I guess the simplest way to describe Jitter is that it’s Heat Signature, the hectic spaceship hijacking game from Suspicious Developments, but you are the spaceship, not the hijacker, and also, you can glue pieces of other ships onto yourself, like in Captain Forever, and also, this looks a bit like Lemmings on the Game Boy. Boil that down, and we have a brand new subgenre, the Hot Lemming Boy Foreverlike, which… let’s maybe forget I wrote the words “Hot Lemming Boy Foreverlike”. Let’s proceed without further reflection to this video showcasing the combat.
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If the above description confuses and alarms you, there’s a cleaner one on the game’s Steam page. “Jitter is an immersive sci-fi exploration and survival game set on a mining colony and its outskirts in the Main Asteroid Belt,” it reads. “You assume the role of an experimental AI that maintains ship functions and engages with the crew on board. As you explore the mining colony, you will take on new missions, expand ships and bases using various modules, add survivors to your crew, engage in space fights, and repair the damage left by enemy fire and onboard accidents.”
Cue impressive scenes of your greenish top-down AI core chewing through asteroids like a lemming through a baguette. Shoo, lemming! That’s my lunch, not an asteroid, and since when do lemmings eat asteroids, anyway.
No time for lunch, though, because it’s time to talk about simulation systems. As in FTL, you’ll organise the generation and flow of power and oxygen around your craft as you expand it, ensuring that you still, for example, have the means to swiftly fix hull breaches while adding gun turrets to the design. It might sound like it requires a shedload of menus, but the largely mouse-based controls are quite simple for a game of this fiddliness. There’s a demo on Steam, if you’d like to try for yourself.
If the idea of playing an AI seems dry, may I draw your attention to the line above about your crew. It consists of named humans with fetching character portraits and bespoke abilities. You’ll shepherd them through boarding actions, opening airlocks and tactically clicking rooms to have them survive against greater numbers. Beware: if you lose one of the story-critical ones, it’s game over. This seems to rule out the possibility of being an Evil AI, alas, though there’s definitely scope for venting the odd humanoid in a fit of cybernetic pique.
I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played of Jitter, though it’s a bit too processing-intensive for my work laptop, with all manner of physics-enabled celestial body bouncing around the playing field. There’s no release date yet, but developers Berko Games posted in June that they’re now focussing on “the final major updates before our Early Access release”.
Their practical difficulties include living in Ukraine, a country that has been fighting off a Russian invasion for three and a half years. “It’s not easy working under drone and missile strikes, but your attention and support should remain focused on the game itself,” the developers comment briefly in a recent update about the game’s NPC vessel behaviour.