Since nobody has made a thread about this one I thought I'd spread its gosbel a bit. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is very much a Vinny Caravella -ass space trucking (just with cutting instead of trucking) game and I encourage anyone with an interest in floating around in space while listening to some chill but also kinda sad sorta southernly guitar to give it a shot. Played for a couple of hours so far and still getting a hang of the controls and mechanics but its extremely my jam so far.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Game » consists of 2 releases. Released May 24, 2022
Salvage valuables from spaceships in zero-g to pay your debts.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
Yeah I watched a video the devs put out recently and it seemed neat. I've definitely enjoyed quite a few of the more...mundane gaming experiences out there (American Truck Sim and Viscera Cleanup Detail, to name a couple), so this seems kind of up my alley. That being said, I don't really have any interest in it until it's out of early access.
Warning: This game is VERY un-optimized. You might be at a good framerate on the starting platform but that will get cut in half (pun intended) once you're actually in the ship you're taking apart. At least I haven't had any crashes yet. The devs have said resolutions higher than 1080p are not supported yet but I think that boils down to how text overlaps in some places. It IS possible to play the game at higher resolutions.
The poor optimization and the fact that you work in 15 minute shifts kinda makes me worry that the ships you take apart aren't going to get very big. I was hoping for levels big enough that you could get lost in them but that might be outside the scope of this game.
If you take a chance on it, I highly recommend just going ham on a ship in the freeplay mode. The ships can blow apart in some pretty spectacular ways.
@mobiusfun: Agreed that its still very rough in spots, especially when dealing with air decompressing or reactors blowing up. Then again they're at least a year off from being done with EA so plenty of time to optimize. The 15 minute time limit seems to be a hot topic on the steam forums and the devs are very much into having that conversation so who knows where things go in the future.
I like the 15 minute shifts. I think it'd be very easy to sit there for hours and pick a ship apart but how many times are you gonna do that before burning out, realistically? The shifts are a great way of measuring progression and efficiency. It gently forces you to use your time well instead of measuring 10 times and cutting 100 times for what ends up being not a great deal of money.
Instead of feeling like a slog it gets a real civ-esque one more turn flavour out of me and that I think is integral to the flow. I went from earning $500k and losing most of it for rental costs to dropping a cool mil off my debt every time I went out there. I can strip a grade 3 heavy cargo ship in one shift by this point and that wouldn't have happened if it was more sandbox-y.
@lkennedyl: And by having you be on a clock you're forced to make more quick decisions which sometimes result in fun and tense disasters.
How do you break?
After FULL decompression (double check the airlocks) ill start with the floor below the reactor so I can just tether it into the barge. Ill finish the rest of the floor and clean out any big stuff to finish my work order. That's usually about one "shift". Ill usually use one or two more shifts to strip away the outer plating and try to cut out the airlock. If I feel I can actually make a profit off one more shift ill take a crack at it but rarely do I make any more money after day 3.
It chuggy when you get a new ship but gets faster the more you cut away.
@mobiusfun Is there any chance that the game will be optimized in the future, is there any info from the devs?
Tried the tutorial last night. It's a little confusing where each component is supposed to go. There's a processor, a barge, and a furnace, and as far as I could tell, no real way to determine which component goes where. The cutting itself feels great. I was a little worried that the zero-g would make it difficult to play, but it seems like the physics are not 100% real world, which I'm okay with (ideally, I'd like to see an option for more realistic zero-g physics for those who want it).
The mix between a dystopian mega-corp and space trucker vibes is pretty amusing. Personally, I selected the "plastic-free" food option on my employment forms.
@mobiusfun I'm asking cause the fact is that many game developers promise to optimize their game at an early stage, but as experience shows, not everyone does it (Ark Survival Evolved as an example)
I played a few hours tonight and experienced two crashes. The first one was a failure to load a level. The second one was a hard freeze, after spending a few minutes in the free play mode just tearing a part a ship as fast as I could for fun.
I have a total of 10 hours in and I'm enjoying it, but I am a bit worried about the progression. There is only one laser upgrade that allows you to cut through tougher materials,, and you can't unlock that upgrade until you're level 8 out of 10 on the tech tree. It looks like the tech upgrade tree will be finished long before one could possibly pay off the billion dollar debt, which makes me think the endgame will be a real slog.
I'm still learning new things and new mechanics, mostly how the parts of a ship connect to and affect each other. Spaceships are complicated. I have questions. Mainly, why the fuck would you keep ships that are slated for salvaging pressurized to begin with?! I'm just imagining this orbital parking lot somewhere with a hundred ships there. A hundred pressurized, fueled ships. A micrometeorite comes through and all of a sudden you have a chain reaction and a whole lot extra junk in low Earth orbit.
But yeah, I'm enjoying it. It is very much an Early Access game, so take note of that.
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