Senaste recensioner av sir_deadlock

A fairly simple slider puzzle game. Casual friendly. No time or move limits. The music gets played out after a bit, but there are volume controls in the options menu that can turn it off. Animations are cute enough. It's an alright game.

It's alright. It's a lot like other survivor games. What makes this one unique in my opinion is mostly the art style. It's very pretty. The innate progression stats are nicely laid out. There's a good variety of attacks. There are pets which are more than cosmetic, which is nice. The loot chest mechanic is somewhat comfortable, it's on a proximity timer. The game has a lot to keep a person busy.

Because of the story content, this is not a straight up puzzle game or work simulator. It is an RPG where you play out the story of a character (Shipbreaker #9346-52), while they do salvage to progress through the story.

The story is finished and so is the game. Don't expect any DLC or future content updates. You get 4 ships to break down: Mackerel, Javelin, Gecko and Atlas.

Without giving too many spoilers, the story is about 52 (you) signing up to be a ship breaker at a time when there is unrest among employees of the company. They want better treatment than they signed up for and are willing to go to extreme lengths to get it.

If you just want a work simulator to zone out with, this may not be the game you're looking for, although it does have have those mechanics.

A frequent consolation the community suggests is that if you don't like the story, you should mute the audio or take off your headphones while waiting for the unskippable dialog to finish. Or after the initial contract signing scene, you have the option to do "open shift"/free play mode where everything is unlocked and you can play pretty much without any story or progression mechanics.

The game gets my thumbs down because I don't like the way it treats the player and how the story is presented.
There's no way to get around it. You must engage with the initial contract signing chunk of story to do anything.
That didn't sit well with me so I bailed immediately. I do not appreciate the forced theme they went for of being a debt slave to a dystopian corporation that has zero regard for your life. It's not the feel-good escapism I hoped for. Had I known what the story is like and how it's essential to being able to do anything at all in the game, I would have opted to ignore the game sooner.

But that's my experience. I'm allowed to not like a story as a matter of taste, from any point in the story, even just from reading other reviews. I don't have to be forgiving and let it have more of my time after I know what it's about.

You might feel differently, and that's okay. If you enjoy stories about dystopian futures in space, you might really like this one.

If Hardspace Shipbreaker isn't exactly what you want, but you do want something similar, I can suggest some alternative game options. (I contacted Steam community support first to make sure it would be okay to suggest other games in my review. They said that mentioning other Steam Store games is not considered advertising).

If you want a more cartoony looking game similar to Hardspace Shipbreaker, from a third-person perspective, you might enjoy Space Trash Scavenger. https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1759350/Space_Trash_Scavenger/
This game has a bunch of procedural generated game scenarios, and is basically a survival game. Collect loot and upgrade your home base.

If you want to play with similar game mechanics without story getting in your way, I would suggest Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2201940/Ship_Graveyard_Simulator_2/
The game is still in development and has a roadmap that aspires to introduce more ships and even multiplayer. It is however terrestrial, so if you absolutely need that weightless space aesthetic, it might not be the game you want. SGS2 holds a slight advantage over SGS1, because you can break down even more of the ship than before.

If you're not so much in it for the destruction aspect, but you really want to do some work simulation in space, may I introduce you to Space Mechanic Simulator: https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/429380/Space_Mechanic_Simulator/
Be forewarned, this is a mechanic simulator game with a learning curve. It might be more tedious than you're looking for. The devs have opted for a touch of realism which means player quality of life is an after thought. They're working on it though and listening to community feedback.
Rather than taking ships apart, you'll be jetting over to ships, then opening panels to repair modules. There's a lot of back-and-forth buying and replacing parts.

Space Engineers https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/244850/Space_Engineers/ Is a sandbox game where players have the ability to build things, including bases and ships.
The outer design of ships in Hardspace Shipbreaker are similar. While Space Engineers doesn't get down to the nuts and bolts of the objects, it can still be quite intricate, with the added bonus that you get to be a pilot. And if destruction is what you love, most things can be blown up or stripped down to bare materials too. Not good at building? Not a problem. With a large community making workshops items that are free to download, you'll never be short of variety. You can even get Space Engineers and Hardspace Shipbreaker bundled together for an extra 10% off (if you can wait for the next steam sale, these games tend to go 50% off) : https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/bundle/30281/Space_Engineers__Hardspace_Shipbreaker_Bundle/

If you're not so fussed about space specifically and want a weightless looting game, you might consider Voidtrain https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1159690/Voidtrain/
If you've heard of Raft, it's a lot like that, but instead of water it's a weightless void to swim through and reclaim scrap from to upgrade your train car.

There's also an old gem which predates Subnautica, called Far Sky. https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/286340/FarSky/
It's like what you'd get it you gave Subnautica a Minecraft skin pack. There's swimming, resource collection and base building. It's not space, of course, but it may scratch a few itches you had hoped Hardspace Shipbreaker would be good for.

There are probably more looting and weightless games that have swimming, so I won't delve deeper into suggesting things like Sunkenland, Under a New Sun, Deep Abyss, Loddlenaut, and Ocean cat. You can look those up yourself if you haven't already heard of them.

And if what you're looking for, I mean what you're actually looking for, is games with semi-realistic spacewalk experiences; if you have a VR headset you can get a free game called Home https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/512270/Home__A_VR_Spacewalk/
It's mostly a demonstration experience. The player leaves the safety of their space station to go repair a solar panel, but ends up having to try jetting back before time runs out. It's a short game with a high failure rate and an (in my opinion) unsatisfying success cut scene, but it's free and very pretty.

There are a lot of space games, there are a lot of games with characters in space suits, there are a lot of games where people fly ships, there are a lot of games where players destroy things in a physics engine, there are a lot of work simulators. However, there are not many games that offer a weightless spacewalk experience, which puts Hardspace Shipbreaker in a niche category.

Got the game on sale. Played through all the songs in 2 hours. Absolutely worth it if you're a fan of Avicci music.
As a rhythm game, I found it challenging. There are three areas to focus on all at once on keyboard: WASD keys, space bar and arrow keys.
It was a challenge keeping the command groups separate.

You may have a lot of games that you debate whether or not to play because they take so much time. Not this game. Load it up, play for five minutes. All good.
It's a simple: the bubbles bounce. Do not get hit by the bubbles. Pop them. Goomba stomp them. Get thrown around the walls. Survive as long as possible. Buy cosmetics in the coin shop.

The chip tune music is really good!

First thing to mention: shadow quality should never be turned off. Even if you have a slow pc, never set shadow quality below LOW. If you do, you'll get flash banged all the time while playing the game.

Second thing to mention: You can assign tasks to team mates by pinging things, such as terminals or walls. On keyboard the default button is the down arrow.

Third thing: The game is actually alright. It's not mold breaking or anything, but it's good. If you've played the Batman Arkham series, or Lord of the Rings: Shadow of, the battle mechanics feel the same as that, but it's a Marvel game.

I Googled if it was on sale anywhere. Friend grabbed me a copy for $6 from Green Man. It's been worth it, for sure.

I've played through the Assemble mission set, which was okay. It does a pretty good job of telling the player how to do stuff and the story is fairly entertaining.
I like the new Marvel saying "good is something you do, not something you are."

There are two sides to this game:
Side 1: Truck driver.
Side 2: Truck fleet manager.
Most people only dabble in driving. It's the main draw to the game and a good one. Get all your stimming and job completion satisfaction taken care of.
I'm not particularly good at meta gaming, but I think the idea here is that the player is supposed to drive until they can afford to hire their own fleet, then they eventually have enough passive income that the bigger objective becomes owning every garage.
I dunno. I just drive the truck. I'm not out here trying to get rich.

The beauty of this game is its simplicity. Left and right are the buttons needed during levels. And they're quick too. With a lot of games it can feel like even turning the game on is a huge commitment for story development and time investment. With this game? Start it up, kick butt as much as you want, turn it off. No pressure.

A nice simple 3D hidden object and puzzle game. It also has a hint button (and an achievement for using the hint button).
Some of the cats are quick to find, but take my advice: when you've been looking for that one cat or postcard piece for ten minutes, go look at the guides. Save yourself the frustration.

This is a great game to throw on while multi-tasking.
It's one of those games that eventually goes on sale for like a dollar off, but if you don't want to wait, it's only like $5.
My brother once told me to think of games cost in terms of a dollar per hour. Could you play with this for 4-5 hours?
I got my money's worth, but I tried really hard to find all the cats on my own before using hints or guides.

Steam kept recommending this to me. It was near the top of compatible matches and it was on sale, so I thought I'd give it a try. Page said it was a play 1-2 hours a day thing, which sounded doable for a slow progress gamer like me. And the name itself says "Cozy" which made me think it'd be relaxing.
I was unprepared for how much story content there is. When it's tagged with "story rich" it absolutely means it.
To be clear, I don't generally care about story content. I opted not to get the expansion because a review said it's mostly more story content.
The game is generous in that it has a skip function, but the amount of times I had to use it in order to keep interacting with mechanics wore me out on the first attempt.
After a minimalist character creation and a long feeling intro scene I washed up on the island. There were a number of speech bubbles before I could actually do anything, so as soon as I could actually start playing I quit. I'd seen the art style which is like Don't Starve (not a good thing for me), but more cute, and interacted with the flow of the game (which is that there will be a little bit of user interaction and then a fixed camera moment followed by speech bubble after speech bubble of story content).
I was ready to return the game, but I had to be fair and give it another try; actually play a bit.
My time was limited if I wasn't sure about keeping this, so I decided to check out the guides to see what I'd be dealing with if I really dedicated my time to this game. Instant intimidation: Time gates, meta strategies about how to get around time gates, what things to ignore or not focus on, benefits tied to cosmetics and decorating, a bunch of food recipes for quests, achievements you can only get at certain times of the IRL year.
I told myself that none of that is necessarily bad. It's probably many small things to do over a long span of time. Just give it a try.
So I got to the camp site. Cut scene, more speech bubbles, leave cut sceene, more speech bubbles. Can't actually do anything, so I have to go talk to somebody. Around this time I realized I was in a mandatory tutorial phase where I'm expected to get emotionally invested in the characters. The skip function is there, but I'm not sure if they're going to actually be telling me something useful or if it's just a bunch of story. As it happens, the answer is both. The characters tell you how to use the game mechanic the same way a blog gives a recipe: they tell you their life story and then tell you how to do things.
I unlocked some of the people nearby the camp site. Ran in circles a bit because I didn't understand how to check quest progress, dug some holes, scattered some leaves, skipped a lot of dialog. Things didn't seem like they were changing up or going somewhere more, so I called it there and finalized the return.
The game feels like a visual novel with some farming sim mechanics thrown in. People who like story rich RPGs will probably have more fun with it, since a lot of the things I'm complaining about are things they would enjoy. I don't have any constructive criticism to offer because I didn't get far enough to find anything wrong with the game; it's just not a game for me.