Space Engineers

There are a few games that have felt impossible to put down over the past few decades of game development. Some of them are just straight addicting, while others seem to have endless content that, no matter how many hours you play there’s always more to do. And then there’s Space Engineers that, both ingame and in real life, seems to be a blackhole of time consumption. Looking at my own hours, coupled with those of across different platforms, its not uncommon to see people breaching the thousand-hour mark.

It’s a hard game not because its unforgiving, nor because there’s challenging AI/difficulty spikes, but because there really are thousands of different approaches to take. Plus, at some level, this really is pretty much rocket science. Though hardly impossible, it’s a challenge to get into but be warned – you won’t just be able to put it down once you’ve got the hang of it.

An Engineer’s Paradise

So why is this game so beloved if it’s a technical challenge rather than ‘difficulty’ challenge? Like I said, there’s endless possibilities and the game embraces creativity and exploration. The primary goal of the game is to build, explore, and survive in space. Rather than taking a simplistic approach, Space Engineers is aimed heavily at giving players the ability to alter any and all aspects of space ships, land vehicles, and space stations along with many other setups.

The physics system is one of the best assets that this game has to offer and is on par with Kerbal Space Program but with similar gameplay to Surviving Mars. Its realistic down to how it uses an object’s mass, inertia, and velocity to determine outcomes of in-game interactions. If you smack into the surface of a planet or moon, your ship won’t just take general damage – depending on where you’ve crashed, different pieces of your ship can chip off and require repairs. This can be frustrating at first since you’ll have to get used to the controls and how to avoid objects, but it ultimately creates a cohesive, realistic experience that is unlike any other made before.

Futuristic Management

Okay, so the physics system is realistic and the possibilities are endless. So what? There’s other games like it – on the surface, anyways. Your goal as a space engineer can be solely creative, or you can delve into the survival side, which plunges you into a resource management sort of game itself. Survivalist engineers will be tasked with anything from programming, building an electricity grid, generating artificial gravity, creating weapons for military management, and harvesting oxygen, hydrogen, and thousands of other resources to be used for crafting/base building.

Bottom Line

Its honestly one of the most in-depth games ever made because its not just a physics game, a resource manager, or a survival-strategy game – it has elements of each of them that are incredibly fleshed out. Its mind boggling how many different paths you can take throughout this game. Like I said, it’s a challenge to familiarize yourself with all these systems, but if you take it slow and actually study the game’s mechanics, you’ll be a pro in no time (or 20,000 hours, apparently).

Pros:

• Dedicated developers, physics systems, and creative opportunities
• Fuses together several genres for a survival/strategy/resource experience
• Gameplay can be further expanded through community mods/assets

Cons:

• Huge learning curve, not for casual players
• Could be overwhelming
• Some mod experience/dev dedication has been questionable