I’m going to keep working through, largely because I loved Startopia and I really, really want Spacebase Startopia to work. Each level has taken me about 20 or so minutes to knock off, although your mileage may vary. Spacebase Startopia hasn’t quite nailed that yet, at least not from what I’ve played so far. I’m about halfway through the main campaign, which is 10 missions in total. Not being challenged in a sim like this is fine if the setting and sandbox elements are fun enough that you don’t mind. But the lack of charm and lacking that little bit of extra polish, that slick aesthetic that so often defines sims like these, really hurts Spacebase Startopia. It’s all pretty straightforward in the end, and it’s easy enough regardless of the difficulty for anyone who’s played a lot of Simcity, Cities Skylines and games like this. It’s easier, but does it make for a better management sim? I don’t know. The terraforming controls don’t have quite the same amount of finesse as the original, and instead of controlling the individual temperature and moisture of a particular area, you now just apply the terrain you want directly on the spot you want. There’s some outstanding bugs, like on the biodeck where you fill a hole full of water and then it doesn’t properly appear, but the game never tells you why. One mission has you dealing with a prison population on-board another tasks you with healing a certain amount of aliens, while ensuring the most infectious ones don’t suddenly start a pandemic. Each mission unlocks more and more buildings, so you’re slowly exposed to the full suite of options/problems/nightmares that Spacebase Startopia might entail. I haven’t spoken much about the actual missions themselves, although they’re pretty standard fare for these kinds of games. Mechs are a thing now.Įven just little things with the UI here, like the way the font isn’t properly centered and the lack of definition, just leaves me wanting a little bit more. And Startopia‘s worst attribute - the RTS-lite systems where you hired security officers to expel invaders from neighbouring bulkheads - has gotten a complete overhaul. The individual models and textures have been cleaned up really nicely, and you can zoom in and get a really great level of detail if that’s your thing. UI prompts are more readable, even if it results in you having less space on the screen most of the time. Rotating buildings with the mousewheel is a nice touch. The developers have made some smart changes from the original, though. It’s not the biggest dealbreaker in the world, but it’s not well thought out either. So when people fire up their first mission, they’re going to see this difficulty screen, which just throws a whole bunch of stats that might not make any sense at all. You have to manually go into a separate menu for the tutorials. I was jumping into the first mission, because I figured, hey if you play the campaign, the first thing it’ll drop you into is the tutorial. For instance, when I first fired up the game, this was the first screen I saw. Putting the depth of space aside, Spacebase Startopia just feels like it could use a little more polish. Even the industrial level in Spacebase Startopia, particularly with the more aggressive curve, feels cramped. Maybe it’s a difference in the design in how objects are placed or just the field of view in particular, but the original game felt like you were building out massive, warehouse-like bulkheads. There’s something a little claustrophobic about the whole experience. Franklyn was a perfect pick for the assistant AI in Startopia: he had that classic snark you get from a British professor, someone you know is deeply unimpressed with your work, but they’re professional enough to go along for the ride anyway. And a large part of that was down to the astonishingly good voice over work from William Franklyn, a British actor who voiced most of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC radio series. It wasn’t necessarily the great sim, but it had a great sense of style. You had a few decks to manage, one for pleasure, one for industry and a “biodeck”, which basically gave you a giant deck to terraform with plants, water and all sorts of life. It wasn’t a commercial success, but it had this brilliant blend of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy humour blended with what was functionally Theme Hospital in space. Launching today on consoles and tomorrow, Spacebase Startopia is basically a redux of Startopia, a quirky management sim made by a bunch of ex-Bullfrog employees in 2001. You know those games that have all the right pieces but you know your heart just isn’t into it? That’s the struggle I have with Spacebase Startopia right now.
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