captain blood is a video game about alien communication developed by french studio ere informatique (later known as exxos) and published by infogrames for atari st, commodore 64, macintosh, amiga, apple iigs, ibm, zx spectrum, amstrad cpc, thomson to8, and thomson mo6 computers in early 1988. i first learned of it last week thanks to videogame history, a fantastic bluesky account that fills my feed with nostalgia on a regular basis.

here’s how ere informatique described captain blood on the back of the atari st packaging when the game arrived on english-speaking shores a year later:

WELCOME TO THE AGE OF THE BIO-GAME

A breath-taking galaxy on the rim of the universe. Visit worlds where you will find thrilling scenarios populated by exotic creatures. Experience the nerve shattering excitement of low level hotshot flying through rugged terrain and canyons.

CAPTAIN BLOOD is a game for EVERYONE. A game which has set new standards in graphics, sound and playability, that remains unbeaten to this day.

CAPTAIN BLOOD will provide months of enjoyment, exploration and hours of wondrous amazement.

while this summary isn’t wrong, per se, i do think it oversells the flying aspects. see, captain blood is essentially a game about conversations. the core gameplay loop works like this: warp around the massive, randomly generated hydra galaxy, find one of the game’s 32,768 habitable planets, skim across the surface of the planet while staying as low as possible to avoid being shot down, follow your radar to the conspicuous gorge present on every planet (“life-forms in the hydra galaxy have a weird habit of living at the very end of canyons,” the instruction manual explains), and travel through the chasm until you find someone to speak to.

i wouldn’t describe the planet-searching stage as “nerve shattering” by any means, but it’s easy to see why it may have made an impression on players 35 years ago. captain blood‘s flying sections bear a strong resemblance to the vector graphics displayed by the targeting computer luke skywalker forgoes at the end of a new hope. as cool as that sounds, the core of captain blood‘s gameplay so revolves around your speaking with those canyon-dwelling aliens that the game allows you to skip flying entirely and get straight to chatting by way of a simple (if unexplained) key press.

conversations in captain blood utilize a dictionary of 120 symbols that you and your alien buddy pick and choose from to construct simple sentences. by hovering over the symbols in the alien’s message to learn their english counterparts, you can usually get a good sense of what they’re talking about. for example, if your conversation partner greets you with ME GREAT BOUNTY ME GREAT MIGRAX, you can infer they’re a migrax named is great bounty (reading the manual helps here as it includes details on every alien species). after sending the PLANET symbol, the response REPRODUCTION 14 PLANET ME may indicate that the planet you’re currently on is called reproduction 14. aliens will dump a lot of info on you at once, including the coordinates for important planets. as such, taking notes is key to avoid aimlessly wandering the game’s massive galaxy.

of course, not everyone you meet in captain blood will be this forthcoming or helpful. i once ran into a croolis-ulv (a race of beefy contra rejects) named dead genetic who asked me to blow up a handful of planets inhabited by the croolis-var, a cousin species to the croolis-ulv and their most hated enemies. “ME GIVE YOU GREAT INFORMATION,” he promised. once i destroyed four croolis-var planets and returned, however, dead genetic‘s info ended up being that he wanted to have sex with me. i didn’t find this joke all that funny but dead genetic filled his conversation window with laughter as i reset my game.

the game’s ultimate goal is to use information gleaned from these conversations to save the eponymous hero’s life. a hyperspace accident 800 years prior cloned captain blood 30 times, and each of these duplicates took off with some of the “vital fluid” he needs to maintain his life and humanity. upon finding a faux captain blood, you need to teleport the duplicate to your ship and disintegrate it, which returns some of the vital fluid. take too long, and captain blood‘s hand (e.g. your cursor) begins to shake, making just about everything you do in the game harder. these tremors eventually become so uncontrollable that it’s impossible to continue.

i’ve yet to complete captain blood after half a dozen attempts. most of the time, i hit a dead end and would rather start over than barrage aliens with random questions until my hand becomes useless. while some information in captain blood is static from run to run, the game’s universe largely randomizes with every reset. even so, i’ve found myself learning how to more efficiently navigate conversations. the fictional hydra galaxy, much like life on earth, may be daunting, but captain blood serves as a helpful reminder that there’s always someone out there to show you the way.

the versions of captain blood for ms-dos, zx spectrum, and amstrad cpc are playable right in your internet browser courtesy of internet archive if you want to check it out for yourself.