A downloadable game

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Story

Space Station 23 has been hit by an asteroid and it's partly destroyed.

The space station is also invaded by a nasty species of aliens.

Joe Phoenix is back from the jungle and is now sent to the rescue. His mission is to collect resources to restore the full power of the space station and evict and kill all the aliens.


Features

- 10 levels (3 exterior themed and 7 interiors themed)

- 240 different rooms to explore

- save/load game


Compatibility

The game is tested on real hardware, TheC64, and VICE emulator. The game will run in PAL and NTSC modes, but it's not optimized for NTSC.

Note for fast loader users! The game has been tested on multiple fast loaders and there might appear some unexpected behavior and crashes with them.

Epyx Fastloader should work.


Disclaimer

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

StatusReleased
Rating
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
(6 total ratings)
AuthorVector5 Games
GenreAdventure
TagsCommodore 64

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

space23_v2.d64 170 kB
manual.pdf 331 kB

Development log

Comments

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A link to the game was posted in the news on the site:

https://retro.flashback.cz/novinky/space-station-23/

BTW: Nice work! Looking forward to more games. (:

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I made a cartridge version https://csdb.dk/release/index.php?id=238278

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Will there be a CIB release of this game?  It looks incredible!

Thanks, but unfortunately CIB is out of the question at the moment.

(3 edits)

Good job!

I like how Laser Squad vibes here. :-)

https://c64universe.wordpress.com/2023/12/31/space-station-23-2023-vector5-games...

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Very good game, thank you. This game also made it into my latest "Great games to play on Commodore 64 in 2023, my top 10 games" -video. So congratulations! πŸ™‚

"Joe Phoenix is back from the jungle" implies the existence of a prequel. Does anyone know its name?

It's this one: https://vector5games.itch.io/jungle-joe

ah ah, so it went full Rick Dangerous himself πŸ˜†

Is there going to be a CIB release of this game?

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Good game !

Good job!

Good work! This is a really good game. I hope we can see Space Station 24 one day ;)

we covered this game in the most recent episode of our podcast. Go have a listen! 

Thanks, good stuff!

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Hi, good job the game is very good like space zelda / die and retry adventure on commodore 64, i play on my wii with emulator on CRT tv. I love it, i made a video in french

Good fun game!


I've put the game in my round-up of retro indie games for April 2023

(2 edits)

Here is our small review in text form:

A really great action adventure, which is certainly one of the best and most extensive in recent years. The structure of this game reminded me a lot of the "Alien Breed" series from the Amiga era and thanks to items such as access disks, terminals for opening locked doors, laser barriers, etc. there are actually some similarities. However, it is a lot fairer. Thanks to numerous rooms and areas in which nuclear material and bolts have to be collected, which are necessary in addition to the well-hidden cartridge to open the level exit door, there is much to discover here. Some rooms can only be reached through teleporters, porous walls or ventilation shafts, which are not immediately recognizable as such. The graphics of the 10 levels in total were designed to be quite varied, even if there could have been a little more variety in the enemy sprites, because there is only one type of them in the whole game. You are also constantly under pressure in some levels, since you have to refill your spacesuit's coolant at the designated coolant stations on a regular basis, otherwise you lose valuable life energy. A small downer is also the rather tight supply of ammo in the game. As soon as you have collected all the ammo packs and used them up for the alien nests, you have a problem, because without ammo you can no longer open destructible walls and ventilation shafts, meaning that important areas of the game can no longer be reached. So you have no choice but to restart the respective level. Fortunately, alien nests that have been destroyed once (alien films say hello here) remain without any harmful effects even when re-entering the respective areas together with aliens that have already been killed. Furthermore, the game does not have a fastloader by default, so it is recommended to download the trainer version of Laxity (available on the csdb.dk website) instead to avoid longer loading times. In addition, the disk storage requirement was reduced by a factor of 2.5 to more than half. Either way, this game is a small and also completely free masterpiece that you should definitely have played. - 5/5 Stars! πŸ™‚πŸ‘

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Excellent and addicting game, which reminds a bit of "Alien Breed" from Amiga. 😎 Our German-language review can be found in our recorded livestream starting at 00:17:24 and there is also a 2 hour longplay starting at 03:06:17. Automatic subtitles should be available soon (switch on, if necessary). Subscription to our YouTube or Twitch channel is welcome. πŸ™‚

Looks to be a very nice game. Just gave it a quick go and will definately come back. Very polished!  Congratulations :-)

https://ibb.co/LNNHkxW/10

(meaning, it's good. here, have one of my "covers" i make exclusively for myself. i was to share these on lemon, alas, they banned me for being a "troll". their loss, your gain. this stays up for 1 week before it gets auto-deleted so grab it now or never. more covers incoming...)

Whoaa, nice!

(2 edits)

Hello, I am playing the game to review it in Zzap! Italy. Very nice game, playable and with a spot-on atmosphere, kudos for that! Yet there are a few issues you may want to take into consideration.

  1. I am stuck at level 6 because if I load the game, the screens are not reset, i.e: enemy nests I destroyed are still destroyed and objects I collected are still missing, but I need a bomb to blast and obstacle and there is none. I have a snapshot if you want.
  2. tile based movement for the character and baddies is fine but there are some issues that make gameplay frustrating. In crowded situations it's very hard not to get hit for 3 reasons: 1) you cannot just turn on the spot, you take a step in that direction, so often taking a hit is inevitable and 2) most if not all the times you cannot kill a baddie on an adjacent tile, the shot goes right through them (bug or feature?) and 3) destroyed nests still block shots, usually destroyed items in games aren't interactive anymore.
  3. In the 6 levels I played, I died only once in level 3 and several times in level 6 (outdoor), so maybe the difficulty curve needs a bit of balancing. Personally I don't mind it being quite easy most of the time, it is pleasant to play, so a sudden difficulty spike is rather annoying. I think the real problem is due to the difficulty in killing swarming baddies as I explained above.

Thanks for the comments and please send the snapshot to vector5games(at)yahoo.com

Sent!

Regarding reason 1 and 2 of your second point (turning and hit detection), yeah inclined to agree. I worked around that eventually and learned to deal with it. Reviewing the game for English Zzap!64 here ;)

Hey there Mat! :-) 

Thanks for the great game. I like the gameplay, the graphics, the atmosphere. Great you added save game support.

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I like it, so I created a video of the entire game.

Great game! We will review it in the next issue of Retromagazine World. Www.retromagazine.net

A great game! Really fun to play :) I did get one hang in stage 4, when entering a door. I can send over a VICE snapshot file if it’s of any use to you.

Thanks for playing and please send the snapshot to vector5games(at)yahoo.com

Cool game! Played on Mac with Denise, but had sometimes slowdowns. However: Cool game! :)

Just use LDX $BA instead of LDX #$08 before JSR $FFBA in floppy routines to make them work from drive number you loaded from.

As a result of seeing Saberman's vid, I have to purchase this and feed more lovely new food to my beloved C64 :-D Cheeers, great game!!

(1 edit) (+1)

Very cool game :) I must say that your titles are very playable. Of course, I take the title to review for the latest issue of "K&A" #23 Greetings. 

Retro ChΕ‚op :)

gracias

Really cool!

very good

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Great game!

What a cool game, love it