Visiting aliens can be hired, and each species has their own merits and uses, such as the trash compacting Talgor, and the security enforcing leviathans. Luckily, you can manually do a lot of things, like collecting and depositing resources which is a godsend, as otherwise you’d be waiting forever for your workers to do it for you. It was much easier once I’d worked out how to buy more Fuzzies, a task in itself that took longer than necessary to pull off. Because you can’t manage their tasks individually, you have to wait for them to work out what to do next. Fuzzies especially (your robot worker bees) are slow, meandering and struggle to prioritise jobs. It’s also the area you’ll likely notice how slow, and sometimes, completely incompetent, your workers can be. It’s quite frustrating to have to dip back and forth between your decks, bioforming areas over and over to get the resources you need, and then having to change them back to spawn something else again. The tutorial is already sparse, but it barely touches on how to bioform (in hindsight, it’s easy, but you have to work it out for yourself), and, at least for the first hour or so of play, you’re extremely limited with space. Watching your robot workers mill about, collecting boxes is joyous in the fibre-rich jungle bio, even if it’s one of the more confusing areas of the game. The area is testament to the game’s nostalgic but, actually quite pretty, graphics and character design. The bio deck is essentially a resource management area, where your employees harvest various flora to create oxygen, minerals, and everything else you might need to improve your station’s facilities. You also need to manage their needs, such as keeping oxygen levels across the ship stable. No matter what mode you’re playing, you’ll almost always need at least one of every building, but often more of each when the constant stream of alien visitors gets overwhelming. Board is the meat and potatoes of the game, where you’ll make medicine rooms, recycle waste, create brigs and even keep a beady eye on your population with a security station. Your donut halls are also split into three very distinctive levels sub, fun and bio. That being said, you’ll still need to expand your station constantly, but if you find yourself tight on space (and funds), most rooms can be chopped and changed to suit the needs of your station. Unlike the boring, generic square layouts we’re used to in most building management sims, navigating the donut-shaped halls of your space station forces you to make interesting choices, especially regarding room placement. The circular layout is, however, an incredibly distinctive feature of Startopia. It does however, become easier the more you play, and it’s much easier on the stomach than most VR games I’ve played. It made sense though, as the circular motion of the station is initially jarring. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the initial motion sickness warning. I imagine though, it transitions better on PC (go on, do your gloating), after all, it’s really hard to squeeze finicky controls onto restrictive console controllers, so it’s not an issue that’s limited to just Startopia. Even if you take my advice though, you’ll find yourself, on more than one occasion, scrambling with your controller, trying to work out a specific button combo you know you’ve done by accident before, but can’t quite figure now you actually need to pull it off. Spacebase Startopia has an exceptionally steep learning curve, and without learning the basics, it’s almost impossible to enjoy the game’s ten level campaign or free play modes. I’m absolutely the type of person to jump straight into, well, anything usually, but if you take anything from this review, let it be this – play the tutorial. It’s a period of peace throughout the galaxy, and what better way to celebrate than opening a cylindrical space station for the galaxy’s residents to visit, relax and have fun in, all while complaining endlessly to the hub’s management you. It’s strange, as much as I love strategy games, (and I’m definitely a sucker for the early noughties chic that Startopia envisages), I still can’t help but wonder who asked for this?īut maybe it’s just me, I mean, who doesn’t want to manage a Spaceport, right? And if you’re screaming ‘I want to manage a hub for galactic travellers!’ at your screen, then Spacebase Startopia has all your whims and fancies covered. It definitely feels like a successor to Startopia, a twenty year old management sim from the days where games were, mostly, really weird (here’s looking at you, Eidos) but I’m still not sure if it’s a necessary reboot. Nostalgia can be blinding, a sentiment I echoed throughout my time with Spacebase Startopia (or Starbase Spacetopia as I’ve called it for the last couple of weeks).
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