Figures...
For some odd reason, at the end of a pretty trash day after failing one of my midterms. I thought of this game, I played nearly a decade ago. I remember when I first booted it up with two of my best online friends Gryphon23 and [EG]JimNNail. The first thing my 12-year-old brain thought about was how "awful" the graphics were. Honestly, I was so close to uninstalling the game and going back to playing Spiral Knights.
But, for some reason, I didn't. I signed up and joined my friend's new empire - I forget the name - as Sgt. Dakota. We were a reptilian race that had dark brown scaley skin, big bug eyes, and dragon wings. For the first few hours I was struggling to keep up with my friends, what do you mean I have to click this Work button to build this Stone Mine? Why do I keep making these plus-signs whenever I make a road? Wait our wings actually work? I was frustrated at first but by the end of the week, I had played at least a good 50 hours of game time. The first hours of a whole summer dedicated to nonstop playing this game.
I remember Gryphon always being concerned about our Quality Levels and why they were always so low, but JimNNail and I we were more about messing around in the Starship Designer trying to figure out why our ships weren't functioning and exploring each planet to the most minute detail. I have four vivid memories that honestly move me emotionally every time I think about them.
- The first spaceflight of our Empire, I was in the backseat of the two-seater Rocket and we lifted off. The sound was unbearable but I was so damn excited I didn't care. As we pointed the rocket to our closest moon, I looked back at the planet we were leaving, our glorious capital city's lights shrinking and shrinking.
- My first time blowing up a ship. We were under attack by pirates in the first day or two of us creating our first functioning spaceship. I let off a shot and the ship exploded in a cloud of Green. The only screenshot I have with my first empire. (https://gyazo.com/96955daedd9f64f3e8b93593649f560f)
- Racing my Friends around the world in our sailboats, only to get bored about 5 minutes into the race, abandoning the ship and flying back home to go fiddle with the new Submarine that had been built.
- And lastly, the last time I talked to my two best friends. We had made it to our first Ring World, when we first saw it we were in awe. I remember as we went through the wormhole (or however you get into the world, I honestly didn't have a clue what was going on) our TeamSpeak went from three ADHD-fueled little shits screaming at each other to "man the turrets" to a brief moment of silence. We immediately sought after colonizing it. We built our city and expanded and expanded. At the airport, there was this little ramp area where we were jumping our Jeeps and motorcycles off of late that last night we played. I was the last one to log off and for some odd reason I can't forget it I just sat there looking up at the sky. Looking at each star and getting giddy about all those worlds out there. That was the last time I played. And that was the last time I was in that TS3 channel.
Now I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes looking at those old servers just knowing the 1's and 0's of those memories were in those servers.
I literally just created this account and I wrote this for no damn reason. But this game is so damn special to me. Thanks for all your work, Haxus and whoever helped create this game.
TL;DR - Got nostalgic looking through old Steam screenshots, came back to see one of my favorite games ever sadly shut down mere weeks before I finally look back at it, I wrote, I cried. Thanks, Haxus, et. al.
For some odd reason, at the end of a pretty trash day after failing one of my midterms. I thought of this game, I played nearly a decade ago. I remember when I first booted it up with two of my best online friends Gryphon23 and [EG]JimNNail. The first thing my 12-year-old brain thought about was how "awful" the graphics were. Honestly, I was so close to uninstalling the game and going back to playing Spiral Knights.
But, for some reason, I didn't. I signed up and joined my friend's new empire - I forget the name - as Sgt. Dakota. We were a reptilian race that had dark brown scaley skin, big bug eyes, and dragon wings. For the first few hours I was struggling to keep up with my friends, what do you mean I have to click this Work button to build this Stone Mine? Why do I keep making these plus-signs whenever I make a road? Wait our wings actually work? I was frustrated at first but by the end of the week, I had played at least a good 50 hours of game time. The first hours of a whole summer dedicated to nonstop playing this game.
I remember Gryphon always being concerned about our Quality Levels and why they were always so low, but JimNNail and I we were more about messing around in the Starship Designer trying to figure out why our ships weren't functioning and exploring each planet to the most minute detail. I have four vivid memories that honestly move me emotionally every time I think about them.
- The first spaceflight of our Empire, I was in the backseat of the two-seater Rocket and we lifted off. The sound was unbearable but I was so damn excited I didn't care. As we pointed the rocket to our closest moon, I looked back at the planet we were leaving, our glorious capital city's lights shrinking and shrinking.
- My first time blowing up a ship. We were under attack by pirates in the first day or two of us creating our first functioning spaceship. I let off a shot and the ship exploded in a cloud of Green. The only screenshot I have with my first empire. (https://gyazo.com/96955daedd9f64f3e8b93593649f560f)
- Racing my Friends around the world in our sailboats, only to get bored about 5 minutes into the race, abandoning the ship and flying back home to go fiddle with the new Submarine that had been built.
- And lastly, the last time I talked to my two best friends. We had made it to our first Ring World, when we first saw it we were in awe. I remember as we went through the wormhole (or however you get into the world, I honestly didn't have a clue what was going on) our TeamSpeak went from three ADHD-fueled little shits screaming at each other to "man the turrets" to a brief moment of silence. We immediately sought after colonizing it. We built our city and expanded and expanded. At the airport, there was this little ramp area where we were jumping our Jeeps and motorcycles off of late that last night we played. I was the last one to log off and for some odd reason I can't forget it I just sat there looking up at the sky. Looking at each star and getting giddy about all those worlds out there. That was the last time I played. And that was the last time I was in that TS3 channel.
Now I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes looking at those old servers just knowing the 1's and 0's of those memories were in those servers.
I literally just created this account and I wrote this for no damn reason. But this game is so damn special to me. Thanks for all your work, Haxus and whoever helped create this game.
TL;DR - Got nostalgic looking through old Steam screenshots, came back to see one of my favorite games ever sadly shut down mere weeks before I finally look back at it, I wrote, I cried. Thanks, Haxus, et. al.