Space Quest: Incinerations

The information from this article is from a fan game or fan fiction and is therefore not canon.

Space Quest: Incinerations
Name:	Space Quest: Incinerations
Team lead(s):	Datadog
Start date:	January, 2006
Release date:	January 11, 2012
Website:	Space Quest: Incinerations
Releases:	Download the game
Summary:	When a time traveller sabotages Roger's future along with the fate of universe, Roger must race against a rival captain to defeat an army of Space Chickens, destroy a deadly super-weapon, and recover his missing luggage.
Engine:	AGS
Position on the SQ timeline:	Post-Vohaul Strikes Back

Space Quest: Incineration (or simply just Incinerations as its listed on the title screen) is a 2012 fan-made sequel to the Space Quest series, created by Chris Ushko. It had been previously started in 1999 as a team project, cancelled, and then revived again as an almost completely different game. Information for both versions of the game are kept on this page.

Completed Version[]

About the Game[]

Space Quest: Incineration is developed using Chris Jones' AGS engine, taking place about ten years after the events of Space Quest 6. As an indirect follow-up to the dark ending of Vohaul Strikes Back, SQInc completely re-imagines Space Quest in the style of a sci-fi action thriller, combining explosive character-driven drama (with emphasis on the explosive) with tongue-in-cheek humour and traditional puzzle-solving.

The game was originally started as a team project back in 1999 following the cancellation of the official Space Quest 7, was cancelled, and then revived again in 2006 by the original team lead. The new version and style of the story was actually conceived while the team leader was working as a mall janitor, and had been forced to spend two weeks listening to the Halo 2[1] soundtrack on loop while painting the hallways behind a Laser Tag. Having been dabbling in 3D animation, he designed the new game with fully CGI backgrounds, cell-shaded characters, and full-motion videos for the cinematics.

The story, while originally inspired by "Halo", updated Space Quest with many elements from contemporary science-fiction movies and games (including "Starship Troopers" and "Mass Effect"). Many newer cliches were included, such as a militarized space government, armoured battle mechs, epic space battles, an FPS rail-shooter sequence, tons of explosions, a convoluted time-travel conspiracy, and a darker introspective into the characters. Having grown up over the years, the characters themselves were also re-written for the story, with their relationships going in different directions than the ones established in previous games.

The game was released on January 11, 2012 as part of "The Big Three", having been released almost a week after Infamous Adventures released their VGA remake of "Space Quest 2", which was shortly released after "Vohaul Strikes Back". It has since been featured on G4TV and as a "Let's Play" on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.

The game contains over 45 minutes of fully-animated cut-scenes, over 100 CG backgrounds, and over an hour's worth of music.

Team[]

For a majority of the game's development, only the original SQInc team leader, Chris Ushko was at the helm, writing the script, programming the game, and animating the graphics as he went along. Three years in, his VSB associate, Frederik Olsen offered to join and help write the game's soundtrack.

The rest of the team was outsourced at random during development, with a few SQ fans lending their assistance with art and programming. Many free models were downloaded from various 3D sites and modified to suits the game's needs. At a later point, more musicians were brought on for a few months to help fill out the rest of the game's soundtrack, with Matthew Chastney providing the game's opening title theme.

While the game's ending credits go on for much longer, the opening titles credit the following people:

Chris "Datadog" Ushko - Team lead, writer, animator, programmer, graphics
Frederik "olzen" Olsen - Music
Matthew Chastney - Music
Akril - Concept Art
Andres "mjomble" Kalle - Additional Programming
Patrick "pcj" Johnston - Additional Programming
Petros Tsoulkas - Additional Music
Robert Bäckman - Additional Music
Peter Engel - Additional Music
Chris Jones - AGS Engine
Stuart "Sslaxx" Moore - Beta-Testing
Arseni Kondratenko - Beta-Testing
Alan Luckachina - Beta-Testing
Scott Murphy, Mark Crowe, Josh Mandel - Original Space Quest Developers

Plot[]

Years after the events of "Space Quest 6", Roger finds himself worse off than ever when a strange temporal mishap causes him to lose five hours of his life. The next thing he knows, he misses the job interview of his life, loses his girlfriend to a rival space captain, make enemies with an omnipresent operating system, and to top things off, misplaces his luggage.

Roger is soon approached by a mysterious visitor from the future who warns him that his life has been sabotaged - and that in order to restore the time-line, Roger must find and destroy a ship known as the Incinerator within three days. But things aren't going to be easy for Roger as he must race against the military forces of Aries 6 to save the galaxy first, while thwarting both new and old adversaries along the way.

Technical Details[]

SQInc was developed in Chris Jones' Adventure Game Studio engine. The graphics were developed in Autodesk Maya, and both edited and composited in Adobe Premiere and After Effects. The program Particle Illusion was used for all the environmental effects such as explosions and dust clouds in the cut-scenes.

Gameplay[]

Most of the game plays out as a traditional Sierra point-and-click. Much like the earlier King's Quest games, you get to use the walk, look, hand, and talk icons along with your inventory to solve puzzles. The additional lick and sniffs icons features in SQ4 do not make an appearance here, although in a few cases, the talk icon can act as a tongue. Later in the game, you get to drive your own Armech with access to weapons and jumping abilities. This part also plays out like a traditional adventure game. Anything puzzle-related is often highlighted with text at the bottom of the screen, although everything in the game is already clickable, with custom messages for every look/hand/talk interaction possible.

Near the end of the game, there is an optional arcade sequence done in the style of a first-person rail shooter. In it, you click on enemies to shoot them, and cinematic cut-scenes will take place between waves. Anybody who gets to the end of the arcade sequence without skipping will get to solve an additional puzzle.

The game also features a trophy system. You automatically get two freebie trophies over the course of the game and unlock others by either doing mundane tasks, completing unusual quests, or completing scavenger hunts such as finding all the deaths or cleaning up all the trash. There are twelve trophies in total.

The game also has multiple endings. Along with the default ending, you can easily unlock two more endings and a post-credit scene by talking to people near the end of the game. In addition, there is a fourth unlockable "happy ending" when you get a complete score, and a fifth "bad ending" for when you get the lowest score.

Characters[]

Roger Wilco: Our bumbling space hero. The years haven't been good on Roger and it's beginning to show. He's losing his grip on reality, neglecting his girlfriend, making bad decisions, and ultimately just not being the great guy we've come to love. But when he hits rock bottom, it'll be up to him to crawl back up from the wastes and be our saviour again.

Beatrice Wankmeister: No longer an ambassador for StarCon, Beatrice works in resource management at Aries 6 orbiting Xenon. She too has grown weary over the years and is finally ready to settle down - but with Roger always off saving the galaxy or just plain slacking, she's starting to wonder if it's time to move on.

Stellar Santiago: Roger's gal pal from Space Quest 6 returns, and she's not too keen on finding out what trouble Roger is cooking up this time. Nevertheless, when Roger starts acting suspicious and goes missing, Stellar will take it upon herself to go after the bonehead and keep an eye on him - for everyone's sake.

General Bruce Havoc: He's the poster-boy of Aries 6 - the lean, mean killing machine who's won over a hundred wars and is finally itching to settle down... with Roger's girlfriend, that is. When he and his fleet go on a mission to rescue Beatrice, Roger will stop at nothing to make sure HE saves Beatrice first.

Doomtron: An armoured battle mech tossed into the scrapheap, Doomtron is salvaged by Roger and joins him on his mission. The two of them totally hit off and start the ultimate man-robot bromance as they battle their way across the galaxy, flying blind on dumb luck and shooting at everything that moves.

Chronarr: A time-traveling ninja robot assassin who has his eyes set on Roger and Beatrice. A typical henchman at first glance, Chronarr has more schemes up his sleeves than even his supposed superiors can imagine. He's always one-step ahead of everyone and he'll let nothing stand in the way of his objectives.

Reviews[]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun: “Incinerations was a wonderful surprise. It’s not Space Quest as we know it, but it packs every bit as much charm, considerably more action, and isn’t afraid to poke a little fun at itself where necessary … it has no trouble impressing with the kind of action the Space Quest series never came close to, and to a scale that goes above and beyond the call of duty for any fan-made game.”
Adventure Gamers: “…Space Quest: Incinerations is one of the best fan made adventure games out there. Had it been released in the late ‘90s, it could easily have been a commercial spiritual sequel to Space Quest 6, with its top notch visuals, clever puzzles and an intriguing storyline that keep you coming back for more.”
Adventure Game Studio Page: SQInc currently holds a 100% player rating

External Links[]

Space Quest Fan Games
Remakes	SQ2 VGA Remake · SQ3 3D Remake
Spinoffs	SQ-1 · SQ0 · SQ:TLC · SQ4.5 · VSB · Space Quest: Incinerations
Full list	Category:Fan Game (Complete)