SpaceCraft is an interesting title, one that may be polarizing, and one I think will be super appealing to a very niche crowd. Being in Early Access, there are obviously bugs and incomplete features that will detract from your overall enjoyment of the game, but perhaps the most polarizing parts of SpaceCraft aren’t its Early Access flaws, but intentional design choices that fundamentally change how the game is played.
The core gameplay loop of SpaceCraft is simple in theory, but pretty ambitious in practice. Starting with nothing more than a ship and a dream, you head off into a wide galaxy, collecting resources from planets to refine into materials that you use to craft your ship, sell to a corporation, or eventually build your own outposts on the surfaces of planets to expand your operations a thousandfold.
Upgrading your ship is already a particularly interesting system, where you can assign specific modules to your craft to change its functionality and appearance. The roadmap, however, promises much more in-depth shipbuilding, which I think is the most exciting of their promised features.
To be perfectly clear, SpaceCraft is a game that I think a very specific and very niche audience will enjoy, as I mentioned before. That is to say, the progression is long, and many hours of the game are spent simply mining, exploring barren worlds, and crafting through a menu. Not everyone is going to enjoy this game, but the audience that will be intrigued by the scale of everything. If you are reading this review, chances are you are part of that audience.
The best way I know to describe the game would be to compare it to EVE Online. You engage with a very slow progression system where you gradually dominate an intergalactic market, albeit without space combat. If you like the idea of mining ferrous deposits in deep space, then making the long trek back to a space station to sell them, you’d probably like this game.
The most polarizing part of the game comes from the fact that it is, in fact, designed to be something of an MMO. The hard truth for solo players is that the game will intentionally gatekeep your progress and force you to join other players if you want to interact with late-game elements. These are not soft caps but hard limitations, such as limits on the number of outposts you can build or the amount of money you can earn per day selling to the markets. When the caps hit, they really hit hard, and you simply will not be able to progress without joining other players.
This game is also not an expansive exploration game. While it’s cool that you can explore the galaxy and enter worlds from orbit without a load screen, planets are low-texture orbs designed to pull resources out of the ground. Again, for a very niche audience, this is just fine. But you should know that you’re not getting into No Man’s Sky when you play this game.
As far as the state of Early Access, SpaceCraft is surprisingly stable and expansive. There are bugs that will hurt your progress, but they are rare enough that I didn’t experience any in my playthrough, though, to be perfectly honest, I simply was not able to put the amount of time into this game that you really need to progress deeply. Other issues that you are more likely to face are far less impactful, but still noticeable.
Performance in SpaceCraft isn’t incredible, but it’s not as bad as some other Early Access games. Frames were more than playable in most areas, but transitioning into certain zones would freeze the game and drop frames significantly, as if the game were trying to catch up to the area you just loaded. This is especially noticeable when you fly into a planet’s atmosphere. While it is incredibly cool that you can go from space to a planet’s surface without any loading screens, what should otherwise be a seamless transition is ruined by this performance issue, which really breaks the immersion.
An odd bug exists where, if you try to speed through dialogue by pressing a button, it instead cuts off the voice acting and resets the dialogue text, essentially making you replay the dialogue all over again without voice acting. The option to continue the dialogue only comes up when the text string ends. Clicking still allows you to skip the dialogue as you would expect.
As I said several times, SpaceCraft is a great game for a niche market of gamers. If the idea of traveling from planet to planet, slowly building a mining and exploitation business, interests you, as do the nitty-gritty details of such an exploit, this game is for you. If you don’t mind the MMO-like nature of the game, forcing players to interact with guilds to get to the deeper progression, this game is also for you. If you don’t mind the slow progression, with the first few hours of the game being a repetitive process of flying in, mining something, flying back out to craft it, and then selling whatever it is you just crafted, this game is for you.
It certainly has its bugs, but SpaceCraft seems to have some promise as it continues its Early Access state. The developers seem to be responding when they can, and the roadmap is promising. Hopefully, the bugs and the game’s performance issues will be addressed before launch. Right now, I would say to give the game some time to breathe and develop, unless it really seems to pull your interest like nothing else. If you do wait, I have a feeling that the full launch of the game will be far better than its current Early Access build.
Pros:
- An interesting space-exploitation gameplay loop that will appeal to a niche genre of gamers
- A very long, detailed progression system (a pro to some, a con to others)
- Nice ship customization with more to come down the line
- An overall interesting roadmap promising future updates
Cons:
- A host of bugs and performance issues in the current EA build
- A very niche genre of game that may be confusing to onlookers, closer to EVE Online (without the combat) than No Man’s Sky
- Multiplayer elements and MMO game design philosophy limit the enjoyment a single player can get from the game
Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC Early Access Review of SpaceCraft. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page!
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