A game by Dr. Kucho Games for PC and Mac, originally released in 2020.
Pilots of Darsalon is a gravity-based spaceship game inspired by the classics of the genre: Lunar Lander, Gravitar, Thrust, and Solar Jetman. Per genre conventions, you control a spaceship with limited fuel resources, and you must descend beneath the surface of a planet that is filled with enemy turrets. You fly through 15 levels, moving carefully to avoid crashing into the walls while balancing the need to move quickly and efficiently to avoid running out of fuel.
The game offers a total of five difficulty settings, most of which poke fun at the player for wishing to have an easier experience, which is somewhat appropriate given that this particular subgenre offers notoriously difficult gameplay that punishes even small mistakes. The default difficulty setting is Level 4, which gives an experience that is in line with the difficulty of other genre entries. As a joke, the lowest difficulty setting is called “Narrative”, and selecting it cuts to a Commodore 64-style screen that cheekily types out that you have killed all of the enemies, delivered your cargo, and won the game.
