If you are fond of Nausicaa, Moebius, Andrei Tarkovski, Jeff Vandermeer, Rimworld, FTL: Faster Than Light, fungus, coral, and furiously bright colours in general, you may wish to take an interest in Trailblazers: Into The March – a roguelite colony sim in which you guide a crustaceous landship through a ravishing wilderness. Amongst other things, it is a game in which your vessel’s chief fuel source is also a lifeform that has to be kept happy, if you don’t want your valiant expedition to end in a cloud of cordyceps spores.
As detailed by development team Strangers in a series of blogs, Trailblazers is set in a rainbow puffball world of corrupting flora, with humanity confined to a single walled city. Or humanoids, rather – there appear to be lizard people, as well. Or people wearing novelty lizard hats, anyway (it’s a top-down game). You are among the brave and/or stupid captains who undertake missions into the March. You’ll be given various assignments by city factions, but the overarching goal is to discover what lurks at the March’s heart, and find a way beyond it.
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“Before setting off you will purchase and customize your Landship, recruit crew members with their own backgrounds and skills, trade supplies and materials, and take on contracts,” explains the Steam page. “Once you venture into the March you will have to carefully manage your crew’s daily lives, witness their evolving relationships and stories, and defend your moving home in tactical landship battles as you explore the vast, uncharted territories.”
Enemy landships aside, the big threat within the March is the Bloom, an incorrigible vital force that “can behave like a symbiote, a parasite, or both”. It represents “the March’s hunger to exist and expand” – or so your fellow Trailblazers tell you. More straightforwardly, the devs call it a “global pressure system”, consisting of a gauge that is filled up by actions such as combat, resource extraction or allowing the Bloom to take root inside your landship.
As the gauge fills, you’ll trigger events or “perturbations” that generally make life harder. You’ll also have to worry about Bloom leeches, which glom onto your ship or crew and drain away your resources and life force, assuming they don’t simply explode after an interval. Apparently, the Bloom system takes inspiration from the Torch and darkness mechanics in Red Hook’s Darkest Dungeon, piling on the peril later in each run.
Your chief defence against the Bloom is the Spirit living in the heart of your ship – a teeny elemental being comparable to Calcifer, the demon contracted to keep Howl’s Moving Castle on its feet. The Spirit’s energy can be turned into fireflies that cleanse your ship of Bloom. Helpfully/unhelpfully, each Spirit is a personality, with moods, opinions and preferences. Some Spirits really like getting into battles, for example. The same goes for your regular crew, each with a backstory and skills. Aside from managing the landship’s innards, they’ll disembark to complete multiple-choice quests, and develop foibles that may hinder the process of, say, beating the shit out of an invading toadstool.
All of which very much tickles my gills. Yes, I have gills now – I’ve been hanging around that Bloom stuff for too long. Alas, Trailblazers: Into The March hath no release date, but it does have a Steam playtest, with limited access on request. I recommend rifling through those devblogs, too – Strangers have been generous with their insights about the project’s origins and gestation. Where are all the hovercars, you ask? You are thinking of the other Trailblazers.
