Notrium review by Kiwi

Greetings from the alien hell hole called Notrium! Notrium is a freeware game created by Ville Monkkonen. You view things from a top down perspective and the best description is a survival adventure game. You try to maintain your body temperature, such as not running around the desert in the middle of the day, keeping yourself fed, and, of course, fighting off the various things trying to kill you. You do this by picking up whatever you can find and combining it with other random things and using whatever comes out of it to assist you in your fight to survive and eventually get off the planet.

You can play as 4 different races: Human, Android, Alien, or Psionic. Each one is played differently; well the Human and Android have play similar in some ways but different enough. The Human and Android rely the most on finding random bits and combination. The Alien hunts and evolves by being well-fed and killing. The Psionic can carry nothing but the psionic tokens he has but can combine them to create various abilities. Towards the end of the game the Human and Android come out with big guns and armor and such, the Alien is leading an army of aliens, that it gave birth to, and the Psionic is creating duplicates of itself and other fun things. A good amount of fun comes from experimentation with the random things you find. Make no mistake though, this game will not be that easy your first play though, unless you play on easy which eliminates body temperature. The game is very replayable, with the areas and items being randomly placed.

One of the things that Kiwi loves about this game is how easy it is to mod this game. The data files are quite easy to understand, at least compared to other games. It comes with an easy to use map editor as well. With a few minutes in the data files you can create a brand new item or weapon. There are also a couple good mods floating around for this game if you enjoyed it. Though you should try to complete the game at least once before you go into that.

Story is not a huge focus of the game. The basic story is that you are on an explorer ship (your role depends on what your race is), and you come across a planet that appears to have a lost civilization! However, soon after your ship is ripped apart by missiles and your escape pod heads and crashes on the planet, Notrium. You can find out more about the character your playing by reading journal entries as they come up. Journal entries will also give you details about items you pick up and will give you some possible combination and other useful hints. The game doesn't really have anything in the way of the an instruction manual so journal entries and experimentation are your best bet. The game has multiple endings so you'll have to play through a few times to see all of them, or at least, load a saved game a couple times.

The graphics are not really amazing, but it's a freeware game, what do you want? Next-gen graphics? The sounds are decent, background sounds in particular are noteworthy, but the music is lacking.

Overall, Kiwi would definitely recommend this game to anyone, unless you have something against the setting or type of game it is. Kiwi first picked this game up 4 or 5 years ago, and he still comes back to it.

Here's the link to the game's web page:
Notrium Site

Pros:
-Great game play
-multiple characters
-Easily modified
-Legally free
-The game's files are small and it has low system requirements (the install file is 10 MB if Kiwi remembers right)

Cons:
-It does have some bugs
-Poor music
-Can be a bit unfriendly to new players
-Some important items can be nearly impossible to find

NOTE: These screenshots are from a modified version of the game, as Kiwi has nothing else on hand.



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