Jonas Kyratzes has brought us many enjoyable, thoughtful games in bizarre, surreal settings. Well, he's decided to grace us with another one of his creations, only it's not what you might be expecting from his previous work. Stepping outside of the box of strangeness you may have thought you could fit him in, Kyratzes has developed a top-down space shooter, Traitor. Don't get scared, he's still able to cast his powers of storytelling, it's just in a different yummy, gooey, science fiction package.
Traitor puts you in the shoes of a space pilot in the distant future. You've trained hard to earn the honor of fighting for the Augustan Hegemony and all it stands for. Until, one day you find that you don't quite agree with your superiors orders. This eats at you until you decide to become a rebel, a dissenter, a traitor. But it's not enough that you've left the empire behind, you need to earn the trust of The People's Council and those who support them before you can help them strike back.
Most of your time will be spent in the battle screen where you move yourself with the [arrow] keys and shoot with [X]. This is how you carry out the missions given to you by the various habitats in each section. You travel to the sections in the (universe? galaxy?) world map though not all of them are available right away. Within each section lie the habitats where you can accept missions or trade your hard earned credits for improvements on your ship. Not everyone is eager to deal with a brand new turncoat though, some missions require a certain level of reputation, which you can earn through other missions.
Analysis: This game is huge. After playing around for an hour, you'll feel as though you've barely scratched the surface. There are so many missions available and so many upgrades to purchase! Through the open world style of gameplay, Kyratzes is still able to tell a story that compels you to chug along, even if you're not a die-hard fan of shooters.
The genre alone may deter some Jonas Kyratzes followers from hitting that play button. It's understandable to feel uncertainty when trying something completely different from a familiar developer, but considering Traitor on its own merits, it does not disappoint! From graphics to gameplay to some great music by Chris Davis, this is a well made shooter. If the intriguing pixel-meets-vector style graphics don't get you, then let the space opera storyline suck you in. There's no better feeling than causing the fall of a large, heartless empire. Haven't you always wanted to be that rebel gearing up to shoot torpedoes down an exhaust vent?
Does your choice in the third mission make a difference later on?
If you don't shoot them then you'll lose all your credits. Other than that there are no immediate effects.
I'm playing having made the choice to
not shoot them down
.
RobWatts:
I also noticed that because the medical supplies weren't delivered, all the people in Aruru Habitat in Occator Prime are dead, so any supplies or missions available there are gone.
...I should not have started playing this before bed. I thought I'd just get started tonight and come back tomorrow, but of course, I couldn't bring myself to stop.
Definitely doesn't feel like a typical Jonas Kyratzes game, but it's cool to see he can still make a good game in a different genre, because that was great fun.
Uh, what monitor resolution does Jonas Kyratzes expect us to have? It's really frustrating to not be able to fit the whole game on my screen, and I'm using 1024x768. Don't most people who don't have fancypants monitors use that?
gatekeeper.aidan, try clicking outside the game window and hitting Control-minus (or Command-minus if on a Mac). That'll work in Chrome, though I'm not sure if the other browsers resize Flash windows yet. (Control-plus or Command-plus to enlarge the page again if you go shrink too far.)
To add to what nobody said, you can also hit F11 (at least in Chrome) to go full screen to give yourself that extra bit of room.
I'll be honest, when I started this, I wasn't too impressed. I soldiered through the intro though, and now I won't stop playing it.
I'm gonna put a spoiler tag in before I give my impression of the upgrades, just to be safe:
One comment though, about the upgrades... it doesn't seem like the upgrades give you as much... well upgraded capabilities as I was expecting.
I was expecting to be able to upgrade my gun and go back to levels that I'd gotten killed on the first few times around, but (specifically) the gun speed and power upgrades don't seem to have much effect - at least the upgrades I've purchased thus far.
I was a little disappointed with the scanner, as it's required to get into a couple of areas, but if you rush to get the scanner, you can't do much in those areas until you've built up your reputation anyway.
I'm going to keep plugging, though!
I really enjoyed this game. Although I do need to disagree with the reviewer's analysis of the game being "huge." Although there was a lot to discover and do, but I would not consider it "huge."
Had one issue where the game froze when I had the 2 allies attacking with me. Not sure what may have caused the freeze, but one of them had been destroyed and the other was all the way on the right side of the screen, halfway off-screen.
My strategy:
Upgrade your weapons to the max before anything. Second, get the regeneration upgrades and finally get the upgrades to shields and hull. Get all the upgrades you can before you get the scanner to enter the two other areas. With high weapon power, you can easily collect money by mining. For the final two battles (the only truly challenging ones in the game) I recommend the ally that repairs your ship once; even with full regen, shields, and hull, those guys that shoot the three wobbly balls at you can make short work of you--just DON'T hit them with your ship!
Cornelius Baxter, I'm curious to know what beyond having "a lot to discover and do" would make a game huge for you. Of course, it's by no means a PC/console game, but I thought it had quite a lot for a flash game. I'm not trying to argue my words, just better understand how others interpret them so I can make my articles more meaningful.
I spent the entire game feeling like my shots didn't do enough damage. It took several upgrades before I even felt like I was doing as much damage as I should've been without any upgrades at all.
Wow did not even know that you could use allies, I guess I beat the game the hard way then...
What's more annoying is that once you beat the game, you can't go back in and play more missions (loading your game goes straight to the epilogue).
Other than that great game :)
An update has been uploaded that should address that issue, coolsonh. Just refresh the page and you should get the new version.
How do you use allies? I played the entire game without knowing I could...
I thought it was actually very interesting that you start out with weak weapons and even the upgrades you get don't feel all that useful for a while. Things are just peculiarly set up so that upgrades only start to really be good in combination (for instance, regen+better armor is immensely better than just one or the other. With it, you can actually employ ramming enemies as a tactic in some cases). It felt like for a long time I had to just coast around and dodge most enemies, then all of a sudden the ship was modified enough to do some real damage; and I think that makes a lot of sense in terms of the story. I mean, a tiny ex-military ship shouldn't be expected to do a lot of damage to the bigger guns until it has been heavily modified.
Also,
If you shoot down the medical ships (I tried shooting down all of them for curiosity after not shooting at them the first time around), you keep all your credits from military time but three habitats in Occator Prime are "wiped out due to disease", including the one where you pay 3000 credits to gain reputation for saving them. I don't remember what the other two did, but they were probably an upgrade and a relatively easy mission.
Anyone else having an issue with sticky keys? I find that the key detect is wonky, so my ship is hard to control. Most maddening - sometimes when I tap X to enter a planet, the game thinks I'm still holding it down and autobuys the sale item.
Great game. Had fun for hours. Strategy: skip the hard missions until I had enough upgrades.
Jay,
How can I make sure I'm seeing the new update? Right now when I click on load game it still goes straight to the epilogue, then credits.
Jonas told me your issue was fixed in the latest update, so if you're still seeing the issue try emptying your browser cache first, then reload the game page. That will ensure you are getting the latest version.
This is such a great game, not so often you see a story like this in a space shooter game.
The gameplay never really gets repetitive due to the upgrades and different envirotements. And the feeling for helping the ones who really need it is just something priceless.
Thank you, Jonas.
How does one use your allies? I had no idea this was even an option!
You can pick your ally by hitting M and going to "ALLIES" on the bottom. Didn't find it till the very last battle... There could probably be a better way to let people know about that.
Allies? Where?? Am I allowed to feel slightly leet for having beaten the game without even knowing I had that option?
I actually liked the choice to make the main weapon underpowered for most of the game. It meant I had to fly evasively, pick my targets, and occasionally just fly straight into a bad guy blasting away, praying they'd explode at the last second. It also made the weapon upgrades extremely satisfying when I could finally afford them!
I'm a sucker for good flavor text, and this game had a ton of it. It also seemed like nice, subtle propaganda. The kind of thing that might fleetingly come to mind next time you see some talking head on TV explaining why [unnamed nation] was obligated to block food aid or medical supplies to [much smaller nation] in order to make a political point...
So does anyone know how to choose allies, I tryed clicking and using the numbers and if didn't work.
@ FrostHound:
as DAM commented above, you access your allies through the menu [M].
Could someone please explain to me how to navigate on the map screen? I've tried clicking every element of the map and browsing the menu page, but so far have been unable to go anywhere.
Travis He:
Use the arrow keys to move around and [X] to enter an area.
Is anyone else having trouble with the final boss taking (apparently) no damage? I tried attacking him for like 10 minutes and saw no change in his behavior.
Never mind. You just have to really keep at it.
Absolutely excellent game - 5 stars. I wasn't impressed in the first three levels, but once you get free reign? Wow, I played it all in one sitting.
anyone else having a problem saving?
Is it just a coincidence that your ship looks kinda like a Firefly?
Update