S
ince the dawn of videogames, we’ve been
destroying spaceships by the hundreds.
It says something about the progression
the medium has made since that Blackbird
Interactive’s salvage sim now has you carefully
dismantling individual craft instead. That’s not
to say this blue-collar job of the future isn’t a
dangerous gig, however. You might accidentally
hit a fuel tank with your laser cutter, for
example, while it’s not long before you’re asked
to remove volatile reactors. The idea is to
deposit them safely before they explode; then
again, while you’ll lose potential income for
failing to salvage it, letting it blow is another
way to crack the surrounding shell. Fromchunky pixels to polygonal fragments with
their own physics: you might say we’ve come
a long way to travel such a short distance.
Yet it’s mishaps like these (or at least the
threat of things going badly wrong) that
initially make Hardspace: Shipbreaker so
gripping. As a titular shipbreaker, you’re
immediately in debt to a corporation to the
tune of a billion dollars. Hiring the equipment
to do your job incurs a hefty daily fee, and so
you need to make enough money on each shift
to more than cover your expenses. With a
15-minute time limit, that potentially means
taking a few risks and cutting a few corners,
even before you consider having to top up yourHARDSPACE:
SHIPBREAKER
Developer Blackbird
Interactive
Publisher Focus Home
Interactive
Format PC
Origin Canada
Release TBA
This Early Access salvage sim is a cracker in every sense
If you’re particularly lucky,
you’ll get a ship with plenty
of repair kits on board. That
way you can maintain your
equipment without having
to pay through the nose