The Captain - Pocket Edition finally brings its sci-fi adventure to iOS and Android
Earth, and step on it
- Captain Thomas Welmu must find his way back to Earth
- Your choices shape the fate of alien civilisations
- The pixel-art adventure costs £6.99 with no in-app purchases
The Captain has taken its time getting to your phone. Indie Fund put money behind it back in 2017, it didn’t reach PC until 2021, and Switch got it a year after that. Now it’s out on iOS and Android as The Captain - Pocket Edition.
It’s a pixel-art point-and-click from Sysiac Games, which is Peter Hedin and Benny Eriksson, two Swedes who’ve been making games together since they were kids. Tomorrow Corporation, of Little Inferno and Human Resource Machine fame, is publishing.
You’re Captain Thomas Welmu, a Spacefleet science officer stranded on the far side of the galaxy, and you happen to be carrying the one thing that can stop the forces heading for Earth. So, you make for home. Along the way you pick up crew and fall out with people, and somewhere in there you’re deciding which civilisations make it.
It’s a comedy adventure, mostly. The developers have named Star Trek: The Next Generation as an influence, with old Space Quest and Monkey Island in there too, though some of the choices get fairly heavy. Between stops there are space battles, but you can slip past enemies and still reach the end, which seems a very science-officer way to win.
Each planet has its own dilemma with more than one way it can play out, so your first trip home won’t be your only one.
The Captain - Pocket Edition is £6.99 on the App Store and Google Play, with no in-app purchases.
And If you like your pixel art with a bit more fighting in it, Vampire Crawlers has turned Vampire Survivors into a turn-based dungeon crawler, complete with a deck of cards doing the damage. We gave it four stars, though the layout on phones doesn’t make the best use of the screen.
Our list of the best adventure games on iOS won’t make you leave anyone behind.
