Review: Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages

PC-Gaming has quietly, in the last few years, entered something of a second golden age. While consoles are now seen as the natural home of Triple-A releases, PC’s have become a virulent breeding ground for all sorts of amazing indie titles. I bring this up, because Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages is a glorious game that represents all the best things about PC indie games. It’s clever, contains dozens of new idea, is well written, and gorgeous.

Gushing aside, Ring Runner is top-down space shooter. At the bare bone level, it is a game where you pilot a spaceship, avoid obstacles, and shoot down other spaceships. But this says as much about the game as saying that Gustav Holst’s The Planets is a musical piece played with instruments. The amount of variations on the space-shooter theme that developer Triple.B.Titles has packed into the game is nothing short of ridiculous. The game opens with a spectacular trench-run a la Star Wars, then moves into dog-fighting, arena combat, collecting space trash, and spectacular battles against capital ships. To further the variety, the player is also given access to a wide range of ships: fighters are small, fast, and pretty much standard for this type of game, but also included are grapplers, which fight with melee attacks (including a space-flail) and rogues, stealthy ships that hide, tag their targets, and then unleash a hellish burst of missiles before slinking back into the darkness.

SPACELASERSWHOOSHKAPOW!

Of course, the danger with squeezing so many ideas into a single game is that it could feel schizophrenic and rushed. While there is a bit of that, the game compensates by giving you opportunities to get used to new ships, and breaks you into the controls with tips and instructions from your cyberware co-pilot. The game is not easy, I died fairly frequently, but it is never unfair and the pace never feels overwhelming. I could have used more checkpoints though, as death usually just brings you back the start of a mission. Death can also come unexpectedly if you are not watching your health bars like a hawk, and I would have appreciated some sort of audio cue that indicated when my shields are down and it’s time for a daring escape. These are minor issues though, and do not detract from the experience.

The game is also wonderfully written. Nero, the AI co-pilot, delivers much of the humor in the game and is one of my favourite video-game support characters. He is snarky without being annoying, and his presence keeps the experience from becoming a lonely one. Thankfully, he is not a fluke and the rest of the writing is up to snuff as well. With game mechanics this good (and Ring Runners also includes skirmish and multi-player modes), the developers could have let the story slide, but instead crafted a space-opera epic. This is a long game, with a real sense of scope, journey, and exploration. Overall, it manages to find that sweet spot between poking gentle fun at the tropes of space-opera, while also being an amazing example of the genre.

Finally, and I have said it before, the game is gorgeous. The backgrounds are crisp and varied, objects look good, and the ships are distinctive enough in design that you will not often mistake one type for another. This game really shows what can be done with quality art direction rather than spending insane amounts of resources bumping up the polygon count to absurd levels. Triple-A developers could really learn something from this game.

The darkly glimmering beauty of space.

Ring Runners: Flight of the Sages is a game that raises the bar for its genre and is a bloody good time besdies. Also, its only ten bucks. The game is available for sale on its website, and is currently attracting attention on Steam Greenlight, If you like space adventure, shooters, or clever writing you owe it to yourself to check out this gem.