Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Space Engineers

What if I told you, you can do Minecraft in space? You'd probably tell me there's already a mod for that but that's not what I'm talking about. 

I'm talking about Space Engineers, a sandbox space engineering/construction game. Using blocks to build, but with a smoother and more "realistic" graphic than Minecraft. As an example, everything isn't blocks! Not that I'm complaining about everything being blocks but that is beside the point. What is the point is that in SE you can build ships and stuff with clean diagonal edges, which I think is awesome. Being in space really makes it go that step further in inspiration for me as a sci-fi enthusiast. This game is in alpha stage and is available on Steam, which is nice. Finished features include (among others) building in creative mode, scenarios, large and small ships to build, pilot and crash, world management, gravity, magnetic landing gears, weapons and possibility to do some modding on world files, shaders, 3D models and textures. 




From some let's plays I've seen, you can make really awesome stuff. A great example of this is a W40K build of a Battlefleet Gothic Space Marine-style battleship with a landing bay complete with a Thunderhawk (now that was a mouthful). I've also seen a build of the Slave I, pretty nice!

The makers of the game wanted to make something that felt realistic and used equally realistic technology, although they did have to loosen a bit on the realistic part to make the game more playable, i.e. artificial gravity among other things. But this also means that when you build a ship you have to think about how it will move in space. To have enough energy and thrusters in the right place. But space is space and that makes it awesome.


This is a game that I really want to get my hands on and I think that it has real potential to be a great success. Even though there are still no sound effects, crafting or multiplayer it does have favourable winds in its sails. I think that when multiplayer and crafting features becomes implemented, this game will become a standard title when it comes to space based sandbox building.


Hipp Hipp!


LINKS!


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