A warning before we start: This is not a review of the latest Kickstarter, but a collection of random play notes by an outsider. Things I think I'll want to keep in mind. If they are in any way useful to you, I'm glad, but if you're an experienced Coriolis player, the following may sound quite naive to you.

To me, Coriolis is the kind of glossy, streamlined commercial RPG I don't usually care for. I have never played its earlier incarnation, The Third Horizon, or any game using its Year Zero Engine. However, I like to occasionally try out games that are different from my usual DIY scenario-based storygame fare. I think there's something to be learned. So I'm glad I got a spot to play the quickstart scenario for Coriolis: The Great Dark called The Sky Machine – shoutout to our GM, Zeitiger.

With all that said, here are my takeaways:

• Reading the quickstart rules section was a pleasant surprise. It's a D6 pool-based system. I played The Pool by J.V. West back in the Aughts and felt pleasantly reminded of that. Of course, unlike The Pool, there are six quantified attributes plus three currencies of life force (Hope, Health, Heart), six conditions like "exhausted" and distracted" (one for each attribute), a table of weapons with four or more properties, ammunition to track, quantified talents, gear list ...
• It's been long since I played in a game with Critical Hit tables. These are quite extensive.
• The quickstart includes pregenerated characters. I'm not good at playing those. I'd have to study them like a role for a theatre production. Much easier for me to start with some random rolls and come up with something. (That is purely a personal problem - my fellow players did well with their pregens.)
• Following the Keep of the Borderlands recipe, we arrive at a place, meet some factions at the safe haven (a mining outpost) and spend a night there before we set off to the dungeon proper. All very well for a quickstart.
• The dungeon itself is again split up in two halves. The first is just shafts and corridors, filled with minor incidents, procedurally generated events. Lots of rolling the dice. The second half consists of four rooms, with a natural order of progression. This is well-constructed and the most interesting part of the adventure. A competently written mini-dungeon. I felt reminded of DCC adventures, which often have a similar degree of linearity and also make good use of read-aloud text. (I personally find the text slightly overwritten both here and in many DCC offerings, but that is a matter of taste, many people seem to enjoy this kind of prose.)
• The dungeoneering rules in Coriolis: The Great Dark force the group to expend one unit of abstract "supply" for each travel and exploration action. I've said previously that I don't really enjoy counting torches, but I do like time limits and pressure on players. In fact, my little system alea atra (only available in German) is centered around such an element. So I rather liked the delve mechanics. They're much simpler than, say, the combat system.
• After finishing the Sky Machine adventure, I found myself reminded of Hard Light, an OSR-style Sci-Fi dungeon by Kevin Crawford I'd read many months previously. In Hard Light, PCs also explore the remains of long-gone civilizations. It offers more exploratory freedom, but it is of course a much larger module, not just a starter. I have read Hard Light, but not run it yet. The Sky Machine inspired me to take another look at it.