I said I’d offer something lighter this week, and here it is: “The Ur-Quan Masters,” a free multi-platform port of the classic sci-fi game “Star Control II” (the name was changed for copyright reasons). This is a classic game of the 1990s.

Title: The Ur-Quan Masters
For: Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD
ESRB rating: Everyone

Of course, the bare-bones description of the game doesn’t make it sound anything but bleak: You’re the captain of a starship crewed by a science team that was marooned for years on an alien planet, only able to escape because your group found an ancient factory that automatically built the ship you’re in — actually, half-built, as the vessel is just the skeleton of a larger craft.

You’ve returned home to find Earth shielded under a glowing red barrier, and an automated drone informs you that humanity and its allies have been defeated by the Ur-Quan Heirarchy; Earth chose permanent isolation rather than become battle slaves for the Ur-Quan.

Who are these Ur-Quan? Well, they’re extremely mean and warlike three-eyed grub monsters that pilot huge ships on a galaxy-spanning mission to subdue or enslave all races they encounter. And they’re not even the worst of their kind — an offshoot of the species is traveling the galaxy in the other direction on a parallel mission of genocide; the game takes place as the two factions near a predetermined meeting to determine the superiority of one of these doctrines — through war, of course.

Still sounds prettty bleak, right? Well, the situation is dire, but the game has a cheeky sense of humor to the proceedings, mixing goofy races and running gags with space exploration and ship-to-ship battles. There are the hyper-cowardly Spathi, a race of mullosks who’d like nothing better than to be shield-protected slaves but are condemened to eternal battle servitude; the spaced-out hippie bird aliens called Pkunk; the disgusting Umgah, galactic pranksters who tricked the Spathi; and numerous other races.

The gameplay is relatively simplistic — in battle each ship can accelerate, turn, and employ a standard and a special weapon — but there’s a diverse arsenal spread among the many ships. When not fighting, you can explore planets for resources and other points of interest, and the story is engaging.

(Image courtesy of sc2.sourceforge.net)