A true science-fiction power fantasy, this game puts the player in control of an enhanced cybernetic elite soldier in a suit of powered armour. Following a pre-game in which the player’s choices determine the character’s progress through basic training (and their statistics and overall motivation), the player is assigned their first mission: re-establishing contact with the remote colony of Far Hope. Leading a squad of Shock Troopers, the player must scout the eerily vacated colony town, potentially encountering survivors or invaders, and rendezvous with the troops at the colony’s power station before descending into the lower levels of the complex, directing both massed and solo combat, at long-range and in close quarters. There, with adequate reconnaissance, the player will venture alone into an inner sanctum, revealing a horrifying betrayal and setting it to rights in the game’s climax.
In addition to measurements of the player’s skills, the game also logs the status of the player’s powered armour, the size and morale of the unit under the player’s command, the amount of glory the player has achieved and how good or evil the player’s conduct has been overall. If the player is overcome in the field of combat, a game mechanism pulls them back in the timeline and returns them back to the point between the end of basic training and the beginning of the mission. All of this is enacted through the trademark Choicescript multiple-choice game (MCG) interface of selecting from a list of options, often in hub areas, and then reading (often at some great length) about the outcomes.
