Had the potential to be fun but the game has become a tedious ship babysitting simulator.
You are constantly out of all different kinds of resources from the very start. You cannot design a fun, good looking ship because you have to float around in a metal wreck with the least amount of resources used just to be able to get to the next system and that is just so you can have the next best dice roll for the next resource that you have to trade with what ever ship comes along.

While this sounds like a fun "survival" aspect there is nothing to it. There is no strategy or decision making. It's just frustrating and boring to be constantly annoyed with having to fetch the next thing that is missing and ends your game because you ran out of fuel, or food, or fertilizer for the food, or water, or the other kind of fuel, or the building material needed so your ship doesn't fall apart.

All while your crew will become unhappy because they are now bored. Because starving to death is boring.

I want to like Space Haven.

Run after run, however (or more accurately, run after run abandoned about halfway through), I lose interest. The early game challenge is where the game at it's most developed - The frantic scramble to make the most of limited resources, planning ahead (or failing to) and entering a death spiral, being one meteor impact away from a lost run, your decisions feel like they matter, and while it's hellish in places and prone to negative feedback loops, you can adjust much of the difficulty to your liking.

Once you get out of that though, the game grows stale. With most of the techs researched, ample stockpiles, and reasonable resource management, the only thing that's really going to get you to pay attention in a run is a complete catastrophe or losing people. The game does try to inflict these on you, with later space combat in particular being on the brutal side, but across multiple versions, the game's struggled with compelling me to carry on, and they still haven't nailed down a satisfying core gameplay loop that isn't putting out fires.

If you're one of those people that can make their own fun and enjoys sandboxing, there's a few things that Space Haven does right - The most interesting being able to operate multiple ships simultaneously - but for the most part, the gameplay isn't compelling, and you're not likely to get good value for your money. I'll probably check back to see what they've done after full release and revisit this review.

My crew members will not stop beating the ♥♥♥♥ out of each other around the clock every time I start the game, I have no method of making them not hate each other despite having tons of comfort, their own rooms, etc. All my halls are smeared in gallons of blood and all of my crew is permanently sleeping off two black eyes and near-death injuries. I actually cannot play the game.