2009 · Roguelike · Shooter

Captain Forever

Captain Forever was inspired by the 2007 freeware game Battleships Forever, which itself drew inspiration from the 2003 game Warning Forever. The player pilots a ship with the ability to be expanded by attaching 'modules' (such as lasers or boosters) gained from defeated enemies to a command module, represented by a box containing a broken heart. The goal in the game is to keep your ship alive for as long as possible.

Released: 31 December 2009
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Roguelike Shooter
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Science fiction

About

Captain Forever is a multidirectional shooter video game by Australian developer Jarred "Farbs" Woods. The name comes from both its ongoing development process, with new versions of the game regularly being created and released, as well as its limitless gameplay experience.

There are four games in the series, the first of which is free and paying supporters may gain access to any future sequels released without being required to make any extra payments. In May 2018, the first three games in the series, namely Captain Forever, Captain Successor, and Captain Impostor, were re-built and bundled as Captain Forever Trilogy on Steam. All current Supporters are to be granted Steam Keys to redeem the Trilogy, and as of May 2018 the Supporter program stopped accepting new members.

Keywords

spaceship
space shooter
vector graphics
customization
deliberately retro
abstract art style

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Captain Forever was inspired by the 2007 freeware game Battleships Forever, which itself drew inspiration from the 2003 game Warning Forever.

In each game in the Captain Forever series, with the exception of Captain Impostor, the player pilots a ship with the ability to be expanded by attaching 'modules' (such as lasers or boosters) gained from defeated enemies to a command module, represented by a box containing a broken heart. The goal in the game is to keep your ship alive for as long as possible. As the game progresses, stronger enemy ships (labeled according to letters from the NATO phonetic alphabet) arrive. Destroying stronger ships increases the Law (levels within the game), until Protectors (Peacekeepers in the original game) arrive to attack.

Reception

Captain Forever won the Best Game award at China's first Independent Games Festival in 2009.

Captain Forever was also named as one of the 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.

Legacy

Captain Successor: Launched for supporters in November 2009, as the original game was made freely available to all players. This new game introduces a variety of new weapons, propulsion and defensive modules, as well as more types of enemy ships.

Captain Impostor: Released in March 2010, but is only available to paying supporters. It introduced the Clone Drive which copies enemy designs entirely and cannot be constructed module by module.