Oh, Protostar. You came so far and got my hopes up way high, only to stumble and miss out on standing alongside the giants of space adventure games. It’s a damn shame too, as there’s a lot to like about you.

Galactic Origins

Protostar: War on the Frontier is a DOS PC game developed by Tsunami Games and released in 1993. This now-defunct software company, founded by Edmond Heinbockel, an ex-Sierra On-Line staffer, first released a game focused on parodying classic video games and ‘nerd culture’ (Wacky Funsters! The Geekwad’s Guide to Gaming), before turning to more serious fare. Their first venture beyond parody was a point-and-click adaptation of Larry Niven’s Ringworld novel. They also put out Blue Force the same year as Protostar, designed by ex-Police Quest designer Jim Walls. Jim was one of several Sierra staffers who left the company to join Tsunami, much to Ken Williams’ annoyance. Reportedly, the relationship between Sierra and Tsunami was bitter, with litigation threatened as Ken saw it as a direct competitor poaching their developers, especially with Tsunami based in Sierra’s home turf of Oakhurst, California.

With drama and rivalry swirling around them, Tsunami then turned its attention to another of the giants of video games: Electronic Arts. And it was during this time of courting the biggest video game company in the world (or so I heard them described recently in a 1993 episode of Bad Influence!) Protostar was born… as Starflight III.

Haven’t I Seen You Before?

To anyone who has already played Protostar, this origin as the third planned game in Electronic Arts and Binary Systems’ series of space exploration and roleplaying games is plain to see. Understandable, too, as Tsunami worked under the assumption that it would be a Starflight game for the first six months of its life. Then the collaboration between Electronic Arts and Tsunami abruptly ended, leaving Tsunami with a Starflight game but no legal right to call it a Starflight game. And so, as sometimes happens when a license or sequel authorisation is pulled from under a game, Tsunami squared its shoulders and retooled the game to be its own thing. But the hallmarks of it being a Starflight game are all over Protostar, as is Tsunami’s pedigree as a point-and-click adventure game developer. 

Protostar transports you to the 24^th century, where Earth is under threat of invasion by the Skeetch. Desperate for both allies to resist Skeetch conquest and the funds to do so, Earth calls upon the Protostar Initiative, an interstellar espionage organisation, for aid. And that’s where you come in. Smuggled in through Skeetch-occupied space, you’re tasked with a mission to go forth and establish alliances with the four alien races that call the Thule Sector home. However, your ship is the property of Newfront, the only corporation that hasn’t turned its back on Earth to avoid Skeetch retaliation. Their covert assistance comes with strings attached; should you succeed, they want exclusive trade contracts with Earth’s prospective allies.

Corporate altruism, eh?

Home Sweet Home

This is where Protostar’s lineage of being a Starflight game first asserts itself. Though the presentation of the space station hub is different (and depicted in some GORGEOUS VGA artwork) and more akin to a point-and-click adventure, what you do is functionally the same as in Starflight I and II. You’ll consult a terminal for the latest news and titbits of useful information, outfit your ship, and report in HDF HQ. What you didn’t do in Starflight is visit the space bar – and it’s here that the point-and-click adventure heritage that Tsunami was born from asserts itself. As in the station hub, you can right-click to change the cursor to examine your surroundings and talk to bar patrons. These conversations hold much of Protostar’s characterful writing and irreverent humour. You could be easily fooled into believing you are playing a Space Quest adventure. This vibe is only emphasised when you learn that the two lead artists on Protostar also worked on King’s and Space Quest games.

Did I mention how gorgeous Protostar looks? And sounds? Especially if you’re playing it with an MT-32, real or emulated. While the Adlib/Soundblaster soundtrack has its charms, Protostar’s soundscape shines with a Roland in tow.

On your first jaunt to the station lounge, you’ll encounter a salty ol’ cyborg spacer who’ll serve as an explanatory tutorial for the game, but only to a point. Though the game presents you with conversation options for all its functionality, you can only quiz him about a handful before he’ll have had enough of chatting and want to be left alone. Then you’re left to your own devices again – and a big swathe of space to explore.

The Fatal Flaw

This is where the fatal design choice that likely turned so many people off Protostar kicks in. You burn through fuel quickly – too quickly. Jumping from one star system to another – or into the depths of interstellar space if a clue or mission calls for it – eats away at your fuel supply; twelve to twenty units for a short jump and anywhere up to a hundred and twenty to jump to the other side of the sector. Fair enough, given you’re traversing many light-years of space, but interplanetary travel between one planet and another takes almost as much fuel. You’ll burn through 5-20 units just puttering about a star system’s planets, hoping to find valuable resources, exotic animals, and trading outposts. And that’s before the additional fuel costs for collecting those resources and future zoological exhibits. Then add on paying for upgrades and accounting for crew salaries, and you’re struggling just as hard to balance the books as you are to save the human race.

It’s all too much and can lead to some nasty, sudden dead ends. Should you run out of fuel, the game is content to leave you adrift with no rescue option or a game-over screen. Much like Starflight, you’ll just hang there, dead in space, until you quit and game and reload – unlike one of its contemporaries, Star Control II, where being rescued is a welcome option.

Small wonder that a restart game option is right there on the escape key menu.

Learn-by-death to such a harsh degree was something I wasn’t expecting from Protostar, given my experience with and love for Starflight. From the scant comments I found on videos and forum threads about the game, being stranded in space seems to have been the fate of many attempted playthroughs. The sole Let’s Play on YouTube of Protostar managed five episodes before frustration over the things that I picked up on too aborted it. “Play Ur-Quan Masters instead!”

Getting Chatty

Protostar has so much to offer fans of space exploration games and point-and-click adventures. The writing exudes snappy humour and worldbuilding. Crew members you’ll recruit during your voyages to fill various positions, such as navigator and weapons specialist, have their own personalities and well-written dialogue. It’s fun to barter with merchants in a way that feels more like insult sword fighting from The Secret of Monkey Island as you volley banter back and forth, trying to get the best deal. You can even play the game entirely via mouse pointer and a clickable interface. So, it does feel more like a graphic adventure than a space exploration sim. In fact, you’ll spend as much time chatting with the cast of exotic alien races and colourful characters as you will engaging in combat and exploring worlds, usually more.

Resource Management, Inc.

Space and planetary exploration is much simpler than it was in Starflight, with your explorer craft dispatching an atmosphere-capable shuttle to swoop over planetary surfaces, scooping up resources and alien creatures with a retractable space hoover and landing at outposts to barter and trade. But resources are far less plentiful than they were in Starflight, further exacerbating your fuel and money woes. In fact, from reading the old-style Let’s Play for Protostar during the evening my partner and I sank into the game and tried to progress after three abortive voyages, it seems the only way you’ll actually be able to beat it is by finding a single fuel-rich world that’s so abundant in reserves that you’ll be able to trade it back to merchants in vast quantities and keep your own tanks topped up, therefore rendering all the other resource acquisition and trading mechanics of the game useless. And it’s a crapshoot to stay profitable long enough to buy the fuel to find it.

If you don’t go this route, the only other way appears to be going on doomed voyages to map out systems and hitting the restart button or reloading an earlier save once you’ve determined an efficient path to follow. Save scumming is practically required to play Protostar blind and as intended. It’s in these aspects that Protostar feels the most like a Sierra game.

Starflight had a gentler approach to fuel use and mineral acquisition (and no crew salaries to pay!), granting you more freedom to go on voyages of exploration and live out your Star Trek fantasies. Protostar feels more like an open-world space exploration game set within the universe of Space Quest and designed by Sierra, with the baggage such a game would come with. There was also a stronger feeling of traversing interstellar space in Starflight and Star Control II than in Protostar, where you simply click on a planet on a system map and watch a dot move across the screen, fingers crossed as your fuel reserves tick down.

Die, Alien Scum!

Combat is more interactive and an arcade experience. Wing Commander Lite. You’ll use the mouse to move the first-person viewpoint of the ship around, engaging in simple dogfights and unleashing laser death with taps of the left mouse button. It’s decent enough, but is the most bare-bones aspect of Protostar’s gameplay, and it rarely feels satisfying as enemy ships are bullet sponges, especially early on and ship-to-ship combat can drag on.

Did I mention that you can name the non-sentient critters you discover, and you’ll make the news for discovering them?

Concluding Thoughts

Having played the game a little again to grab some fresh screenshots and refresh my memory on a couple of details, I’m once again left with the conclusion that it’s a damn shame. Protostar is just one critical flaw away from being one of my favourite space adventure games. I could forgive the weaker aspects of its gameplay (such as the combat) when compared to the games that inspired it if it didn’t seek to bring a voyage to an abrupt end without save scumming or careful, nervous planning and lengthy grinding that may or may not pay off. The Sierra On-Line adventure game heritage is too strong. Perhaps some hex values can be hacked in the game’s code to reduce the fuel consumption to a more forgiving value? That’s one option, but it’s still at its core a fatal design choice that feels like it’s there to artificially lengthen the game’s playtime and (perhaps unintentionally) engender frustration.

Would I still recommend playing Protostar? Absolutely. It’s clearly a passion project and a labour of love. Enjoy it for the graphics, the soundscape, and the mixture of seriousness and silly humour. Go on voyages and return with a Woolly Sneep in the hold and show it to the people of Earth. Engage in amusing banter and trade negotiations. There is no ticking clock, despite the threat of invasion looming large. But be careful of growing too attached to the game unless you’re willing to put up with a lot of frustration.