Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Ixion. The world of science fiction gaming is one that I occasionally tread into. The genre is also rife with absolute classics that have redefined what gaming can be. No Man’s Sky, Outer Wilds, and the Mass Effect series are some of the standout entries that come to mind. While each of these games has its own unique focus, they all bring something to the table. But what about a game that focuses on tactical combat…while also balancing an absolute smorgasbord of factors in the management of your base camp. Enter Dead in Antares.

Dead in Antares is the third installment of the Dead In… series from Ishtar Games, with the prior two entries being Dead in Bermuda and Dead in Vinland. Dead in Antares is slated for a 2025 release with publishing by NACON.

Gamer Social Club is no stranger to the sci-fi genre of gaming, as whole. That being said, we’re going to take a look at the demo currently available on Steam for Dead in Antares and provide some initial impressions on what we experienced.

The World and Story

In Dead in Antares, the Earth as we know it is dying. In a valiant effort by the Global Committee, the most advanced starship, the Ixion, has been sent into space. The mission: to locate resources to stave off the planet’s death. The Ixion is manned by a crew of ten highly skilled specialists who will seek to locate what materials can save Earth.

But not long into the journey, the Ixion is drawn into a wormhole and jettisoned to another location in the universe. The ship crashes into a strange and unknown planet within the Antares System, located 550 lightyears from our blue planet.

Stranded, the crew, consisting of Amelia, Liu, and William, must make do with what the planet has to offer to eventually find a way back home. Within the demo version of the game, another three characters are accessible for use: Polina, Maria, and Noemie. Each of these professionals will bring their own unique strengths to the mission.

The Gameplay

Dead in Antares has two main gameplay components: “base” management (where the Ixion crashed) and exploration.

Base Management and Survival

With regards to the management of the base and your crew, think of a board game like Lords of Waterdeep. You’ll be placing specific crew members in locations throughout your camp to generate valuable resources that can be used to make repairs, expand resource harvesting, and improve the conditions in which your crew will be surviving.

Trust me – you will need to be making improvements to your base, because your very survival depends on it. But here is the caveat. Not only are you managing the resources of your base, but you are managing all the facets of your crew members. Food and water intake, exhaustion, mental health, sickness, injuries – all of these will have serious implications to your survival, as well as the traits of each of your crew members. And like any role-playing game, traits and skills can be leveled!

You will also need to balance your choices when exploring the various backgrounds, ambitions, and secrets of your crew members. Nothing can spell imminent disaster like a situation where trust has broken down and tempers flare. And flare, they will!

Exploration and Combat

The other side of the coin in Dead in Antares is the exploration of Antares Prime. In order to escape, you will need to locate the various wreckage sites of the Ixion and salvage what materials remain. But the world of Antares Prime, while beautiful, is not without risk and danger. Strange and aggressive beasts abound, and the environs themselves can spell the end for the crew.

If the crew must engage in combat (and trust me – they will), the gameplay is very much like a turn-based combat system. The emphasis of this system will focus on the use of Action Points, as well as the various strategic locations on the field of combat. Certain attacks and abilities can only be used in certain ranges. Additionally, your actions may only be able to affect certain ranges of the enemy’s field of combat.

The mechanics themselves boil down to the balancing of attacking, defending, buffing, and biding your time to strike. The combat itself also has a “Power Surge” that can be activated. The best comparison, think of it as Trance from Final Fantasy IX. You’ll unleash a powerful ability, unique to each crew member.

Following combat, you have the option to explore the location your expedition travelled to. With the presentation of options at each location, your choice may help…or hinder you.

First Impressions

The Ambience

This cannot be stated enough: the initial treat of the music, the art, and the voiceover work blew me away. It was such an astounding introduction to the world of Dead in Antares, all of which carry through to the other aspects of the game.

The Gameplay

With regards the survival management of the game, while very dense, did feel intuitive. Not only was it intuitive, it was challenging as well! Dead in Antares is not going to be a cakewalk of a survival game, based on what I experienced.

Every choice, while helping you in some regards, is also going to hinder you. We’re having William harvest ore, because he is simply the most skilled at doing so. But by having William focus solely on this, he is going to experience exhaustion…and injury…that much faster. More exhaustion equals more stress. And with more stress…comes a slew of negative effects. These will only compound when you also factor in the environments of not only the base, but the planet itself. Despite the learning curve and challenges, I wanted more. How far can we push this crew without suffering the consequences? We’ll have to wait for the full release.

The combat was very comparable to other games that I have played in the past. While my point of comparison is from Bravely Default, the most comparable comparison (based on a cursory search) is that of XCOM. I can definitely see falling down the rabbit hole of synergizing the best teams for the purposes of exploration. And I experienced that with only six crew members.

The Story

The last piece that I will speak on is the narrative components of the story. What amazed me was that not only are you given the choices to guide the narrative based on your decisions, your decision isn’t the only factor. Yes – certain skills will make you more (or less) likely to find success in the narrative point you are pursuing. Dead in Antares addresses this in a very unique way via a cursor bar that bounces back and forth between success and failure. As I noted, certain traits may provide a buff and create more of a success “area”. A lack of that trait? Well, I’m certain that you can figure that out.

Final Thoughts

Dead in Antares is looking to be a treat of a game that will further expand on the concept of a narrative-driven survival RPG. The resource management, the difficult choices, the skill progressions of each crew member, the combat – all of these fascinating pieces of the game are, in my opinion, going to come together into something that will truly be memorable to survival game enthusiasts.

Dead in Antares is slated for release in 2025 to Steam, with a demo version of the game available now.

Stay connected with Gamer Social Club as we near the game’s release!