Aven Colony — A Game That Takes Place in the Future… and That’s It

I am really desperate to find new games

Video games are not like what they were 12 or so years ago. It used to be so simple; you put the CD in the drive and boot the game. Today, on the other hand, you have to go through 10 different layers of DRMs just to figure out if your computer can run the game, only to find out that you need to have Windows 8 because you’re still using Windows 7, even though it isn’t supported anymore. But once, games used to build up hype years before their release, and every game was a celebration because back then, not everyone could make video games with the help of Unity’s very convenient approach to programming. Games today are a dime a dozen, with so many that I haven’t even heard of. And they’re even being given out for free! No demos or samples, but fully playable AAA games… for free! I swear, the future is weird, but some games’ placement in today’s world just seems somewhat random.

So as people may or may not know, I don’t use Steam, but instead, I use the Epic Games Store, and I have this library of god-knows-how-many games, most of which I got for free never played and probably never will play. One of those games is called Aven Colony, and I have no idea when I downloaded it as it happened to be in the library. So I thought, “this game looks somewhat interesting so let’s see what it’s about”, and these were my conclusions…

The Game is like eating a plain ol’ vanilla ice cream because it’s tasty and sweet, you can’t help but feel like you had it before, and I’m sure most people have had their share of vanilla ice cream over their years. The game doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of basic gameplay. It’s supposed to be a simulation game of sorts where you are tasked with managing a space colony, and there’s a ton of micromanagement. Same old same old, and the usual crap here and there. What’s the problem? Well… I guess that there was no future dialect… or something.

Vanilla ice cream… what did I tell ya?

So I play the game, and I feel like I’ve done this a bajillion times before, but it seemed nice for the hour or two I gave it before uninstalling it. It’s not a bad game, just not a special, let alone something that justifies taking 10 GB of my hard drive. Anyway, a lot of micromanagement yada yada yada. That’s cute and all, but where’s the future dialect?

Now, I didn’t get what was up with the space colonials in the game because they just seemed to walk around the space corridors with no purpose whatsoever because I heard them talk here and there, and they rambled about stuff I couldn’t care more about.

Anyway, let me just say that they didn’t speak in any future dialect, which I would be expecting from a game in the future on terraformed planets. Then again, I’m expecting too much from this game, but I’ll give this a shot anyhow…

Anyway, here’s the shot…

So a future dialect would be a version of English where everyone uses future terminology. What kind of neologisms would they use? Well, it all depends on what kind of story the game had. Unfortunately, I failed to notice any trace of narrative that may or may not have existed in the game, either because I wasn’t interested enough or because there wasn’t. Either way, I’m not reinstalling the game just to find out.

But let’s say that these are genetically engineered humans, similar to Voyagers, that one movie that came out recently about teenagers doing shenanigans in space, and not a really good movie at it. Anyway, in this scenario, they would probably be educated from a young age to read books and speak correctly, never cursing and always complimenting. In this regard, it’s less of a dialect and just more of a manner of speech.

I’d write an entire language for it if it were me because my future game would be in the year 2326. At that point, Middle English had long been a forgotten concept already, and people spoke a new language called Future English. I still need to work on the grammar, but right now, I got nothing, as I don’t even know what kind of words this Future English will contain, but it’s something that I should into… just not now.

Did it taste like vanilla ice cream to you?

Don’t get me wrong; I love vanilla ice cream, especially the ones from McDonald’s, because those are a real treat. But if vanilla ice cream tastes like video games, that’s a real problem. Anyways, if you played this Aven Colony or whatever it’s called, be sure to say what you thought of it; if you played enough to establish an opinion, that is.

In Conclusion…

Aven Colony is… um… ok? I mean, it was sort of fun, but not too much fun. Y’know… that kind of fun. Is that ok?

As for the future dialect, I want to work on it, but as I have a heap of bullshit to tend to, I probably won’t get far writing this future dialect. Then again, after the last time I wrote a language for my book, I don’t think I’ll write another conlang in the near future… hehe… get it?

Anyway, I really enjoyed trying out random games I never heard of that somehow managed to make their way to my EGS library. Anyway, I’ll do it again next time with… Thrustpunk? Did I pronounce it right? Ah wait… that’s Frostpunk. That sounds a heck of a lot less dirty. Ah well…