An affordable adventure every Wii U owner should check out
Outside of Nintendo first-party titles, there haven’t been many games that have really taken advantage of the Wii U GamePad. During the system’s short lifespan which is already coming to an end, only Nintendo first-party developers have seemingly had any inkling of how to utilize the peripheral. One of the few exceptions is the 2015 release of Affordable Space Adventures from Nifflas’ Games. While in some regards the game doesn’t fully realize the promise of its rather innovative mechanics, it represents the best effort a non-first party developer has made (or likely ever will) at taking advantage of the Wii U’s unique controller.
The game has a fairly basic setup. You are visiting an alien planet aboard a budget, barely operational spaceship. The transport ship that brought you to this world has crashed, and it’s up to you to locate an operational SOS device so you can signal for a pickup craft. The game’s rather shallow story beats exist simply as an excuse to push the player through the game and as a setup for the game’s quirky comedy. Most of the game’s humor comes from each time the game pauses to offer you a tutorial on a new mechanic. Loading screens are devoted to both reminding you of the game’s controls while also mimicking an in-world instruction manual for operating your spacecraft. While all of this content is sparse, what is there is enjoyable.
All puzzle mechanics are related to the operation of your space craft, and there are quite a few of them. In fact, the game manages to take advantage of about every possible control available via the GamePad. You can activate most ship systems from the touchpad. The trigger buttons also activate and deactivate engines. The face buttons control certain systems. You can tilt the GamePad to reorient your ship, which is necessary for navigating some sections. As you traverse the game, you will activate new ship systems every so many screens. Thankfully, the game walks you through each mechanic at a good place by typically introducing one system at a time, then spending at least one to two screens letting you familiarize yourself with the way the mechanic works.
The game does such a good job at continuing to build one mechanic on top of another that it’s unfortunate it starts to fall apart around the two-thirds mark. Once the game has taught you about every mechanic it has to offer, puzzles start to become less about logic and more about execution. Some of the ways the game asks you to quickly switch on and off or change power levels of ship systems really stretch what you can reasonably do with the Wii U GamePad. While the game ultimately recovers toward its final screens, I find myself looking back at the squandered potential of the game. To use an analogy, it felt like going for a fancy meal where the appetizers and the dessert were fantastic, but the main meal was underwhelming and a bit difficult to finish. While this represented maybe only about one-fifth of the game’s total content, it was also the one-fifth of the game that should have been the payoff to everything prior.
It was rather surprising that such a modest game featured some pretty extensive load times. It takes a healthy twenty to thirty seconds between each screen. It’s not a deal-breaker, but for a game operating completely off the Wii U’s flash memory, it is a little disappointing that it doesn’t run better.
Fortunately, these load times are not a factor upon death. Unfortunately, each time you die, your ship’s systems are entirely reset. Given many of the later challenges involve having a very specific setup for your ship to even attempt a section, this does mean a good ten to fifteen seconds after each death just to properly set up your various power levels and turn on and off any necessary systems.
Flaws aside, Affordable Space Adventure is an easy game to recommend for anyone with a Wii U. There simply aren’t, and now likely ever will be, many titles that have shown off the potential of the Wii U’s unique controller. In some ways, the game feels like something from an alternate timeline where more developers figured out how to take advantage of the GamePad. It is thus even more frustrating that the game squandered much of its early potential, as I can see an alternate timeline out there where the sequel to this game is something truly special.