Children of a Dead Earth (english)

The Space is Hardcore

Have you ever wondered what kind of real spacebattle would be? Certanly nothing like something you see in Star Trek or Star Wars. ? Children of Dead Earth is a research dressed to game and it tries to ponder what kind of realistic space battle would be accordingly our current scientifical knowledge. The whole game is like antithesis of  science fantasy - even ships are basically cylinders and longest missions take few years!

Game information

Name: Children of a Dead Earth Game publisher/developer: Chinese Room (2016)

Alustat: PC, Mac Pelin tyyppi: early access, strategy, simulation

Age ratings: -

Reviewer: Rami (36)

Pictures and videos:

Trailer 

Scott Manley tests

Designing rockets, lasers and modules

Mechanics and playability

The gametype is strategy. The people don't really drive their spaceships like in Elite: Dangerous but decide on tactics and strategy. CoDE is letting player to plot courses - the orbit can be changed by spending delta-v reserves of the fleet and this is challenging enough to merit a 'fast' interplanetary missions like bringing friend from a trojan asteroid to Mars orbit in a less of two years. Not every mission involves shooting and strategic space battle means that lessons learned in Kerbal Space Program should be close to heart. One can get best ratings from missions by finding a compromise between fuel usage and time. Practically gameplay is new course plotting for ships, salvos of missiles and drones. Close combat is deadly enough to be avoided as long as possible!

What is it for experienced players?

The most interesting part of the game is building own ships and gadgets. So if player thinks he can make more optimal ship the physics do slap him to face. In the blog developers have been discussing about techniques and limitations. Although 'what if' questions are easy to answer with the game. Do we add more armor. Ok, now the weight is keeping us down! Do we add more reactors? Well, the price tag just went too high! Despite scientifical realism keeping player from making something truely epic there's still room for innovation. If one has enough education the lasers could be fine tune in multiple ways.

In my case I said no for nuclear weapons and fancy drones because sir Isaac Newton is baddest guy in the block. The outcome was tungsten missile without any kind of explosive warhead. The goal here was to ram through the battleships armor with just momentum. At least if you happen to hit, which is not guranteed with the AI that starts to maneuver burn too close to target.

The biggest part of the gaming is course plotting, again and again. In some missions dodging the drones and missiles is tedious enough to make player think how the game is still in beta-phase. However the tools were rudimentary even in the beginning of Kerbal Space Progam and there's lots of optimization that should be done because freezes and lagging. Definetly some kind of multiplayer or mission editor would be great. Current 'sandbox'-option let's player to test customized battle between AI and player. While sandbox is great for testing out theories the more expanded mission editor would keep player interest up.

Ethical message?

Well, the earth is ruined (game model is dirty brown). The main character is admiral in the Republic of Free People while bad guys are United Sol Trade Alliance. In the beginning Republic and Alliance set to solve their differencies with nuclear weapons. Although the main character is offspring of Republics president the plot isn't really high drama or appeal to player. Meaning there's again two sides and then we fight. The enemy commanders have russian and chinese names so I'm seeing boring cold war style West vs. East setting up here. Other influences are clearly something from the direction of The Expanse tv-series.

Interesting features

I'm pretty much agreeing with Scott Manleys review that missions in the game have strong puzzle-feeling. There is usually only one style to do things right and many ways to do them in a inefficent way. The game tries to teach orbital dynamics but I found out that having played with Kerbal Space Program and KerbalEdu helps with the game a lot. Heavy scientifical argumentation can be seen in almost pietistic simulation of materials and their qualities and the fact that all of the ship modules and weapons are editable. Player can optimize and develope new ships as much as he likes and physics allows. It's hard to tell any single thing that is unrealistic - the technologies are totally plausable. However if anyone has grasp of physics and finds something that wouldn't work the developers probably would want to hear it?

Scary and distressing elements

The most banal thing in the game is it's name. The battles are really clinical while player is a bit like outsider. The tracers are pretty and ships get big holes but that's as far as violence goes. The simulation is pretty much clinical in all of the sense and even UI is boringly gray.

DLCs

nope

Age rating

The game doesn't have age rating and it wouldn't get it because clinical simulation. Here we can see actually how the game doesn't fit to PEGI criterias. Implications are there, but then again the implications would be only arguments to back up the age rating. In the comparision with Finnish age rating system we do find that implications are not stressed in similiar matter.

Players can talk about?

• How well would people deal with being enclosed to the metal boxes for extended periods of time?
• Guns in space. For example Almaz-station launched in 1974 had a cannon quite similair to ones in the game.
• Mass distribution. What is the real spacecraft is consisting mostly of?