Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator review – body horror is just good business
You might expect the nastiest thing about SWOTS – ugh, what an acronym! Like the slap of a thrown liver – to be the organs themselves. They are indeed pretty grim. See how they spin in your cargo hold, all glisten and pixel; blanched neon veins and ventricles pulsing under your cursor. They look both freshly peeled and woefully antique, like they’ve been plucked from gibbed sprites in the Black Isle Fallout games. The tab-based interface is pretty ghastly too: a relic from an age of MS-DOS command lines, stippled Macintosh textures and CyberTM wireframes that has somehow been cast forward into the distant, nightmare future, a future you learn about exclusively via terse messages from your clients, some of whom are in the process of bleeding out. But by far the most horrible thing about Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator is the music.
Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator reviewDeveloper:Strange ScaffoldPublisher:Strange ScaffoldPlatform: Played on Xbox Series XAvailability: Out now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Is it possible for a soundtrack to smell? If so, this one stinks of Adderall, formaldehyde, stale pizza and several vintages of sweat, plus various other aromas that haven’t been invented or discovered yet, and hopefully never will. No, I won’t link to a Youtube video. You don’t want this stuff in your play history. There’s no getting away from the score, but you’re safest in your ship’s cargo hold: here, the backing track becomes a sort of echoey, mournful lilt, suggesting long, lonely weeks at the helm with naught but frozen kidneys for company.
Switch to the stock market tab and the beat levels up into something itchy and fuzzy and ribald and obscene, spiking your heartrate, tickling your flight reflexes. Worst of all, though, is the motif that plays when you hit the Trade button and kick off another day in the offworld flesh bazaars: a brazen, rising riff, Zelda’s treasure chest music on Satan’s synthesiser. Good luck and good hunting, interstellar peddler of viscera! The galaxy is your gall bladder. Do you have the guts and vision to make a million credits? If not, don’t worry – hearts and lungs will do the job just as efficiently.
