Helionaut is a goofier, noodly limbed, and more focused No Man's Sky about trying to fix a TV

Since it can be difficult to find time to finish video games, let alone find interesting ones that will provide a complete entertaining experience in a few hours. For this series I’ll talk about a short game that could easily be played to completion over a weekend.

I had a Genesis as a kid, and I used to rent ToeJam & Earl a lot from my video store. It was something that I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around at the time, most likely because of the randomness, but that’s also what made it incredibly interesting to me. There seemed to be a surprise around every corner, a new item, a new enemy, a new piece of terrain. Though I wasn’t adept enough to actually play the game well, the exploration and sense of discovery kept me coming back.

I’d later learn about Rogue, and its successors, which helped me better understand what it was about ToeJam & Earl that interested me so much as a kid. And while I wanted a new ToeJam & Earl game to play, the same game with modern improvements didn’t strike at what I think I wanted. A lot of other Rogue-likes already scratched the itch of what I liked about ToeJam & Earl, but they didn’t soothe it. Watching the trailer for Helionaut I instantly knew this is what I had wanted from a ToeJam & Earl sequel, and playing it only further confirmed it.

Helionaut has you playing as a strange humanoid, seemingly made of a fat blue hot dog, rubber tubing, and a clear glass head, whose TV breaks. So to go about fixing it they set off from their small planet into a universe of infinite tiny planets and asteroid fields in search of what they need. Of course things are not that simple as you only have so much oxygen on your ship as you travel between planets, most planets have robots with lasers who try to kill you, there are little spaceships that shoot at you if you get too close, and planets are sometimes to inhospitable for you to walk around on.

To combat all of these dangers you start to acquire blueprints for tools and equipment, and broken ship parts, which can be crafted or repaired. But they require resources to do so, resources you can only collect by going to different planets. This is the game’s loop of moving to a new planet, clearing off the robots, collecting what resources you can, and moving on. Occasionally this is broken up by learning the location of a new thing you can craft or repair.

While the loop remains the same as you play the challenge continues to increase as you begin to encounter things you aren’t quite sure initially how to deal with, like planets with shields around them, or asteroid fields with turrets protecting them. And so you continue the gameplay loop in hopes of finding the right tool or ship piece to help you get passed this next challenge, all the while also getting more efficient and effective at playing.

So while I’ve talked about Helionaut in relation to ToeJam & Earl, it isn’t a Rogue-like. If you die you reappear on the last planet you were on, and some of your resources are taken away as a penalty. And as it is now I don’t think it would make a good Rogue-like, but the systems are there where with more variety to enemies and items it could be.

Although that isn’t what Helionaut is, but what it is is still immensely enjoyable. It’s fun to hop planet to planet, because despite the loop being repetitive there are constantly complications that arise to keep it from becoming stale. Pushing you to rethink your plans, take chances to learn new solutions for the problems that occur, and to explore further... all to fix a broken television.

Helionaut was developed by Sokpop, and is available on Itch.io (Windows and Mac) for $3. It takes about 4 plus hours to finish.