Void Raiders
Release type: Shareware
Release date: 2001
Levels: 7
Author: Robert Brandon
Registration bonus: The rest of the first episode, side-scrolling scenes, and bonus courses
Registration price: $8
Related games: Orb: The Derelict Planet
Whereas much of John and Robert Brandon's material is unfinished, due often to appetite greater than the size of the plate, a few games did reach some level of definition. Void Raiders is one of the Brandons' most complete games, to the point that it asks a registration fee. The lens we use, then, should here be different from the lens we use on their other work.
Compared to John's games, his brother Robert's may be distinguished by two themes: one, they more tend to be complete; two, whereas John most seems to enjoy the act of production, Robert tends to use what is to hand to sketch at a structure. If John is the artisan, Robert is the architect. When Robert happens on a vat of John's raw material, we get a collaboration like Terra or Fox World. In the case of Void Raiders, Robert seems to have found his beats in other material -- namely, Nebula, Zark, and Orb: The Derelict Planet.
For his melody, Robert seems to be working from riffs that he improvised in the maze game Droid. Some part of its chaos may have kept an orbit in his head, and stabilized over time. Here he more clearly sketched an environment, put more thought into player input, and draped the game with with a more focused theme -- that old stalwart, space ships. So now, we've got something. Or, the start of it.
On paper, Void Raiders looks solid. It's a free-form space shooter that controls like Robotron -- an unusual scheme, yet ideal for the engine. The visuals are borrowed, yet applied with an eye and ambition. One level turns marble tiles from Pipemare into a seeming torrent of water or plasma. Elsewhere the levels twist on a tapestry of NASA photographs, scrounged from whatever source would hold them.
In action, Void Raiders struggles to hold together. The monsters are relentless, and absorb many shots. It's hard to shoot them, because the action is set in small enclosed areas where the walls tend to block the player's shots. It's hard to run away; the spaces are so narrow, often there's nowhere to go. If there is an exit, the ship's directional momentum can make it hard to squeeze through. Then even if the player does run, the monsters keep coming.
This struggle with basic survival compounds a lack of clarity in the game's demands. The game sets the player free to wander its levels, but leaves little in the way of clues or direction. If it were easy to explore, then finding a goal might be an acceptable challenge. As it is, the game leaves the player little bandwith to think about long-term ambitions. This pressing concern turns the lack of a clear goal into an ongoing source of disorientation.
None of this looks like intended behavior. Void Raiders wasn't meant to be so merciless. The problem lies in the difference between design and real behavior. Due to Game-Maker's eccentricities, a game system that looks stable in theory can go totally off-balance thanks to elements that do not interact as one would expect. You can go back and forth, and tweak the results until they match what you want -- but it's a time-consuming and often confusing process. Basically you have to second-guess how the system will behave, and feed it in the data it will take to get the response that you want.
In the case of Void Raiders, each of a handful of minor issues multiplies the game's difficulty, often in a way that feels unfair, until it becomes unreasonable to expect the player to survive for more than a few minutes. This isn't long enough to get a sense of what the game wants from the player, and it isn't enough for the player to feel some kind of confidence, or ownership over the experience. The game just bludgeons the player to death, over and over, until the life stocks are drained or the player moves on.
Clearly Robert believed in this game; it's a careful and laborious design, and one of the few that either brother saw to completion. In theory, the controls are perfect. In theory, the premise is a good fit for the engine. It's easy to see why he believed in it. Void Raiders works as a summary of Robert's experiences, and therefore a statement of intent. The problem is, Game-Maker doesn't care about intent. Any statement you make, you have to consider the translation it will undergo and choose your words very carefully.
Luckily, Game-Maker still exists. If you want to tweak the game, you can. Give it a few nudges, bring it closer to what looks like its intended behavior, and Void Raiders could be one of the more entertaining space shooters on the platform.
Contents
Story
Once, in a land far away, there was a strange occurrence. Where it came from, nobody knew, but whenever anyone touched it, he/she disappeared. Some believed that it was some mystical portal conjured up by the ancients. Others thought that it was an alien device accidentally left there. Nobody knew. It was eventually forgotten, that strange mist of swirling purple gasses, and it remained, swallowing the odd traveler here, a hiker there.
CENTURIES LATER
Technology had improved much since the discovery of the transporter, and the Zorbians were once again ready to take on the once forgotten menace. They constructed a fine ship, made of the best materials of Zorb, and equipped with dual ion cannons. However, the portal was quickly fading, so they strapped in the first junior pilot they could find and started the countdown.
...5...4...3...2...1... PREPARE FOR LIFTOFF!!!
Here's my story; I was walking down the sidewalk in my rider's outfit, (I was waiting for the washing machine to finish) and suddenly, a big guy's arm reaches out, grabs my arm and throws me into a nicely padded seat. As the countdown begins, I'm wondering exactly what I'm doing here. I'm also wondering if I can get back before my clothes are done. I've been using the on-line help section of the ship, and what I've been able to come up with at the moment is the movement keys, the turbo keys, (W,S,A,D) and the fire keys. (T,G,F,H) Well, I hope that they're friendly...
Instructions
WASD = TURBO
TFGH = PHOTON
Arrow keys = movement
[] = Expel - Impel items into your ship
BN = Plasma bolts - if you have them
ENTER = Cloaking device activate
Credits
This game was made by Brandon Enterprises in the name of the great Emperor Zorgisang.
Actually, I was just kidding - Robert Brandon made this game.
Background
John Brandon:
- Game by my brother, looks like it borrows graphics from Nebula, Zark, and Orb. I do remember my brother spending a lot of time on this.
- Looks like it is a maze style game. You can shoot at the enemies, the levels should have exits, and there is a level select screen! Don't forget to regEster! LOL
- Needless to say, like all of our other games and tech demos, none of these were ever released to the public at the time, nor was a more complete/registered version ever created.
Availability
Prior to this archive's online presence, this game is not known to be publicly available.
Archive history
On January 21st 2010, Rob Brandon pseudonymously responded to a Reddit thread with a passing comment about Game-Maker. When pressed about his history with the software, he replied that all of his games were stored on a couple of defunct computers, either inaccessible or destroyed.
Over 31 months later on August 23th 2012, John Brandon commented on a YouTube clip that he had found an archive of his and his brother's old games. The next day he composed a long e-mail describing the contents of a jumbled collection of gameware files, adding up to an ostensible sixteen games. All of the games were in pieces, many of them incomplete.
Over the next five months, through regular consultation, the games were all reassembled as well as the materials would permit. The games were reconstructed or otherwise recovered on the following dates:
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Links
Downloads
- Void Raiders (544.1 kB)
