arbayer2 Reviews: Moonbase Alpha (PC)
:O HOLY ♥♥♥♥ MAN IT'S THE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON. WHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-*oxygen leak*
Moonbase Alpha is a conspiracy theory simulator officially-sanctioned lunar outpost management/exploration simulator released on July 6, 2010 on Steam for PC. You play as a hapless astronaut, either alone or in online multiplayer with friends, and attempt to restore power and life support to a lunar outpost shortly after a meteorite impact cripples the facility. With limited oxygen and crew, hampered by low gravity, you must fix everything preventing the station from returning to viability before everyone asphyxiates.
The game (notably) includes a full text-to-speech function built into multiplayer chat, allowing you to indulge in humorous exchanges of dialogue... on the moon. Alongside this, one can also control remotely-guided rovers and use them to repair sections of the outpost rendered hazardous due to radiation.
The game is surprisingly engaging considering it's essentially Infrastructure Repair: The Game: Moon Edition, although it has a number of (fairly hilarious) bugs which probably won't dramatically impact your gameplay experience outside of some uncommon PC compatibility issues which have probably been resolved by now. Graphically, it's nothing special, especially by 2015 standards, but it gets the point across and nothing in-game looks particularly awful either. Remember, this is an indie game officially sanctioned by NASA. The whole game's got a kind of "America's Army" effect going on with it.
Puzzles are really straightforward, ranging from "connect this to that and then whack it with a wrench a few times" to "get on a rover, drive this stuff over to there and replace a thingamabob whilst whacking it with a wrench a few times". Not that that's a bad thing. The game is rather short for what it is, however. I'd have liked to have seen some interior sections or multiple missions - the game is very much a "one and done" type of deal, with only one level and maybe two or three options in how to play it.
I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in space or who simply likes spamming "aeiou" into chat over and over again. It's more of a novelty than anything else; I mean, who'd've thought NASA would publish a video game in the first place.
Originally written February 22, 2011 on Steam, edited for repost