Lifeline



Lifeline is a real-time text based game developed by Three Minutes Games, released on 2015. The game follows the story of Taylor, a student who won a raffle on science projects and got selected for a trip to space, to test his experiment named "effects of deep space on rats".

Story
'''Alert: The following section contain spoilers! You have been warned.'''

The game follows the story of Taylor, a student who won a raffle on science projects and got selected for a trip to space, to test his experiment named "effects of deep space on rats". Something went wrong and the ship Taylor was on, The Varia, crashed on an unknown moon.

The game starts with Taylor trying to connect with someone via his suit comunicator, on search of help after the accident, managing after a few hours to connect with the player. Taylor seems panicked at the start. As time goes by, Taylor tells the player what happened. Then, the player has the option to tell Taylor what to do. Either to "go to the Peak" or "search on the crash place".

Taylor goes to the crash place, where they find out two things: Capitain Aya and the fact that the Varia is now divided on two parts product of the accident.

Taylor finds all the people on the Crew Quarters to be dead. On the Flight Deck, they find Capitain Aya is heavily injured product of a metal bar going through her lung. Taylor has either the option to left Aya where she is, or try to remove the metal bar. If Aya is left where she is, Taylor will then search for a First-Aid Kit (finding none), but it will find a Medic Capsule, to maintain her stable. The player then will have to decide if they choose to make Taylor get the capsule to Capitain Aya walking or using the levitation mode and fly to Aya. The player later has to decide if Taylor uses a generator found before to power a distress beacon or the Capsule.

After that, the end day is ending on the Moon, and the Star of that sector, Tau Ceti, is going to go down. The moon is fairly cold when Tau Ceti is no where to be seen, so the player has two options: to either go and camp (sleep) next to a nuclear reactor. The second option, is to sleep "under the stars", or outside. If the player chooses the second option, then Taylor will freeze to death. After Taylor sleeps the whole night, they will have green spit.

On this new day, Taylor will decide to go to the peak and try to find what they can. During the day, Taylor will have to go around a canyon. When the day is going to be over soon, they decide to go back to the Varia. Taylor realizes than they will not make it, so he decides to pass the night on a "commercial caravel". Taylor finds inside the caravel a small generator. Then, the player has the option to either tell Taylor to turn on the proximity alert or not.

In the middle of the night, Taylor hears a noise.​ Then, they will ask the player if they should investigated or not. If the player says they should investigate it, Taylor will refuse and try to convince the player not to. If the player insists, then Taylor will just go (not happily) and will crack a lighting rod found earlier on the caravel. After not founding anything and thinking they imaginated it because of the lack of sleep, Taylor will go back to sleep.

If the player insists on turning on the proximity alert, in the middle of the night, it will go off and Taylor will disconect it.

Next day, Taylor asks the player if they should go and give a shot to the Galley on the Caravel. If the player says yes, Taylor will find the door semi-open and see some MREs inside the Galley (the door won't open more). Taylor can't reach them, so they decide to make a "Reachin' Stick" (patent pending, of course). After some time, Taylor will get a Chicken Pesto Pasta.

After eating and "fishing" some breakfast (and also seeing a small green thing, that makes Taylor panic and run from the Caravel, also realizes than their compass is not working at all), Taylor keeps heading to the peak. They talk to the player during the way, things like "should i take a break?" or saying how strange things are happening on their surroundings, like seeing their own footprints on the floor again (the footprints look fresh) or how the peak looks like its becoming more and more imposible to reach. After some time, Taylor finally gets to the top of the peak, commenting than "it seemed impossible some times", because it looked like the peak was moving.

Taylor finds a tunnel inside the peak, just the right size for a human. After a couple of minutes traveling the tunnel, they end up on some kind of "control room". It has a lot of hardware, like computers and monitors. The Player has the option to either not try to interact with the computers or to keep exploring the room. If the player decides to tell Taylor to interact with the computers, then, Taylor will find a map of the entire moon, seeing a lot of crashed spaceships on there. On this time, he also finds their rats fighting each other, with lime-green inexpresive eyes. They will kill a certain rat called "Wildboy", and something green will get out of Wildboy. (Taylor tries to understand, and then he decides to call them "some kind of occupiers.)

Later on, Taylor will keep looking the computers and they will find a counter that says "PULSE TO ZERO". Taylor will click it and it will start a countdown for a pulse to damage ships and make them crash. During this time, he also spots another ship around here, so he sends a distress message, "S.O.S". Then, they realize that the pulse will shot down the ship. After some trying to deactivate the pulse, while a proximity alerts start going on and it shows Taylor that four people are getting close, Taylor is unable to do so, and their visitors are closer and closer. Also, the peak somehow gets out of time. (indicated via system message on the communicator interface.)

After some time, the visitors appear. The visitors have the appearence of astronaunts. Four astronaunts, with the United States flag on their suits and with the name tags of "Colby, Antoine, Trotter, Adain.". Former Varia astronaunts, assumed dead by Taylor. When they remove their helmet, Taylor sees four pairs of green eyes looking at them. Then, they take the green thing from Wildboy and put it on the hand of Colby. Taylor, out of desesperation, tries to reprogran the Pulse to impact on the Peak. During this, the peak moves away from time. He manages to do it, but the astronaunts kind of "understand" Taylor's plan and try to stop him. Then, a siren goes off, that indicates that the rescue ship for Taylor is here. Taylor tries to get out of the peak as fast as they can. The astronaunts start running behind Taylor. As they run, the floor of the moon starts cracking and little occupiers get out the cracks. Taylor is breifly hypnotized by this until the player talks some sense into Taylor. After this, he starts talking about "shooting down every ship posible and they will not rest until every single living thing are their host". Then, Taylor loses consciouness until he wakes up on the rescue ship, and explains they don't remember the nonsense they were talking earlier. They also get to know that they lose consciouness after receiving a "punch to the jaw".

After all of this, Taylor thanks the player and says goodbye to the player, with their last words being "Cadet Taylor, formerly of the Varia, signing off."

There is also a sneak peak for Lifeline: Silent Night, but it will not be talked here.

Gameplay


The game happens on real time. Usually, it will have some text about the context and a choice of two options, as seen on the image. Your choices influence the story and its ending. It can end very soon or get to the "true" ending. On other Lifeline games, the choices the player makes are EVEN more important, because it can affect in a long-term way.

After the first time the player kills Taylor, it will unlock the "Fast Mode", that allows the player to skip waiting times. Used to skip past decisions, it is not recommended for normal play, because it will ruin the experience of "real time text-based game".