Cargo Commander was tested using a supplied review copy. The game was released on PC, available to download on November 1st 2012.
Nobody likes work, it’s a drag. What with annoying bosses, office Nazis everywhere, not to mention incredibly dull tasks that you couldn’t care less about. However, what if you were to work in space? That would make it much more fun, right?
I can only assume that this is what Serious Brew had in mind whilst Cargo Commander was in production. Indie games by their nature tend to focus more on gameplay due to them not having a huge budget to utilise the CryEngine 3, or hire A-list actors to bring life to their creations. Personally, I will take gameplay over aesthetics any day of the week. That’s not to say all the indie titles are great by default, but I am starting to expect something special out of these little potential gems.
The game in question has a simple premise; you wake up in a cube shaped cargo ship and begin your workday scavenging parts by using a huge magnet to draw in other cube shaped transports. You have a few different projectile weapons to protect yourself with, as well as a rocket punch of sorts.
Once you have summoned some other ships you have a short amount of time to gather resources and wade through enemies before a wormhole opens up and destroys everything but your home away from home.
This is a platformer at heart, with a few puzzles thrown in, the conundrum being how to get around each vessel. You can drill through most walls, floors and ceilings in just a few seconds, this allows you to make your own path through the derelict craft (and sometimes outside it), and to scavenge what you can. After you have collected enough materials, you can hunt for the sector pass and move on to the next zone in space. It never gets very complicated, there are a few more things that throw a spanner in the works, more enemies, exploding crates etc, but that’s pretty much it.
The soft droning music is quite possibly my favourite part of the game, which probably doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, and to be honest, it’s not. There is just nothing to keep you playing. It might sound fine on paper, but Serious Brew has forgotten the most important part of the game, they neglected to make it fun.
I don’t want to sell it short here, the graphical style is charming and more than functional, the controls are fluid and don’t cause frustration, the total absence of noise as you enter the vacuum outside is a nice touch, and the mad scramble back to your cuboid dwelling can actually reduce the need for someone to break in to your room with smelling salts every ten minutes.
We have just had too many good indie games recently for me to let this one go with a passable mark. If I didn’t have to review the game, I would have uninstalled after twenty minutes or so. I would love to be able to recommend this to you, as I do love to support small developers, but I can’t, there are plenty more platform games around that are far more worthy of your attention.