So I Tried… Space Engineers

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time around, I went with developer Keen Software House’s space-themed sandbox game, Space Engineers.

What I thought it was

As usual when I pick a game to try solely based on the screenshot from the PlayStation Plus Extra offerings, I knew practically nothing about Space Engineers. At a guess, because of the name, I assumed it to be similar to something like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, with it having some sort of building aspect centred around spaceships and moon bases. You know, the types of games where you’re given specific objectives in each mission to repair/build/demolish your way through a level (like House Flipper but in zero gravity) with your character slowly gaining new skills the more you perform individual tasks.

With that in mind, I was confident that I would enjoy Space Engineers, as these “simulator” types of games are my absolute guilty pleasure. Even though a lot of them are janky and poorly optimised, I find they’re normally simple enough to just unwind with and not have to use my limited brain power to be able to complete them.

What it actually is

What it actually is… is really bloody complex! So much for not having to engage my brain… I only had 30 minutes with the game, and in that time I ended up with next to nothing in terms of progression. I loaded up the “Learning to Survive” scenario, and whilst I did indeed survive, I felt like the learning part was severely lacking on my end.

You see, Space Engineers isn’t exactly like I had thought it was, and is actually a lot more open-ended in terms of what you can do. Simply put, it’s more like Minecraft than anything I had pictured it being, and honestly, the short time I spent with it left me impressed. For starters, I followed along with the tutorial, learning about maintaining oxygen levels, how to harvest raw minerals, piloting a ship, and so on. It was a pretty non-linear approach to a tutorial, with certain game mechanics explained at different points on the map. I was able to freely explore and craft before moving on to the next task, so I didn’t end up getting many of them done!

There are a variety of other scenarios to play, as well as ones with no objectives other than ensuring your own survival, although I certainly wasn’t going to jump into one of those before even fully learning the controls! Survival seems almost unthinkable at this point in time due to my current skill level, and even just the single scenario I played was fairly overwhelming to the point that I was more confused than anything. Then, when you factor in multiplayer, mods, and dozens of other mechanics that I hadn’t even been introduced to yet, Space Engineers seems like it has an incredibly steep learning curve! Which leads to the final question…

Will I keep playing

It feels like I’ll need to go and watch some in-depth guides on YouTube, as well as spend a lot of time in the specific in-game tutorial maps to get my head around this complex beast. But, yes, it’s certainly captured my attention that I genuinely want to learn more about it. With the option to play in the more stress-free Creative mode, I’m optimistic that I could get to grips with the game’s mechanics (especially building) easier, without having to manage things like health and oxygen levels.

Time will tell if I stick with Space Engineers. It’s certainly not friendly to newcomers, and I’m probably at a disadvantage by using a controller. However, as it stands, this one was a genuine surprise at how deep its mechanics were and how quickly I became invested in it, despite my short time playing thus far.