Alarms were screaming all over the ship, and suddenly I was knocked out my seat. The airlock door blew open and I was jettisoned out into the cold, dark depths of space. Checking my suit readings, I could see that homebase was over 650,000 metres away and even at top speed on my spacesuits jet-pack, it would still take at least 90 minutes to get back. I checked my depleting energy levels and knew that there was no way the air was going to last that long.
I keyed my radio and informed homebase of the situation. They scrambled one of the team into a newly assembled ship and he shot of in my direction. I flew through space and watched my readings dip down into critical levels and knowing that I only had moments to live.
I just hoped he would reach me in time
Space Engineers
Version: Alpha Update 01.024 (3/4/14)
Keen Software House
http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/
For the uninitiated: Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and perform asteroid mining. Space Engineers utilizes a realistic volumetric-based physics engine: all objects can be assembled, disassembled, damaged and destroyed. The game comes with two game modes: creative and survival.
Current Playability: I’ve had Space Engineers for a while now, but there was just something about the game that didn’t really do it for me. It felt far too sandboxy for me, and that all you could do was place shapes and blocks, and make pretty things out of them. Thankfully, they have recently updated the game to include Survival mode and a ton of customisation for it.
Survival puts you into the titular shoes of a greasemonkey who has just arrived in a secluded asteroid field in a chosen scenario. You could be the survivor of a crashed ship, abandoned on a platform, or looking for opportunities in a small mining ship. Armed with a welder, grinder and a hand drill, its up to you to build something for yourself before you run out of power. To do that you will need to drill into asteroids and collect any ores that you find, and if you lucky enough to have some machinery, you can convert them into usable items. If your unlucky enough to not have any machinery, then you may have to start stripping your ship for parts
The Battlestar Galactica
Once you finally have some ore behind you, its time to grab some parts and weld them into a thruster, reactor, gravity generator or even begin work on a battleship. You place things down in small blocks with each one having to be welded individually so you will be spending a long time with the welding torch in your hand. More advanced parts may need rarer ore sending you hunting deep into the rocks.
In survival mode, you are going to be spending a lot of time looking in the corner of your screen at your energy level. It depletes slowly if your stationary but once you begin any sort of activity, the level will soon drop. Once your energy runs out, you’re gonna die. Thankfully you can recharge in a medical bay or sat in the cockpit of a ship. It leaves you thinking whether you have enough power for a quick trip or if its time to head back and recharge.. that’s as long as you’ve mined enough uranium to power things and not run out.
In the last update they have included meteorites with a slider ranging from annoying to armageddon (Annoying means that they are going to leave a dent in your station, armageddon means you wont have a station left if you get hit) meaning that not only do you have to scramble around to get things built before you lose power, but you have to build it somewhere safe or risk losing it. I made the mistake of loading a pre patch station up and watched as a meteorite ploughed into my half built reactor.
You are not alone out there as Space Engineers also includes multi-player. You can team up with like minded players to create a super-station or join a public server and fly your ship straight into their hard work. My multiplayer experiences have been fairly annoying with griefers until I finally found a good one, and people that would try save me when a glitch left me far from home and about to die.
Worth Purchasing? Before the survival mode update, it would have been a no, but with it, it makes the game a lot more enjoyable. It is still a little glitchy (especially in multiplayer) and some building options don’t really work yet (like turrets) but even with them, the game feels fun. What does worry me is the longevity of a single game. With a maximum of 16 large asteroids and 80 smallish ones, once you pick them dry there really isn’t anything further to do.. I should know. I went 650,000m away and saw nothing until less than a few 100m away. Also besides meteorites, there isn’t really anything to defend against so hopefully that will come in a future update.
Next Game Update: Keen Software House are updating on a weekly basis currently with each update coming out on a Thursday.
