Extrasolar
is a freemium game developed by Lazy 8 Studios and released in 2014. The player controls a rover on the planet Epsilon Prime to discover alien life...and a Dark Secret.
Only "season 1" was released. It is shut down in 2018, as a Kickstarter for season 2 failed to reach its goals and the game was running at a loss.
This video game provides examples of:
- all lowercase letters: All of kryptex81's texts.
- Artistic License: Averted as much as possible."We hate seeing bad science in movies and games. A lot of the team is pretty passionate about science, so we wanted to keep as much in the realm of scientific plausibility as possible."
- Expospeak Gag: There is an achievement for travelling as far as light does in 1 microsecond, i.e. 300m.
- Fission Mailed: The game starts with the official rejection of your application, and a message window pops up and offers to a backdoor account to investigate further...
- Freemium
- Gameplay and Story Integration: You are encouraged to share the photos you take to facebook, Google Plus or twitter...unless the share buttons have been replaced with the word CLASSIFIED.
- General Ripper: General Arling, who may have had people killed to uphold his plan, which may have involved faking an alien threat to get funding from the Department of Defense. As the game was shut down, we will never know the full extent of his plot.
- Hackette: kryptex81, who also happens to be the daughter of one of the XRI employees who had a mysterious death.
- Hell Is That Noise: The sound from the obelisks, and the even more unsettling sound from the central monument once you play all the sounds of the surrounding obelisks to it.
- Interface Spoiler: During one of your first missions, there is a generic looking blue rod thing in the photo which could plausibly be some sort of alien plant. Moving closer would allow you to see faint markings on it - but when you tag it and identify it, the "Unidentified Artifact" picture in the "Discoveries" page shows it in its full front view, making it very clear that it is an alien object, despite the XRI telling you it is a part of the landing pod. The fact that kryptex81 requests you to take a closer look make it even more jarring.
- Ironic Name: A meta example. General Arling, the closest this game has to a villain, is voiced by Alex Hero. Adding to it is that "Alex" means "Defender of the people", which Arling may believe or claim himself to be.
- Live-Action Cutscene: Many of them, framed as video calls, that forms a large part of the narrative.
- Mysterious Employer: "kryptex81", also known as "k".
- Ominous Visual Glitch: At the end of the introduction of the Kickstarter for
season 2. - Reluctant Mad Scientist: Dr. Turing still wants Extrasolar to keep being funded, even after knowing his superiors are up to something.
- Schmuck Bait: How could you resist driving into the deep sand they told you not to go into? You actually get an upgraded rover for it after your old one got stuck.
- Scientist vs. Soldier: What the conflict shaped up to be like. General Arling wants funding for some ominous military purpose, while Dr Turing wants to keep diverting military funds for scientific exploration.
- Two Decades Behind: A mild case, but the messages heard still uses old-fashioned default phone ringtones which may already be unfamiliar with younger audiences who grew up with smartphones.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: It's an odd feeling, carefully tagging a photo with plants you've already seen and studiously ignoring the towers with glowing alien writing looming in the background.
