Sturdy foundations
It’s easy to feel pride when you’re flying through space at 1000 metres per second.
Build ‘n’ crash.
Every feature fits in this opening paragraph.
But right now, it’s all core, no loop.
It’s a very sturdy core, I should say.
Of course, destroying someone else’s sandcastle is never really as much fun as bulldozing your own.
Then adding the necessary thrusters, cockpit, and gyroscope to make the ship functional.
There’s also no tutorial for how to go about that.
It’s a bit overwhelming at first.
Especially if, like me, you’re coming to this with no experience ofSpace Engineers.
Soon, you understand the importance of holding Ctrl to precisely align blocks along a handy grid.
You discover the helpful “symmetry” plane that cuts your work in half.
Within an hour or two, the building process itself felt surprisingly intuitive and snappy.
There is some friction.
And it’s hard to see how some pieces are meant to fit together.
The window pane pieces, for example, don’t allow as much modular freedom as I’d hoped.
In short, it’s a bare bones creative sandbox, but the bones are strong and healthy.
It is equally a place of directionless wandering and playful experimentation.
you’re able to crash the ship and rush dramatically to shut down the reactor!
But actually, it makes no difference.
Ships don’t need a power source yet.
That makes this currently feel like a 25 building block toy, rather than a goal-oriented game.
It’s a very cool toy, admittedly.
I made two ships.
The second ship was more nautical - an interstellar catamaran complete with solar sail.
This being space, there’s no problem with the crew mate up there being sideways.
Except you won’t have a crew mate for a while.
But it’s not here yet, that’s all.
Design a torus-shaped holiday resort above the asteroid on the end of a big needle.
Cobble together a spacefighter that looks like an annoyed squid.
Paint absolutely everything an aggressive Martian red.
Sequels that arrive fully formed don’t have this problem.
But this isn’t that.
