shatz takes us inside the planetary hangar. He asks us what our “specialty” was at the military academy, and this is another key choice—we now have to choose Joshua’s character class. We could be a Psionic, which is the rough sci-fi equivalent of a mage—Psionics use the power of their minds to heal friendly party members and inflict damage on enemies, but can’t use traditional guns. On the other end of the spectrum, a Soldier is more like a fantasy barbarian. Soldiers have more health than anyone, but have lousy Psionic ability. The other two options, Guardian and Scout, are somewhat mixed. Guardians have less health than Soldiers, but have offensive Psionic abilities and can use heavy weapons while Soldiers are limited to pistols. Scouts are a sniper class and excel at accuracy as well as having some defensive Psionic ability, but they have low health. For this playthrough, I’m going to be a Scout. When I select the option, Tom helpfully fills us in on our choice. Notably, there are several situations outside of combat where we’ll need to pass skill checks to accomplish various things, and different classes are good at different types of noncombat skills. As a Scout, we excel at roughing it in a harsh environment (represented by the Survival skill) and getting past enemy defenses undetected (represented by the Sneak skill). Once I get past the text explaining our class ability, we’re also given some more information about gameplay, including how to access our character pages. I decide to show off both Joshua’s page and Tom’s to demonstrate what each is equipped with as well as their stats. We’re at Level 1 and, as a Scout, we’re equipped with a sniper rifle. Tom is a Guardian character equipped with a submachine gun, and at Level 4 he’s significantly more advanced than us. That’ll change as the game goes on, though.
Not all video game companies are large corporations. Plenty of independent game developers exist as well, and their games can be as good as anything from the big companies. Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time, was invented by indie developer Markus Persson of Sweden. Another indie developer of note is Celso Riva, an Italian developer who produces games under the Winter Wolves label. Several of them have won critical acclaim, and I’ll be tackling one of them in Planet Stronghold. Released by Riva in 2011, it’s a sci-fi role-playing game set on the titular world. Planet Stronghold, like most Winter Wolves games, is a visual novel—it combines text driving the story with fairly static drawings of the characters and their surroundings. Like most RPGs, there are a lot of decisions for the main character to make that affect the course of the story, and it also follows the lead of BioWare games like Dragon Age in allowing relationships with other characters, including romances. When I start a new game, our first decision is to choose whether to be a male or female character. The game has two pre-made characters for us, Joshua Nelson and Lisa Nelson, and whichever one we choose will be our character while the other won’t exist in this playthrough. There’s no difference between the two in terms of gameplay ability, but gender naturally has a big impact on romances—a central part of most Winter Wolves games—as well as some minor plot details. I choose to play as Joshua, and then we have to choose difficulty level. Difficulty level in Planet Stronghold does two things: it affects how many points we receive for character attributes when we level up, and it affects the strength and quality of our opposition in the game’s battle mode. There are five difficulty levels to choose from: Visual Novel mode (which completely removes battle mode and causes us to instantly win every fight), Easy, Medium, Hard, or Nightmare. As always, I want to play the toughest difficulty, so I select Nightmare. After a stern warning from the game about the challenge it poses, we begin the story. As Joshua Nelson, we’re a private fresh out of military training and have been assigned to the garrison at Planet Stronghold. We’re not completely sure why yet—Planet Stronghold is supposed to be a very prestigious assignment—but there are rumors of problems on-world. Regardless, we’re certainly happy to be here. As we start to explore, we’re greeted by a dark-skinned man in a red uniform. This is Tom Shatz, a lieutenant in the Planet Stronghold garrison and the highest-ranking military officer we’ll meet in the course of the game. I make sure to respond politely—the game gives us a polite option and two rather snotty options—and Shatz takes us inside the planetary hangar. He asks us what our “specialty” was at the military academy, and this is another key choice—we now have to choose Joshua’s character class. We could be a Psionic, which is the rough sci-fi equivalent of a mage—Psionics use the power of their minds to heal friendly party members and inflict damage on enemies, but can’t use traditional guns. On the other end of the spectrum, a Soldier is more like a fantasy barbarian. Soldiers have more health than anyone, but have lousy Psionic ability. The other two options, Guardian and Scout, are somewhat mixed. Guardians have less health than Soldiers, but have offensive Psionic abilities and can use heavy weapons while Soldiers are limited to pistols. Scouts are a sniper class and excel at accuracy as well as having some defensive Psionic ability, but they have low health. For this playthrough, I’m going to be a Scout. When I select the option, Tom helpfully fills us in on our choice. Notably, there are several situations outside of combat where we’ll need to pass skill checks to accomplish various things, and different classes are good at different types of noncombat skills. As a Scout, we excel at roughing it in a harsh environment (represented by the Survival skill) and getting past enemy defenses undetected (represented by the Sneak skill). Once I get past the text explaining our class ability, we’re also given some more information about gameplay, including how to access our character pages. I decide to show off both Joshua’s page and Tom’s to demonstrate what each is equipped with as well as their stats. We’re at Level 1 and, as a Scout, we’re equipped with a sniper rifle. Tom is a Guardian character equipped with a submachine gun, and at Level 4 he’s significantly more advanced than us. That’ll change as the game goes on, though.