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Parkan: The Imperial Chronicles

Legendary russian game from far 1997 year. One of the first, or even the first game with merged genre 'Action (Shooter) / Simulator (Space) / 3D / 1st Person'.

Game sometimes referenced as Elite-like game, i.e. it grants player freedom in his actions, providing main plot as plot-mission, but not forcing player to accomplish them. As in Elite, you can trade, or freelance or became a pirate. Above that, in Parkan you can land on planets (to trace or capture them) and dock other spaceships. Stallar map and planetary bases are generated in random behaviour (bases generated first time you land them from basic blocks), except few planets with pre-designed bases.

Pre-plot:

Player is a pilot of space cruiser 'Parkan H15' ('Parkan' is a model, due to similar shape of spaceship), referenced just as 'Captain', one from 'Imperial Patrol' (Empire aka 'Green Ring' (from logo) aka Earth Empire) based on space-station 'Argus'.

Patrol guards space-sector 'Lentis', separated from 'Web' - interstallar cheap transporting network, supported by Web Generators on Earth and other planets from Green Ring - due to war between Empire and Trade League aliance for planet 'Lentis', rumored to be imperial genetic lab, when Trade League used it's own Web Generators, leading to Web instability into whole sector (named by planet). Any travels inside or though the sector via Web was considered to be extremly dangerous and all surviours was evacuated from separated sector.

But, interstallar travels inside sector was still possible with old, expensive, fuel-based, jumper technology autonomous from any kind of external structures, such as Web Generators.

So, Patrol was established, to prevent maroudeurs or just strangers coming into sector, which became unknown. Also, 'Argus' base became an central point for any kind of researches in separated sector.

Finally, there was a decision to make an expedition into sector. A huge spaceship, old imperial destroyer 'Wanderer', was reequiped for scientific needs and sent into autonomous search into Lentis sector. After a few month, connection with Wanderer was lost.

Player, again: pilot of regular cruiser, was into Lentis sent to find Wanderer, or what happent with it. Due to low power of jumper, equppied on small cruisers, he was sent via Argus's stationary jump-gate (something like big accelerator, based on same technology as jumpers) into last-known Wanderer's location.

But, due to error, or mistake, or just some space anomalies on Lentis border, which are side effect of Web instability (this could be one of the reasons, why Wanderer was so big), cargo bay and most of the eqqupement was dettached from ship and scattered into whole sector, while ships comes out from jump in completelly unknown location and there was no sings of Wanderer. Game begins from this point.

Some kind of game FAQ:

There is seven 'races' into Lentis - robots (droids) left, when all people was evacuated - Hammer, Oberon, Xenon, Dagger, Matubo, player's droids 'Parkan' and pirates Astron. Every race inhabits it's own constellation, named by color, and has different fighting capabilities and own ships, named and shaped by first letter of race name (H-cruisers for Hammers, looks like H letter =)). Astrons acts as pirates in every constellation, even in their's own, and there is no known way to alliance with them. All races are netrual to player at the beggining.

Planets in game has four parameters - temperature, middle the best, atmosphere, organic and resources. Mine's efficientcy depends on resources and temperature and factory's - on organic and, maybe, something else. Atmosphere meaning is unknown. Planet could have 5 levels of mine and 8 levels of factory, if there is any organic (if nessesary cartridges and enough 'robot-germ's availible). Factory could repair robot-fragments, produce two types of rockets, four types of drones and even ships (no known way to control them by player).

Player could capture free planets, just by placing two 'robot-germ's via planet console (central trading, freelancing, etc., point on planet), or occupied by other race, by destroying orbital defence fleet and all robots on planet, untill 'working robots' values of mine and factory became 0 (after relanding). It's also possible to land on planet's sattelites and dock other ships, which computer sometimes contains usefull information and hull - some nice stuff (but races became agressive, if you've stolen many things from them).

Most of plot-missions is 'find-something-on-some-planet', when 'something' could be nearly everywhere on planet, starting from central room, and ending into 'second base's underground, accessed via small hole into last level of mine, so search carefully (location regenerated every time on landing, so, sometimes, relanding helps). Also, sometimes, mission stuff could be stolen by transports into system, if you're late - they will try to sell it to you.

Application Details:

Developer: Nikita
URL: http://www.parkan.ru/imperium/...

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For more details and user comments, view the versions of this application

VersionDescriptionLatest RatingLatest Wine version testedTest resultsComments
Non-boxNewer than 'box' version - with patch included, fixing some non-critial bugs (game is very stable), and adding buggy and broken '3d support' for 'shooter-mode' (not works even in Windows).Platinum1.1.2010
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