Before attending the Yorkshire Games Fest in November, we had completely forgotten about the new series of Red Dwarf — the twelfth series, to be precise — but Game Digits kindly corrected that for us with a demonstration of their Red Dwarf XII game. It was a familiar title in a crowd of relative unknowns, so having watched all series to date, we could get stuck in with little confusion.
Red Dwarf XII is intended as a reasonably casual, simple-to-play game for Red Dwarf fans with mobile devices and likely those who played the similar title released for the eleventh series of the show. As such, there are three different modes you can hop in and out of: Quick Play, Explore and Quiz. As you play, you are able to unlock various characters from the latest series, along with some behind-the-scenes content.
Selecting Quick Play takes you right into the corridors of location from the series at a brisk jog, initially control of Lister on Red Dwarf itself in a dash-n’-dodge similar to the notorious Temple Run. Move left or right to dodge obstacles like barrels and vending machines, swiping up or down to jump over or slide under pipes which would see you knocked out. But that’s not all you have to worry about: enemies are out to get you and sometimes you’ll run into a room full of them. Time slows, they move, and you can take them out one by one, if you have decent aim.
Choosing to Explore sees you sally forth in Starbug with a message from Kryten giving you your objective. This often results in rushing to the aid of a ship in distress — our first shout was a ship in the middle of an asteroid storm. Combat was reasonably simple (although we hadn’t quite switched on at first and thought we were meant to shoot the ship) — all we had to do was use our finger to aim Starbug at the asteroids. The guns are on auto-fire, so all you need to do is point and shoot, keeping an eye out as asteroids come flying in from every direction. You can collect points (we assumed these could be used to unlock characters and extras, but these appear to be real-money-only transactions) by firing upon the point icons destroyed asteroids and enemies drop.
Quiz, the final option, was one which we did not get to try at the event, largely due to its purported length — having not watched the tweIfth series at that point, we doubtless wouldn’t have done well anyway, but at the time of writing, we’re up to stage six with full marks. In any case, this quiz mode is a chance to test your knowledge about Red Dwarf and is also a slightly more laid-back option than the other two modes.
The levels we played of Red Dwarf XII were good fun and the brief pieces of dialogue we encountered as mission introductions, short though they were, felt in-keeping with the show’s unique patter of humour. It’s a fun title, free to play with ads, which you can dip in and out of as you like. It’s just a shame that the points don’t appear to mean prizes in this case.
For the record, Red Dwarf XII is a stellar series when set against the ups and downs of previous series. Many thanks are due to Game Digits for reminding us it exists.
