I’ve a soft spot for Lunar Lander clones and my desire to play them just isn’t satisfied often enough. Something about the inertia gained from piloting a spacecraft within the gravitational pull of a planet appeals to me. It makes for some relaxed but compelling action and, as a testament to my laziness, is pretty much playable one-handed.

SwanActive’s Eight Days in Convoke has recently become one of the many, many games set up for Alphafunding on Desura. The game is currently nearing its third beta on the site and is available for purchase at £2.95. That seems like a decent price, but a demo is on offer in case you’re having trouble making your mind up – it features the first set of levels from a global campaign which seems to have you zipping about all over the world abducting people. It’s a fine life, that of an evil alien pilot*.

Eight Days of Convoke might appear rather unremarkable to a wider audience, but what it needs to get right, it does. The only thing I’m not too fond of currently is that fuel depletion results in an instant game over. I’d always far rather see if I can wing it on one last, desperate blast of the thrusters but this, it appears, is a point that has already been notified to and acknowledged by the developer. As you would expect, changes are being made at every release with community feedback in mind.

So, if a monochromatic tribute to the arcade roots of starship parking maneuvers is your kind of deal, then give it a go. It’s not the liveliest of games – the action is accompanied by some very solemn, organ-like piping – but it is good fun.

* N.B. I don’t know if you actually are playing as an evil alien pilot, but I found that imagining this to be the case enriched the experience amazingly.

[Eight Days in Convoke]

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