Descent is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS with entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots.
Descent was a commercial success. Together with its sequel, it sold over 1.1 million units as of 1998 and was critically acclaimed. Commentators and reviewers compared it to Doom and praised its unrestrained range of motion and full 3D graphics. The combination of traditional first-person shooter mechanics with that of a space flight simulator was also well received. Complaints tended to focus on the frequency for the player to become disoriented and the potential to induce motion sickness. The game's success spawned expansion packs and the sequels Descent II (1996) and Descent 3 (1999).
Gameplay Single-player
Descent is a first-person shooter and shoot 'em up game wherein the player pilots a spaceship through labyrinthine mines while fighting virus-infected robots, using the ship's armaments. They must find and blow up each mine's reactor core, triggering a countdown before the reactor meltdown that will destroy the mine and the player if they fail to reach the exit, which was supposedly inspired by the Millennium Falcon's attack on the Second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. The exit door is always open after the blowing up of the reactor and upon the mine meltdown countdown. However, for two levels, the reactor core is replaced with a boss robot. To obtain access to the reactor, the player must collect one or a combination of three colored access keys for each level. As a secondary objective, the player can also choose to rescue PTMC (Post Terran Mining Corporation) workers taken hostage by infected robots. Points are received for defeating robots, rescuing hostages, blowing up the reactor or defeating the boss robot, and escaping the mine before its self-destruction; accumulating enough points will reward the player with an extra life (see below). If the player is too late to escape the mine meltdown, the player loses a life and all accumulated powerups while any embarked hostages are killed, causing the player to begin the next level with only the laser level reset to level one and the default number of concussion missiles for the difficulty level, and therefore, the player receives no bonus scores at the end of the mine.
Items are available as collectible power-ups. They are either scattered throughout the mines or obtained by defeating robots. Weapons are split up into primary and secondary weapons. Primary weapons range from lasers to wide-range Spreadfire Cannons to the chargeable Fusion Cannons whose shots can punch through numerous enemies. They all consume energy as their ammunition, except for the Vulcan Cannon, which uses rounds of explosive shells. Secondary weapons include various missiles (both unguided and homing), such as the Smart Missile, which releases several smaller guided bomblets upon impact, as well as Proximity Bombs that are dropped behind the player's craft to slow pursuing enemies. The player's spacecraft uses shield power as health, and can carry a maximum of 200 units of shields and energy each. Energy is replenished from energy power-ups or recharged to 100 units at permanent energy centers. Shields can only be restored by collecting blue shield orbs. There are also power-ups that modify the status and weaponry of the ship; for example, Cloaking Devices temporarily render the ship invisible, while Invulnerability temporarily inhibits receiving damage, with Quad Lasers modifying the ship's laser system to fire four bolts of energy instead of the standard two. The ship is destroyed directly when its shield goes down to zero, which causes the player to lose all rescued hostages aboard, and all acquired weapons to be dropped as power-ups. The ship respawns at the start of the level at the cost of a life and the player can return to the area of the demise of their previous ship to recover these power-ups. Players can record and later view their experiences in the form of demos, both in single-player and multiplayer.
Descent features 30 levels, 27 (nine tenths or 90%) of which are regular levels and three (one tenth or 10%) of which are secret levels. Each level is based in a mine or military installation in various locations in the Solar System. The game demands that players keep their sense of orientation in a fully 3D environment with a flight model featuring six degrees of freedom in zero-gravity. It also provides a 3-dimensional wire-frame automap that displays any area of the current mine visited or seen by the player. Variously colored lines indicate locked doors and zones such as energy stations and reactor areas. These mines may contain hidden doors or robot generators that spawn enemy robots. Flares and lasers light up dark areas of the mine.
Difficulty modes Descent is played in one of five difficulty modes: Trainee (easy), Rookie (normal), Hotshot (hard), Ace (very hard) and Insane (very very hard). As the difficulty increases, robots become smarter and fire more projectiles and more rapidly and face better evasion. With higher difficulties, the player has fewer concussion missiles at the beginning (seven in Trainee, six in Rookie, five in Hotshot, four in Ace and three in Insane). Energy and shield power-ups are worth fewer points with increasing difficulties (18 in Trainee, 15 in Rookie, 12 in Hotshot, nine in Ace and six in Insane). Meltdown countdowns become shorter with higher difficulties (50 seconds in Trainee, 45 seconds in Rookie, 40 seconds in Hotshot, 35 seconds in Ace and 30 seconds in Insane). Beginning with Hotshot, players get skill bonuses at the end of each mine.
Robot generators Robot generators debut or first appear in Level 3. They generate robots in a number of waves depending on the difficulty level. Higher difficulties generate more robots, with the Insane difficulty generating an unlimited number of robots.
Multiplayer Descent allows online competitive and cooperative multiplayer sessions. The competitive sector consists of "Anarchy", "Team Anarchy", and "Anarchy With Robots", three deathmatch modes whereby players attempt to destroy as many of each other's ships as possible. Team Anarchy assigns players to two opposing teams, and Anarchy With Robots adds hostile robots to the match. In Cooperative, players team up to destroy mines and compete for the highest score. Competitive modes allow a maximum of eight players, with cooperative modes allowing up to four. Players can press a single key to type a message referred to as a taunt, rather than pausing to type in the full message. They can also join same servers across different platforms, particularly MS-DOS and Macintosh.
Plot Descent is set in 2169. The story begins with a briefing between PTMC executive S. Dravis and the player's character, PTMC's best "Material Defender", who is hired on a mercenary basis to eliminate the threat of a mysterious alien computer virus infecting the machines and robots used for off-world mining operations.
The PTMC developed numerous mines in the Solar System's planets and moons for a variety of uses, including resource extraction, science research, and military installations. Prior to entering a mine, the player receives an intelligence briefing upon the robots used there, however the computer virus has resulted in some existing robots either modified considerably or even new robots being produced that PTMC is unaware about. The player starts with the mines on the Moon and later shift to Venus and to Mercury, where a boss robot has to be destroyed. Afterward, the mines progress further away from the Sun, as the player visits Mars, then the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and eventually to Pluto and its moon Charon. The player accesses the three secret levels located in the asteroid belt using alternative exit doors hidden in specific levels.
After defeating the boss robot on Charon, the Material Defender is informed he cannot return to the PTMC's headquarters in Earth orbit, as there is a chance his ship may be infected with the same virus as the defeated robots. His employer also mentions that PTMC has lost contact with their deep-space installations outside the Solar System, setting the stage for the sequel.
Development Descent was co-created by programmers Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog. It has origins as far back as 1986, when Toschlog first joined the gaming industry at Sublogic, where he also first met Kulas. There, the pair worked on various simulation titles from Flight Simulator 2 to Jet. Toschlog left the company in 1988 for Looking Glass, where he worked with Ned Lerner to develop Car and Driver. Kulas joined the company in 1990 to develop utilities for Car and Driver. The two had devised an idea of an indoor flight simulator that used shaded polygons. After working on Ultima Underworld however, they realized they could add textures to the polygons for a spectacular effect. By April 1993, they finished a two-page sketch for what would become Descent.
Descent took about 21 months to finish. According to Kulas, the game cost around US$450,000 to make. The game's marketing budget was $1 million. Deciding that their idea was too good for anyone else to develop it, Kulas and Toschlog left Looking Glass in June 1993 to form Parallax Software. They hired Che-Yuan Wang and John Slagel as their programmers, with Wang also being their level designer. They also hired Adam Pletcher as their artist. They set out to contact publishers, including Scott Miller of Apogee Software, id Software's primary publisher, who was excited about their proposal and signed a contract with them. For the next seven months, Apogee invested in Parallax and shared with them experience they had gained from developing their own 3D shareware titles. Parallax would implement artistic and structural changes that Apogee requested. After those months, Apogee had numerous projects in the works, and Parallax's project became more expensive to create, so Apogee severed its involvement in the project.
Left without a publisher, Parallax spent the next three months to develop a mock-up prototype, continuing their coding. The project was originally titled Miner, but Parallax presented their prototype in written letters to 50 game companies as Inferno. Of those letters, three of them received a reply. One of them was from Interplay, who immediately signed the company up. Until the game's full release, Interplay's producer Rusty Buchert would oversee and guide the development of the project. Parallax hired three more people to finish the project: level designers Mark Dinse and Jasen Whiteside and story writer and 3D modeler Josh White.