"Precious metals" was always a uniquely human conceit, anyway.
Gold? Even after all of the mining that's been done in human history, there's still tens of exagrams of it on Earth alone. Once your civilization moves into space, there's even more of it to be had. Go to any respectable asteroid belt, and a good sized X-class rock would net you, literally, tons of gold.
But it turns out nobody but us humans really cares about gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or any of the other metals we call "precious," except inasmuch as they are useful materials in a commercial or industrial sense. Some species have analogues to our jewelry, certainly. But they make them out of nice, sturdy mundane engineered materials, like plastoid or carbotanium. If you think about it, it makes a weird kind of sense-- why would you make decorative items out of the softest, most ductile, and highly conductive metal available-- too fragile for use unless you alloy it with something sturdier? Most species we've met, though, are plenty willing to trade us their surplus gold if we like it that much in exchange for things they value highly.
Not the latest species contacted by the Coalition, the Ihoin. Unlike other xenoids, the Ihoin don't really have much interest in trading with us. Coalition scientists figure they outclass us by a couple of centuries worth of technological development anyway, and they see everything in the extreme long-term, probably owing to their own long lifespans. So unless there's a good reason to trade right now, they keep all their resources to themselves for future use. They're not actively hostile, but they're highly territorial, and have aggressively driven away any interlopers in their space. On the other hand, none of the inevitable minor skirmishes with pirates and the like over the last fifty-odd Earth years have prompted a proper war, either-- which is probably good, as they'd likely wipe the floors with us. They seem to regard all the Coalition members as annoying lesser races not worth bothering with.
Except. They don't value precious metals as we do, and they don't trade them. Right? But they have electronics, and fusion coils probably. They must be mining gold, at least, and palladium, and maybe other precious metals, along with all the other resources they extract. As a result, legends have cropped up all over: Nth-hand stories, from a friend's, friend's, brother's, sister-in-law's mother, whose diplomat nephew saw a storeroom once that was filled to bursting with neat little hexagonal gold ingots, just stashed for future use by Ihoin who dutifully dug it up along with all the other materials they mined up from some asteroid.
Which brings us, to you. You're an independent trader and salvage worker. You took out a hefty loan to purchase your ship, and have been doing plenty of work in the Coreward Branch. Some legal, some not so. It's gotten you by. But if even a tenth of these old spacer stories are true, the Ihoin are sitting on stockpiles of materials somewhere that could make you a very rich being.
Time to find out.
Welcome to Precious Metal, my 7DRL for 2019! I'm thp, and I wrote the game. This year I didn't take any time off work, thinking I would half-ass it and might not even do the 7DRL at all. Then a few days before it started I had a cool idea and decided to participate after all, so I didn't get much sleep this week. I'm fairly happy with how the game came out-- I'll be a lot happier when I come back and play it a bit, tweak the numbers for balance, and hopefully fix the major outstanding bugs I know about.
Precious Metal is a game about stealing enough valuables to pay off the loan you took out. Your objective should be to explore the Ihoin settlements, get the most valuable stuff you can, and get away with it. The unique gimmick, if there is one, is the fact that you get a mobile base of operations-- your starship, which you can fly from world to world. The combat mechanics are sort of loosely based on tabletop game mechanics that I liked, but with tinkering under the hood to simplify them for a videogame context.
You move your character around with the numpad. (Arrows and WASD are also available, but you'll be unable to move diagonally that way.) Most interactions with the nonliving parts of your environment-- opening doors, investigating containers, etc.-- are as simple as bumping into them. For melee combat, bumping into the enemy will melee them; if you have a gun and want to shoot it at them, press <F>-- see targeting below. For gear, you'll want to start by touching your ship's gear lockers [ to gather up equipment for the trip. To move your ship to an Ihoin facility, or withdraw to empty space, visit the flight console " in the cabin.
The amount of weight you can carry is restricted. The more you carry, the more burdened you'll become, and the slower you'll get. It's best to travel light, especially if you want to pick up valuables and carry them back to your ship.
On the topic of valuables, the value of everything you're carrying adds to your wealth a little bit, but the only way to get the full value out of the item is to carry it back to your ship-- items in your cargo hold = are worth their full, non-discounted value. Also be aware that Ihoin technology is highly advanced and is the most valuable stuff in the universe right now, but like all such commodities they depreciate severely with condition. Using such items will make them permanently less valuable.
To shoot your equipped gun (or guns), press <F>. The nearest legal target will auto-select if appropriate, and you can continue hitting <F> to cycle through nearby enemies, or use the movement keys to adjust the targetting reticule yourself. When you're ready to fire, hit <ENTER> to pull the trigger.