Overview
Star Saga is a text based adventure game released for the Apple II and MS-DOS based PC's in 1988. It was designed by Andrew C. Greenberg (a co-creator of the Wizardry franchise) and Rick Dutton. The majority of the game is reliant on physical printed map and game-books that describe the story and a programmed computer game master to track the player's inventory, location, combat, and actions.
The game features more than 800 pages of printed text split into several books, as well as several line-work illustrations. It can be played alone or support a six person multiplayer mode where players can cooperate to share resources or play competitively and race to be the first to accomplish their goals.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Star Saga revolves around the use of a Computer Game Master (CGM) to parse actions and physical books to describe what the player has taken place. Players read a passage from the game-book describing their character's location and a list of possible actions, accompanied by a six digit code. After entering the code for the action they want to take, the player is instructed to turn to another page in the book and either end their turn, or enter a follow-up code if they have actions remaining. The computer will then update the player's inventory, possible actions, and progress through the game. Players move around the printed game map by inputting moves into the computer as well.
The structure of play is turn based, with each player having a certain number of shared action and movement points per turn. Advancing a space on the map takes one action, while entering trade negotiations or exploring a planet may take multiple actions. If a player attempts an action that they no longer have the points to complete, it is resolved on the following turn.
The bulk of the game challenges revolve around exploring and trading on various planets. As players explore, they discover planets where trade resources can be exchanged favorably in a barter system.These resources can be used to purchase or build personal defense or spaceship upgrades for combat, as well as solving unique puzzles and events. Most events, if failed, can be repeated once the player has accrued the right resources or items.
To achieve victory, each of the six characters must accomplish a unique goal, such as building a spaceship with certain upgrades, finding a lost family heirloom, acquiring unusual alien abilities, etc. The first player to accomplish their goal is declared the winner.
Story
Star Saga takes place in the year 2851. After the initial age of space exploration and interstellar travel, early space explorers brought back a devastating plague, resulting in humanity permanently closing interstellar borders, leaving the nine worlds of humanity cut off from the rest of the galaxy by "the boundary," an area of heavily patrolled space where it is forbidden for anything outside to enter.
The players, for differing reasons depending on their character, must leave the nine worlds forever and cross the boundary, following in the footsteps of early explorers.
The bulk of the game's expansive story is told through a series of vignettes of the inhabited planets the player encounters. However, an overarching theme is one of mysterious meddling with the various alien civilizations by mysterious green aliens. These aliens always interact with the planets they encounter in different ways, with the end result of a civilization that, like the nine worlds, becomes culturally or physically unwilling or incapable of space exploration. Even more troubling, the player learns that these aliens are likely to return soon to humanity's part of space.
The game concludes with the players achieving their initial goals, but faced with the larger task of heading inward to the galactic core to continue investigating these aliens, which is where the sequel Star Saga 2: The Clathran Menace, picks up.
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