Astronomics is an interesting space mining game with a simulated economy. Your goal, as a new contractor for Cube Corp, is to sail the sea of stars and mine asteroids as they drift into your galactic claim, selling their resources back to the corporation for a cut of the profit. Ultimately, you’re aiming to buy a new life on Earth. To that end, you’ll upgrade your gadgets and ships and earn a higher cut of the profits as you rise through the Cube Corp corporate ranks.
Astronomics begins with your character, a faceless space-faring miner, perusing a mini-museum advertisement showing off the luxuries of living on Earth. All you need is a residency permit, priced starting at the low 600 million mark.
With this future in mind, you sign up for a contract with Cube Corp, an astro-mining corporation that sets you up with your very own frigate, mining equipment, and a galactic stake.
The gameplay loop in Astronomics is incredibly simple, yet it can quickly become enthralling. From your freighter, you navigate your galactic claim, flying out to asteroid belts that have drifted within your flight range (determined by the amount of fuel you have in storage—always make sure to keep some in reserve to return to the Cube Corp restocking facility). You then carefully navigate these asteroid belts, land on a procedurally generated meteor, and, with the help of robots, strip it of all its valuables. Once your cargo is full and the meteor is well mined, you return home, sell what you don’t need, and repeat the process until you hit that hefty 600 million-dollar goal.
Something I found particularly interesting about the game is that the resources you sell are actually quite expensive—around $459 per kilogram of iron, if I remember correctly. While your cut of these profits is much smaller, starting at a lousy 0.1% of whatever you sell to Cube Corp, the game allows you to increase this stake by 0.1% for each level you gain within the company by completing specialized tasks.
This makes the task of reaching 600 million dollars much more feasible as you progress, and it’s super satisfying to watch that number stack up as you receive bigger and bigger cuts from your exploits. Thankfully, you don’t have to spend that dollar amount on anything else, since upgrades and purchases come from a separate currency you gain in addition to your dollar profits.
The process of mining an asteroid begins as something of an arduous task. When you begin the game, you have nothing more than a gravity gun, which pulls minerals from the ground with a bit of effort, but not very efficiently. Worker drones exist to help you haul resources back to your ship, but the many cliffs and pitfalls present on an asteroid make it hard or impossible for them to navigate where they need to go. Essentially, until you build a forge, you’re doing all of the work yourself.
That forge, however, is a game changer, allowing you to build micro-industries on the surface of asteroids to better facilitate your mining efforts. Mining turrets, which automatically dig into the face of rocks with powerful lasers, cranes that lift your drones up hills and across gaps, and so much more turn the once challenging game of mining into an automated process—one that is incredibly satisfying to set up and reap the rewards of. There is still work to be done on the part of the player, but it becomes less of a chore of hauling goods around the map and more of a game of exploration and building.
Every asteroid you visit has iron, which is needed to build these structures, and will always net more through mining than you will use to set up your industries on the asteroid. This means the tradeoff between efficiency and resource collection/profit isn’t something you really have to worry about.
Eventually, pirates will begin attacking your asteroid factories, adding a further layer of lite tower defense to mix up the experience.
The game features an almost intimidating amount of resources to collect and catalog, with each asteroid being home to a different selection of minerals and even biomatter to collect. These materials are separated by rarity, with rarer materials netting more profit. While you absolutely can sell everything you pick up, the game nudges you to sell the rarer materials and use the others for crafting—upgrading certain components on your ship to further increase efficiency and, thus, profit. That being said, some materials, like iron, drop in such abundance that you can expect to sell around 300 kgs of the stuff after every trip; otherwise, it’s just taking up space in your hull.
For a game in early access, Astronomics has quite a lot to offer. However, some bugs should be expected, as the game is not yet in its full state.
That being said, I experienced a remarkably low number of these bugs during my playthrough, which lasted a bit longer than it should have because I was just having too good of a time to put the game down and start writing. The one bug I experienced that I can remember happened when I was talking to Cubo (the friendly AI companion you have on your freighter) while in hyperspace. When we arrived back at the Cube Corp outpost, something about being in dialogue with Cubo caused the game to lock up and crash. Thankfully, the game also saved as I arrived, so all I had to do was relaunch and get right back to where I was.
Overall, Astronomics is in a very promising state. Some features are missing due to the game’s early access version, but with a fun gameplay loop and a just-out-of-reach goal that keeps you very motivated to keep playing, Astronomics is sure to be a popular hit.
Pros:
- An addicting gameplay loop, with clear and meaningful progression
- A fun, just-out-of-reach economy goal that motivates you each time you sell your haul
Cons:
- A slight lack of features and occasional bug that comes with being in Early Access
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