A huge, lively space bazaar is overwhelming at first, but you tame it little by little and get into a bitter-sweet routine. It’s a lesson in accepting permanent destitution, limiting your ambitions, and enjoying small things. If you’re after a breathtaking story, you’ll be disappointed – as opposed to those who take pleasure in constant exploration and have a knack for trading. [03/2017, p.68]
I fell in love with my little blue poor janitor in her small alien world. I don’t know if the game started its life as something of a jest against usual gaming trends but it has turned into a poignant metaphor of today’s world, like how it feels to be struggling, different or alien to your surroundings. I must warn you though, this game is not for everyone and certainly not for those who only seek their thrills from the latest big-budget extravaganza. Or is it? Maybe a modest but honest game like Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor can help to see these strange new worlds beyond AAA-games.
Oh I love this game so much. When I think "indie game," this is exactly what I want.
The world feels so big outside of the little box you're constrained to, being an impoverished worker who physically and financially CANNOT interact with the promises of adventure that all of the items and NPCs hint at. You pick up these crazy weapons and spells and items, but you can't make any use of them aside from selling them for 2% what they're actually worth, because you're a JANITOR and nothing more, and you never will be, because that's how the system works. Everything feels so much bigger than you, and the first few days you spend in the spaceport just feel so overwhelming from the sheer scale of the world speeding by around you. It's sort of what I imagine being an immigrant to an alien city feels like, where you know how to get by, but everything is still horribly confusing and scary and new, and you don't know if you're doing the best thing because nobody will help you.
The game is a lot more like the Souls series than most of the games that actually try to emulate FromSoft design, it's got a lot to say about cycles and being caught in a sort of devastating curse that forces you to spend all day every day grinding towards a seemingly impossible goal.
(There is one little game-breaking bug if you forget to pick up the ziggurat tablet piece, that's all)
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is a hallucinogenic merry-go-round of oddities operating at dangerous speeds. Some passengers will be bored to tears at its perceived mundanity while others will find themselves charmed by its stylish construction and otherworldly performance. A select few may be eaten by the ride. In any case, riders will find their expectations carefully challenged.
By bridging the gap between our daily struggles and the daydreams that surround them, it suggests that the one space we truly own is our imagination. There is a certain beauty hidden in that sentiment; that it is the fantastic, the surreal, the strange, that might liberate us.
Repetitive routine of a space cleaner that tries to be interesting with its focus on continuous stereotype. Initial enthusiasm quickly fades, leaving only mindless attempt at social commentary.
Meh. I understand that some people may like the non-linearity of it so I won't give it a low score, but it's way too unstructured and chaotic and low-skill based that it turns out to be very early uninteresting.
If you’re the type of person who likes bizarre and different indie games and doesn’t mind getting lost or meter management, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is one you should definitely look into.
The game has a bunch of really weird graphical bugs with characters flashing in and out and the screen bending in weird ways. In a recent update they released BASIC unity options (why isn't this game early access)
I got a good way into the game. Everything in the stalls is still way too expensive for me to use but I'm not sure if I will ever get to use those items because I ran into a game breaking bug that deleted all my inventory items.
Everything about this game feels unstable. That helps, but because of it I don't want to get another 5 hours in and just lose all my progress again. 5 more hours of this same gameplay loop doesn't sound that interesting to me. There's not as much to customize about your character or environment as there are in Harvest Moon or **** Valley. Even though you can change your gender on a whim all it becomes is just another resource with some goofy flavor text that goes along with it.
It's in Unity so maybe mods could save this game or maybe it will get better with future updates. But as the game is upon release I can't recommend it.
SummaryDiaries of a Spaceport Janitor is an anti-adventure game about picking up trash in an alien bazaar. Play as the Janitor, an Alaensee girlbeast with a municipally-subsidized trash incineration job and dreams of leaving the planet of Xabran's Rock far behind her.