Space Engineers - Initial Thoughts

About The Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Players build space ships, space stations, planetary outposts of various sizes and uses (civil and military), pilot ships and travel through space to explore planets and gather resources to survive. Featuring both creative and survival modes, there is no limit to what can be built, utilized and explored.

Space Engineers features a realistic, volumetric-based physics engine: everything in the game can be assembled, disassembled, damaged and destroyed. The game can be played either in single or multiplayer modes.

Volumetric objects are structures composed from block-like modules interlocked in a grid. Volumetric objects behave like real physical objects with mass, inertia and velocity. Individual modules have real volume and storage capacity.

Space Engineers is inspired by reality and by how things work. Think about modern-day NASA technology extrapolated 60 years into the future. Space Engineers strives to follow the laws of physics and doesn't use technologies that wouldn't be feasible in the near future.

Space Engineers concentrates on construction and exploration aspects, but can be played as a survival shooter as well. We expect players will avoid engaging in direct man-to-man combat and instead use their creativity and engineering skills to build war machines and fortifications to survive in space and on planets. Space Engineers shouldn’t be about troops; it should be about the machinery you build.

Previous Playtime

11 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

I'd just started the blog and wasn't totally consumed in it just yet. I was, at this time, really into Minecraft and this game looked like a prettier Minecraft in space. The half-off prize was a smaller discount than what I've been holding out for recently, but I didn't have quite so many games back then.

Expectations and Prior Experience

I have two memories of Space Engineers. First, the learning curve was very steep. I played it before planets were added and I wound up running out of oxygen and dying. Then I played it with the planets and I could never get a ship into space.

Second, the cybernetic wolves were really annoying. In these sorts of games, monsters attacking your stuff is a stand-in for the inexorable forces of entropy that make regular maintenance of infrastructure necessary. However, when you get a wave every couple of minutes, it undermines the exploration and building portions of the game.

Since I have some basic experience with the game, and I plan on turning the cyber wolves off in my world setup, I'm expecting this game to go pretty fast. My goal is to crash-land on a planet and build my way back into space. Worst case scenario, I waste a lot of time building a base and never get off the ground. That's fine with me. I've played several voxel-crafting games at this point, and I've never been bored with just walking around, gathering materials, and producing monuments to myself. It's unlikely that this is the game that will break my streak.