Asciident

Asciident is set on asteroid FA-17, a mining colony founded a couple of millennia ago. You play as a human clone who escaped from space pirates. Crystal mining continues, though falling prices have left entire areas of the asteroid abandoned; its convenient position as a transshipment base keeps the settlement in use.

ASCII graphics

All of the game's graphics use keyboard characters from positions 32 to 126 in the ASCII table. Text can include characters outside that range, but they are not used in the graphics.

Locations and characters

The spaceport on Asteroid FA-17 is the current location. From there, you can travel to neighboring planets and stations when you have the required resources and skills. Neutral and hostile creatures inhabit the game world. Neutral characters can share information, improve skills and craft items, though some may turn hostile.

Train your skills

Clones can learn skills almost instantly with a neuroprogrammer, a device that changes the structure of brain neurons. Training also requires a person or another creature with the relevant skill. The available skills are:

• Life force
• Inventory space
• Radiation resistance
• Holding breath
• Melee weaponry
• Thrown weaponry
• Plasma weaponry
• Piloting
• Hyperspace
• Navigation
• Hand-to-hand combat

Terminals and display options

Computer terminals around the world contain built-in games, each of which can earn in-game currency. You can choose from eight retro color modes: True Color, three monochrome modes, 16-color mode (DOS / Mac), 2-bit and Game Boy mode. An LED font option separates each character's pixels from those of its neighbors.

The current version offers about two hours of gameplay on Asteroid FA-17.