steam colony survival game space pirates

Crossing the gap between stars means putting the crew into suspended animation, and building the necessary hypersleep chambers requires very rare resources. Traveling from one star system to another requires a hyperspace jump. Ichor on the floor and walls here shows the aftermath of a boarding action. Exploring derelict spacecraft can be harrowing, especially if there are giant insects on board. It’s best to grab what you can and keep moving. The driving force in Space Haven comes from this scarcity of resources. But there are only so many fuel rods to be had inside a given system. I can loot them from abandoned derelicts scattered around, and I can to manufacture them from materials that I mine at remote asteroids. Fuel rods, which keep the ship’s internal systems humming, are consumed night and day. The catch is that whatever choices I make have to be made quickly.

There’s even serviceable real-time tactical gameplay, which allows you to board other ships and take crews prisoner.

Alternately, I could outfit my ship to be a pirate vessel, moving from one target of opportunity to another, taking what I needed to survive by force of arms. I was free to make my ship entirely self-sustaining, a sprawling vessel filled with engineering facilities and food production labs that could keep my crew going for weeks on end. Space Haven gave me control of every single aspect of my spaceship, right down to the color and style of the interior bulkheads. On paper the premise sounds a lot like FTL: Faster Than Light, but Space Haven’s complexity sets it apart.

Standing in their way are multiple warring factions and the cold, hard vacuum of space. In Space Haven, players are tasked with shepherding a small crew of survivors off a dying world and across the galaxy to safety on a new planet. But it also introduces a sense of speed and momentum that other games in the genre lack. Space Haven, which was released into Steam Early Access in late May, uses the same sort of complex, layered systems that make games like Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld so satisfying. The colony simulation genre is known for being pretty slow, often lacking the action-packed pacing common in other kinds of video games.

Steam colony survival game space pirates