Hardspace: Shipbreaker is about yanking spaceships apart piece by piece, hoping to eventually salvage your way into a ticket to humanity’s new home among the stars. It’s now available in early access form on Steam, so you can start getting acquainted with your tools now.
I enjoyed the time I spent with Shipbreaker earlier this year at PAX East. It’s a game that makes you learn on the job – how to deftly manoeuvre your propulsion pack in zero gravity, how to use your scanning equipment to identify dangerous fuel and power lines hidden within ship bulkheads, and which tools to use for a particular job. Blackbird Interactive told me it’s an intentionally working class game, and there’s a story about class stratification and income inequality welded into the seams of each of its procedurally generated derelict ships.
Using plasma cutters and an energy tether that works like a laser lasso, your job is to take each ship that comes into your bay and break it down into component pieces. How you go about doing this is up to you – but you’ll need to work carefully, since the wrong move could spark a fuel explosion or worse, trigger a nuclear meltdown in a ship’s core.
Here’s the new trailer:
Once you’ve pulled a piece free, you’ll hurl it into a collection matrix for processing, where it’ll add to your take for the day. Faster breakdowns mean more money for you, and ultimately you’re trying to work off your debt to a company that owns the rights to you and your clones in perpetuity – or until you’ve paid off the expenses you’ve incurred.
You can find Hardspace: Shipbreaker on Steam, or through its official site. Through July 7, it’s 20% off the normal early access price, so you can pick it up for $19.99 USD / £17.59. If it catches your interest, you may also want to consult our guide to the best space games on PC.