Hit and run tactics haven't looked this pretty before.
House of the Dying Sun (formerly Enemy Starfighter) is the first game of a new indie studio Marauder Interactive, and it was released on June 7th, 2016 for PC.The emperor is dead, assassinated by his untrustworthy vassals. A usurper sits on the throne, and the player is left with the late emperor's last edict: Hunt the traitor lords and bring ruin to their people.
This thrilling, albeit tragically short flight sim contains the following tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A more biological example. The Dragon is compelled to follow certain protocols after the Emperor is assassinated. A particularly important protocol is that they must bombard the planet of any lords that were complicit in the Emperor's assassination, destroying all life on said planets. As the culprits behind the Emperor's assassination were his inner circle, that means that the Emperor's own planet is now the target of the Dragon's vengeance. And they do not stop until all life has been wiped from existence. The usurper's final transmission is a desperate plea to know why the Dragon would destroy his own lord's people.
- And Your Little Dog, Too!: The main objective of "Slaughter at Tannhauser Gate" is to destroy transport ships carrying the families of traitor officers in order to send a few messages.
- Other missions occasionally have bonus objectives that involve slaughtering innocent civilians in order to make examples out of them.
- Arbitrary Weapon Range: Available weapons range from missiles to plain projectile guns with few energy-based guns, all with their own ranges. The shots do not disappear anywhere, rather the weapons' capability to lead on possibly highly mobile targets becomes impossible.
- Bodyguard Betrayal: The Emperor was betrayed by his court physician, who revealed locations of all the Emperors backup bodies to plotting nobles.
- Body Surf: What the Dragon, ie. the player does when they switch from one fighter to another and order heavier ships.
- Brain Washed: The player character is essentially forced to follow the Emperor's protocols, and nobody, not even the Emperor, know what their real thoughts are. The endings allow player to choose their character's motivation.
- Cloning Gambit: The Emperor's ace in the hole against death, had his royal physician not betrayed him and destroyed the backups.
- Cool Starship: The player's super-fighter. Loyalist dreadnought, and the traitor battlecruiser.
- Deflector Shields: Present as somewhat blue transparent bubbles around ships, anything that's inside the shields can shoot out of them. Notably, ships can freely pass through the shields of other ships which allows the player to fly through the shields of larger enemy ships to bypass them and shoot the ship directly or to take refuge inside the shields of friendly capitals. Similarly, shield generating enemy ships will often be seen providing coverage to other enemy ships travelling alongside them.
- Dragon Their Feet: This time, this is you, the player.
- The Dreaded Dreadnought: The Royal Guard dreadnought INV Vindictus, by far the largest ship in the game, and capable for devastating orbital bombardment.
- Escape Pod: Assassination targets utilize these very often after you destroy whatever vessel they're in. You always shoot them down.
- Featureless Protagonist: Initially all one knows is that the player controls the fighter craft from the cockpit and issue orders to other ships not in their direct control. As the game progresses one can read from the codex that the player is literally called the "Dragon", has served the Emperor for thousands of years, is permanently sealed in a cask somewhere, is awakened only for war, and his gameplay ability to freely jump between different fighters is actually established as one of his abilities in the story. Endings allow player to choose their characters motivation, in one of those the player is revealed to be an alien acting as part of secret plot.
- Feudal Future: Whole game is about hunting traitorous nobles in space.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: A necessity. The player begins with just one fighter, pitted against larger amounts of enemies including capital class ships. While two more fighters and a few capital ships are added to the player's fleet eventually, the inevitable arrival of the traitor flagship ensures that the player cannot hang around in missions for long.
- Make an Example of Them: When planet sparks a rebellion against the Empire, the Royal Guard will bombard it until no life remains.
- Orbital Bombardment: The final mission. The late emperor decreed worlds that instigate rebellions to be rained fire upon from orbit. With the emperor's inner circle betraying him, it means Rhal'Tuum Prime, the throneworld of the empire and all its inhabitants must die.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: What the player's mission is.
- Shout-Out: From use of Microgramma font to a spiritual way of describing space-faring technology in the codex and ethereal visuals, the whole game has a sense of a villainous take on Homeworld
- A possible name for civilian ships is the CNV Lusty Argonian.
- One mission takes place at Tannhauser Gate
- Space Is Noisy: Downplayed. While you can hear things such as engines, explosions, and gunfire from space they sound muffled.
- Suicide Attack: Fighters under your command can be ordered to kamikaze into enemy ships. There is even a hull upgrade option to increase damage of such attacks.
- The Emperor: His assassination kicks the game forward.
- The Mole: In one possible ending the Emperor's Dragon is revealed to have been found in an ancient starship, and its true origin never revealed to the Emperor. It ultimately weakened the Empire by helping the Emperor concentrate power in the throne world, allowing for a decapitation strike on the homeworld. This was all according to the plans of what is implied to be an awakening alien race, based on the final statement that "your children weep that they were born to the race of Man".
- The Dragon: Player character is literally referred as the "Dragon", and for thousands of years he has served the Emperor, crushing his enemies on battlefield.
- Vader Breath: The pilots of whatever fighters you control regularly take heavy breaths from what sounds to be a breathing mask, which is most noticable outside of combat when there isn't much else to hear.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can attack and destroy harmless civilian ships. You even are required to do so by bonus and and in one instance, main objectives.
- Villain Protagonist: Hunt for the traitor lords starts with shooting their escape pods, escalates to slaughtering civilians, and culminates with orbital bombardment killing 14 billion people.
- Wetware CPU: The late emperor decreed all nobility to be made immortal and capable of interfacing with their ships.
