• Developer: Space Dream Factory
• Genre: Space Shooter
• URL: ifh.firstones.com

   A long time ago, in industry terms at least, a company then known as Sierra announced that they were making a game based on the Babylon 5 universe created by J. Michael Straczynski. Fans were pleased. Space Shooter devotees were intrigued. The Stock Market waited with baited breath to see how fast Sierra’s share price would soar to giddy heights. Sadly however, and after teasing everyone by showing off a nearly finished game at E3 in 1998, Sierra announced that it was abandoning the title due to financial problems, or in real persons lingo, they’d made too many fishing and drag racing games.

   Programmer and writer Oleg Petrov had already made a start on gathering the Space Dream Factory team together at this point and had written a story which eventually developed into a full blown Babylon 5 3D project. Two other teams began similar projects, the Buda5 group and The Babylon Project using the I-War 2 and Freespace 2 engines respectively. To their credit those two groups are still plugging away and developing their projects.

   Space Dream Factory however have not only developed their own 3D engine for their game but now have a fully working multi mission preview ready for download. The story is set five years after the Earth Minbari war, before Babylon 5 has been built, and aboard the EAS Perseus destroyer which acts as your home base. The action is divided between a very well made tutorial mission and a long and involved single player mission which is planned to be the first of many to come. Actually there may be more than one proper mission here but we don’t want to spoil the surprise.

   The game itself plays a lot like the I-War series in the sense that it use true 3D physics (your ship has true momentum and there is no friction or other causes of unnatural energy loss) and has a plethora of auto pilot options similar in nature to the I-War titles. Hyperspace travel is quite different from anything seen before however. Instead of being just a jump point from one part of space to another, Hyperspace has to actually be navigated, as in the TV series, using beacons and can be quite a tricky, not to mention spooky, experience.

   The development team have gotten together from all parts of the globe, Petrov is a Russian, sound designer Yogi Loeschner a German, 3D artists Maclellan and Nordgren from UK and Sweden respectively, they’ve even got a web master, Stian Thomassen, from our own humble shores. The voice acting, which is better than we’ve heard in some commercial titles, has been done by volunteers also from all over the place. IFH is a real multinational effort.

   As an ongoing project I’ve Found Her gives players a chance to interact with the developers and throw in ideas that might influence how the finished game comes together. The forums are quite active and the developers seem keen to listen. If you have some skills with Lightwave or 3D Max you might even be able to help out.

   There are a few bugs in the code as you might expect from such a technically advanced garage game however we didn’ come across any mission stopping problems and there is an upcoming small patch to fix most of them. If you are a fan of the series or just of space shooters in general IFH is definitely worth a download.