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Ishtar Games’ Dead in series always involves attempting to help a group survive in a perilous situation through smart choices and character management. Over the years, each entry’s tended to feel better than the last. Both Dead in Bermuda and Dead in Vinland had a lot of potential, when random luck didn’t get you down. With Dead in Antares, we’re seeing the next step in the series. It can be entertaining when things are working. However, between losing two save files so far, issues with important Key of Enlil items disappearing (that’s patched now), and the RNG involved, I couldn’t beat it just yet. This seems like it could be an enjoyable adventure and Ishtar Games is clearly working on issues, but I feel like it needs a few more patches.
Dead in Antares involves a situation in which our crew of 10 people stranded on a foreign planet aren’t the only ones in danger. All of earth is. Our explorers went out into the universe on the Ixion to search for resources that could save civilization as we know it, but crashed and burned on a planet called Antares Prime. We now must follow Captain Amelia and help keep everyone alive, managing each person’s status, while exploring the world, interacting with Ataraxian and Atlantean aliens, and finding the means of getting off the planet and saving earth. However, while we can choose from Story, Adventure, Survival, and Last Chance Mission difficulties, if even one of the ten members of the Ixion dies, your run is over and you need to restart from the beginning.
The first thing that struck me about Dead in Antares is that despite the “playable” Steam Deck status, it’s really not meant for any kind of handheld gaming device. There was no controller support when I kicked in, and the nature of the UI means it’s best played with a mouse and on a larger screen. This is a very text-heavy game, and there are a lot of status screen elements to peruse when making choices about upgrades, station assignments, and combat. Some of it is well explained! I do feel like, while this is billed as a title where you don’t need past experience with the series, it definitely helped that I played Dead in Vinland. But if someone has survival management and life/stat management simulation experience, you’ll be fine.
When you first wake up on Antares Prime, not everyone is available. The first day, Captain Amelia, Liu the engineer, and William the medic are the only ones awake while the rest of the crew remains in hibernation. Each day involves some people heading out on an expedition in the immediate area to look for resources and items to salvage. When you return to camp after that outing, you can build up and manage stations and upgrade the areas to ensure you have water, power, and food. As you do things like build radar, you can explore more. After days pass, Polina the astrophysicist and others like Noemi and Maria are woken up to help provide more assistance in their areas of expertise. Days then involve going through exploration and camp phases to ensure progress is being made on both fronts. The gameplay loop is compelling and works well, and it’s very easy to get caught up in the idea of spending one more day getting certain tasks done.
As I mentioned ahead of time, random luck is one of the elements that can hurt the Dead in Antares experience, potentially putting you in a less-than-optimal situation in many ways. Enemies in battle are subject to range in terms of what their attributes might be, which means facing even ones you’re familiar with can be frustrating. Items you get when exploring? Random. Odds of people getting hurt or ill? Random. When you level up, the trait options the character gets to choose from also seems random. That’s probably most frustrating, since sometimes I had builds that seemed good, but bugs got in the way. I didn’t even get past 20 days on the planet during two runs due to my Dead in Antares save issues and other problems. This meant that I’d only unlocked the ability to have six members of the Ixion working toward survival and research, even though all 10 had woken up. As a result, I typically needed two or three people just getting food and water needed to keep the crew alive, three or four on my mission, and four doing nothing, and I never got far enough to enjoy the benefits of more folks active.
It’s those kinds of bugs that keeping me from completely recommending and reviewing Dead in Antares right now. As I’ve said, I lost two saves. One happened after only 11 days, which didn’t feel too bad, but I had trouble finding motivation to return after I lost one after 18 days. I experienced a missing Key of Enlil issue after a quest, though a patch did fix that. I also went through the early issue with battles not responding to inputs, which again was fixed a while ago. One problem I encountered most recently is an issue with crop infestations, but after checking the Steam forums it seems Ishtar Games is aware of it due to someone else dealing with it.
While there’s a full finished game here with some fascinating events and a gameplay loop that could be great when all’s working well, at times I found Dead in Antares almost felt like an early access build. Ishtar Games seems on top of things, as hotfixes and full patches appear at a steady pace. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few weeks, the game is in a much better place. Because there is potential! I can see how some choices and decisions already started to matter in my files, even though I’ve yet to reach an ending yet due to bugs. Especially since some of the updates seem to combat RNG negative effects by doing things like adjusting experience for new characters after hibernation. I think by April or May, it could be worth playing. But for the moment, it could be best to wait for a few more updates.
Dead in Antares is available for PCs.
