Frigate is quite a remarkable game: a real-time/turn-based hybrid ship battle simulator made entirely in a text UI. Radar and sonar contacts are tracked with headings and distances, navigation is via manual coordinate input or relative to your targets and you're constantly outnumbered and outgunned. There's a fair bit of strategic depth as well; ammo is limited, radar can be jammed and damage to the ship impacts the ship's systems.

Going back to replay the game on archive.org it brings it all back, but in such a discordant way. I remember finding these battles so exciting and so clearly visualizing the play field and the action and now it's like hey fun spreadsheet. Clearly baby Josh had a much more vivid imagination (and smoked a lot less grass... a robust short-term memory is a critical skill here).

I guess I can't really recommend this now unless you're really into text-based games or milsim stuff, but boy did I have hours of fun with Frigate.

Reviewed on May 30, 2023


Comments