Dirigo Games Presents...

A good tagline for this free-of-charge indie experiment would be "The little Alien game that could."  Indeed, one of the biggest criticisms I've seen leveled at Stowaway is that it's a bit too much like the 1979 horror film "Alien."  In all honesty though, I think it would be even better if it were more like that movie.

I don't mean in a visual sense...Stowaway does an excellent job of cementing its own distinct look....an especially impressive feat considering the game is basically a spruced up version of a three-day-long game jam project.  The low-res black and white environments are highlighted with bits of color to denote points of interest.  Better still, they are coded for ease of recognition.  Your fellow crewmembers of the partially decommissioned space station "Aroura" exude a blue, purple, teal, yellow or orange aura depending on the individual.  Interactable panels are green, and the titular stowaway is red...as is the blood it spills in vast quantities.  Overall, the visuals are bit reminiscent of the somewhat more famous indie game Return of the Obra Dinn.  The Last Cosmonaut and Solipsis are other examples of indie titles that came later and borrowed the overall look and feel in order to tell their own sci-fi horror tales.  

Gameplay-wise, Stowaway is a first-person narrative-driven experience unsurprisingly similar to Alien: Isolation.  What is surprising though is how well it communicates a similar mood with far simpler presentation.  All the hallmarks are there: high-contrast light and shadow, unwelcoming maze-like industrial corridors, eerie sounding machines and an even creepier soundtrack....all this accomplished with a fraction of the resources.  Sadly, the thing Stowaway lacks is an A.I. guiding the creature to stalk the player throughout the later portions of the game.  Instead, it relies on carefully scripted sequences.  This brings me back to the comment I mentioned earlier about wishing the game were more like the film that it drew inspiration from.

Specifically, I'm not talking about graphics but rather the way the story unfolds.  Unlike "Alien" there's not a whole lot of room for character or plot development.  I understand why that is...the game doesn't have the necessary framework to make it an interesting experience for more than around 30 minutes of playtime.  That said, it would be cool if there were attempts by the crew to expunge the creature or perhaps have some branching paths in relation to the NPCs before they start getting bumped off like dominos.  The monster could also do with a bit more background.  The almost subliminal flashes of cryptic images that are peppered throughout the game don't really achieve much. even so, I want to stress that I'm not asking for a big "Prometheus" style reveal here so much as a bit more in terms of tantalizing hints.  The vessel the stowaway arrives on (the "Taurus") is classified as a "comet hopper" which is an interesting clue, but needs to be followed up by an apocalypse log or something that gives players a terrifying glimpse of where the monster came from and some kind of motivation for it's extreme hostility.  

Despite all those criticism, I really like Stowaway for what it is, and more importantly, what it represents.  You don't need a big budget or even a whole lot of originality to to weave a scary science fiction story.  You just need to observe how the masters of the genre plied their trade and add your own original spin to it.