Hardspace Shipbreaker

[Xarpho's Return]

Got this as a gift for Christmas but only recently played it. It seems to play the "company is a bastard that treats employees like dirt" angle a little too hard on the head, and I must have died at least six times because I used my grappling hook and then smashed into the platform, causing my helmet to break and my man to die a horrible death from decompression/oxygen loss.

I think you can detach pieces to send back for recycling whereas some you have to destroy (without destroying anything that can blow up) but does it get better later on? I went from thinking "this is really tedious" on Factorio to "holy shit I can literally play this for eight hours straight" once I got the hang of it.

 

[Ralph Barnhardt]

I liked it well enough. The story is distracting, annoying, and completely unnecessary. It would've been so much better if the story was like Factorio's where you're just some guy and you have a job and you need to do that job. As for the game play it can be really satisfying ripping apart a frigate to nothing. The game does ramp up the challenge with power modules, fuel, nuclear reactors, and even rogue AI. I think it's a fun thing to sink 20-30 minutes into at a time and come back to when you can.

 

[Sam Losco]

I played the shit out of that game while it was in development. It's a great time waster.
The discussion forum was in an uproar when they started building out the story and put in all the union propaganda. No one gave a shit and everyone was pissed you couldn't skip the dialog. The voice acting is kinda shit, the dialog is shit, and it was annoying having to listen to that one bitch constantly interrupting.

The way they made being in the Hab is shit too. Forced to click around to move instead of it being free movement.

Otherwise, fun enough game.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The story is distracting, annoying, and completely unnecessary.

The main problem I can see already is that the satire of the company being a psychotically over-the-top slavedriver doesn't mesh well with the storytelling of "uwu think of the poor workers".

 

[cybertoaster]

Played it back in 2022, good game with a great setting and worldbuilding but a mediocre story and boring NPCs specially the broad who wont shut up about being a black lesbian and muh space union. There were so many more interesting things about the world to focus on like the whole everlife (was that the name?) system where they just clone you over and over, are you even yourself at all? a copy? isn't that a SOMA-like situation?. And what about the colonies? what about the gate? the ghost ships? the machine god? nooooo what matters is the heckin union!!!1!one.

Anyway, haven't played the game since then, did they add anything?

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I had some fun with it until I got to the point where it introduced the fuel tanks and, no matter what I did, one went off without a hitch and the other always exploded when I did the whole decoupling and flying out thing. I assume it was some bug where the parts of the tank would physics their way into colliding and blowing up or something, but I don't know. It's a neat concept, but they could've cut every single line of dialogue and just had it in the same vein as Viscera Cleanup Detail and it would've be improved.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

There were so many more interesting things about the world to focus on like the whole everlife (was that the name?) system where they just clone you over and over, are you even yourself at all? a copy? isn't that a SOMA-like situation?

I thought that was a neat way to explain your constant dying and rebirth (true to all vidya) while continuing the whole theme of "btw we own your sorry ass"

 

[cybertoaster]

I thought that was a neat way to explain your constant dying and rebirth (true to all vidya) while continuing the whole theme of "btw we own your sorry ass"

They could've gone with a rescue bot and elysium-tier fix/resurrection machines, but loading a backup every time you die means you did die, lights out-die, its somebody else in your cloned skinsuit now.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

As I've said elsewhere, I don't know if they were intentionally channeling this (like they were shipbreaking), but Hardspace's corporate world is exactly like living in an Appalachian coal mining company town. You're a debt slave that has to buy your own equipment and buy your supplies from a company store on company monopoly money and so they rig it so that you can never save enough to get away. People fought America's largest Not-the-Civil-War rebellion against that and got bombed from the sky over it. With a sci fi setting this can be exaggerated even more (like charging you for oxygen).

I haven't played it yet (haven't bought it yet), but I am more than supportive of them playing that angle.

@Xarpho's Return

 

[Involuntary Celebrity]

Yeah, it's that. I didn't mind the story (besides one or two characters) and the way it culminates with the workers rebelling is fine, and more importantly a fun level.

I think my only complaint would be that the focus on the story stuff so they could wrap it up as a 1.0 release kinda constrains the actual gameplay elements that seemed cool earlier in development. Finding logs and all the ghostships/AI stuff? Seemed important; turns out it's all fucking nothing.
And I guess it's kind of understandable that the game is pushing shitty Unity engine physics to the limit already but all I really ever wanted was more big ships to pull apart.

At least they didn't listen (last I checked anyway) to all the whining baby retards on every forum complaining about shift timers being too stressful. Learning your tools and each craft until you're able to flawlessly mulch a ship in two shifts is the whole reason it's so satisfying.