Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a casual, single-player space salvage game where you are tasked to deconstruct spaceships and recycle various components to pay off your crippling debt. It offers both a campaign and free play (where you can get in and just start carving any ship to pieces), speedrun challenges and multiple difficultly modes so the game can either be a pressure cooker where you are on a 15-minute time limit, or a more causal experience. It’s a game I recommend playing, even if only for the somewhat relaxing soundtrack.

Story
You start the game as a debt-riddled individual (known as 52), who signs up to be a shipbreaker for the monolithic company Lynx. The story progression starts off slow with Weaver (your team leader) slowly introducing you to the different techniques and tools used to salvage ships (you have to earn the rights to equipment from Lynx), and other shipbreakers. It’s not long before it picks up however, with the campaign focusing around meaningful questions around workers’ rights, lack of government controls, invasive and dangerous business practises and a boss that seems determined to make sure everyone knows he’s in charge, even if he doesn’t know the job. The last chapter of the game’s pace seems to slow down as you aren’t really learning anything different at this point, just doing the same to work off your debt and the final mission seems to be locked behind a set shipbreaker level or entering the hab enough times to trigger the conversation.

Gameplay
Gameplay seems simple, but can actually be quite complex. Each ship is comprised of multiple components that need to be salvaged and placed into the correct sorting platform, with incorrect placements costing the player the value of the item. There’s typically a order you need to go about before you can really get into slicing the ship apart, such as flushing fuel lines, removing coolant from pipes, decompressing sections, or removing reactors, with the more complex ships having larger systems and requiring more steps. The game is really good at teaching you how to use the different tools at your disposal, how to minimise the different hazards and overcome the more complex ship systems you have to dissemble. It’s likely one of the better tutorial systems I’ve seen in a game.

One of the joys of the game is floating through space while you go about your business, and that’s also where one of the challenges comes in. There’s a strong physics element to the game which is core to the game, objects hitting you at speed that can crush you, break your helmet, or fly into other objects that change their trajectory, or damage them and turn them into scrap. Trying to push objects heavier than you can push you away, and the areas where the parts have to be placed cause instant death.

Each ship has different pre-determined cut points (which don’t negatively affect your credit score when destroyed), however other sections might comprise of materials that need to go into separate collectors and need to be manually cut apart, and each panel has a different “health” rating before being destroyed.

Graphics
The games HUD is minimalistic, only showing you the most important information -your suit integrity, health, O2 levels and fuel, as well as the shift timer. Your vision can be switched between unenhanced (your normal human vision), and 3 scanner modes. Structural, which shows the layout of the ship (different types of metal and cut points, and description of the part of a ship), systems (which is fuel and coolant lines, reactors, thrusters and other hazards) and objects (which is everything else in a ship like computers). While not being friendly for those who are vision impaired (its uses red/green for lots of objects) it’s clear how to operate once you know how each mode works.

When not ripping ships apart you can change the posters in your hab, decode any messages you have found aboard ships, maybe fix up your car/ship with spare parts, which can act a nice break.

Music
The music is really relaxing to listen to, and it’s one of those soundtracks that loops endlessly in the background but is great to listen to in game. It’s all guitar driven country (no vocals) that seems to really fit not only the game but the setting. The music does change to a much faster paced synth based soundtrack when you are in danger or create a hazard. The voice acting was really good, there’s only a few characters, but you can easily identify with all of them and hear the anxiety, loneliness and emotion from the other cast as their situations devolve due to Lynx’s corporate demands.

Achievements
All achievements are easy enough to get with regular gameplay, and there’s only 1 point where a copy of your save file would be required to make a different choice (otherwise another play through would be required.

For more reviews please visit https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/curator/31327216/

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a casual, single-player space salvage game where you are tasked to deconstruct spaceships and recycle various components to pay off your crippling debt. It offers both a campaign and free play (where you can get in and just start carving any ship to pieces), speedrun challenges and multiple difficultly modes so the game can either be a pressure cooker where you are on a 15-minute time limit, or a more causal experience. It’s a game I recommend playing, even if only for the somewhat relaxing soundtrack. [B]Story[/B] You start the game as a debt-riddled individual (known as 52), who signs up to be a shipbreaker for the monolithic company Lynx. The story progression starts off slow with Weaver (your team leader) slowly introducing you to the different techniques and tools used to salvage ships (you have to earn the rights to equipment from Lynx), and other shipbreakers. It’s not long before it picks up however, with the campaign focusing around meaningful questions around workers’ rights, lack of government controls, invasive and dangerous business practises and a boss that seems determined to make sure everyone knows he’s in charge, even if he doesn’t know the job. The last chapter of the game’s pace seems to slow down as you aren’t really learning anything different at this point, just doing the same to work off your debt and the final mission seems to be locked behind a set shipbreaker level or entering the hab enough times to trigger the conversation. [B]Gameplay[/B] Gameplay seems simple, but can actually be quite complex. Each ship is comprised of multiple components that need to be salvaged and placed into the correct sorting platform, with incorrect placements costing the player the value of the item. There’s typically a order you need to go about before you can really get into slicing the ship apart, such as flushing fuel lines, removing coolant from pipes, decompressing sections, or removing reactors, with the more complex ships having larger systems and requiring more steps. The game is really good at teaching you how to use the different tools at your disposal, how to minimise the different hazards and overcome the more complex ship systems you have to dissemble. It’s likely one of the better tutorial systems I’ve seen in a game. One of the joys of the game is floating through space while you go about your business, and that’s also where one of the challenges comes in. There’s a strong physics element to the game which is core to the game, objects hitting you at speed that can crush you, break your helmet, or fly into other objects that change their trajectory, or damage them and turn them into scrap. Trying to push objects heavier than you can push you away, and the areas where the parts have to be placed cause instant death. Each ship has different pre-determined cut points (which don’t negatively affect your credit score when destroyed), however other sections might comprise of materials that need to go into separate collectors and need to be manually cut apart, and each panel has a different “health” rating before being destroyed. [B]Graphics[/B] The games HUD is minimalistic, only showing you the most important information -your suit integrity, health, O2 levels and fuel, as well as the shift timer. Your vision can be switched between unenhanced (your normal human vision), and 3 scanner modes. Structural, which shows the layout of the ship (different types of metal and cut points, and description of the part of a ship), systems (which is fuel and coolant lines, reactors, thrusters and other hazards) and objects (which is everything else in a ship like computers). While not being friendly for those who are vision impaired (its uses red/green for lots of objects) it’s clear how to operate once you know how each mode works. When not ripping ships apart you can change the posters in your hab, decode any messages you have found aboard ships, maybe fix up your car/ship with spare parts, which can act a nice break. [B]Music[/B] The music is really relaxing to listen to, and it’s one of those soundtracks that loops endlessly in the background but is great to listen to in game. It’s all guitar driven country (no vocals) that seems to really fit not only the game but the setting. The music does change to a much faster paced synth based soundtrack when you are in danger or create a hazard. The voice acting was really good, there’s only a few characters, but you can easily identify with all of them and hear the anxiety, loneliness and emotion from the other cast as their situations devolve due to Lynx’s corporate demands. [B]Achievements[/B] All achievements are easy enough to get with regular gameplay, and there’s only 1 point where a copy of your save file would be required to make a different choice (otherwise another play through would be required. For more reviews please visit https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/curator/31327216/