James Lynch 
There is no denying that Robot Gentleman had an absolute smash on their hands with 60 Seconds! Selling 1.1 million copies to date, the game which challenged you to collect resources in real-time and get to a bunker, before a nuclear apocalypse wipes out your entire family. After doing this, it was up to you to make sure that you took the best possible course of action to survive your time in the bunker, and to give your family a real chance of survival. Now these may sound like the kind of hard-hitting content you’d expect from Naughty Dog, but in reality the first game was more like the godless child of Fallout Shelter and Rick and Morty.
Now the sequel, 60 Parsecs!, is coming to Steam and, after we got to take a look at what’s on offer, it seems as though this newest iteration is ready to pick up right where the original left off. This time, the player character is living on a space station in an alternate 1950’s where, you guessed it, the beginning of the game shows planet Earth being engulfed by the mushroom cloud to end all mushroom clouds. With a nuke heading towards the floating chunk of metal you call home, the player has 60 seconds to collect as many important items as possible, as well as multiple crew members, for a journey into the unknown.
Taking its cues from the very first text based PC titles, all the choices you make have a crucial effect on the way the game plays out, as well as whether you and your crew members survive. The first thing to do is find an alien planet to land on, whereupon you will be able to send crew members on missions to find food, batteries or other supplies you will inevitably be running low on. The game also feels a crafting system which, although simple, serves its purpose really well, offering another way for players to gather the things they need to keep themselves and their dependents alive.
The art style remains utterly charming, and gels well with the over the top surrealist humour that is so prevalent in the genetic make-up of the game. It is also a useful manifestation of your choices. An example of this being the crew members beginning to look emaciated when they’re… well, emaciated.
With only a couple of weeks to go before the full game comes out, its really looking like the game is in a great position to repeat the successes of its forebear. The jokes are sharp, the cartoon style is infinitely endearing and the potential of being murdered to death by aliens, crew members or even communists, is a winning formula in my book. Keep an eye out for a full review when the game releases on September 18th.
