Spacebase Startopia - Review

The goal of Startopia is to create multi-purpose space bases capable of being used by all alien races as places of encounter and exchange. And, of course, to earn a huge amount of energy to cover the exorbitant salaries of the R.F.S Board.

Spacebase Startopia is a unique and original view into the economic simulation and empire building style of game with mild RTS elements. There’s a lot of good points, and there is a few that detract from the fun of the game for me.

First off, the game is impressively nice on the eyes. It’s got a sort of cartoon like 3D world, almost reminiscent of games like Evil Genius and Dungeon Keeper. It makes looking at the game for long periods of time (and trust me, you’re going to be dumping hours in) a really nice time. It’s colourful and pops out, and each environment factor really stands out from the others. The comic book like cutscenes are somewhat campy, but in a good endearing way.

The soundtrack is also quite nice. There’s about 20 different songs, and they are all pretty unique. I found myself getting a little bit tired of the same “space” music after playing for a while, but with the quick swapping between decks and floating over rooms it gets broken up somewhat nicely. The sound design in general is pretty good, and you end up becoming aware of what the different sounds mean in relation to what is happening in the game pretty quickly. Personally, I think a rotating soundtrack would help in overview segments, especially in a longer play session. It would help keep it feeling fresh and not stagnant when you’ve been on one stage for forty plus minutes.

The best thing about the game, is the A.I that narrates the game for you, and explains what’s happening at any point in the game. It’s a sarcastic, blunt and rude, and hilarious voice. The developers have hit gold here, in that they give you a few different voice options for the A.I. The best of these definitely being ‘GlaWIN’ which is a GlaDOS style of voice. It tickled that part of the brain that it needed to, and the relation to GlaDOS goes miles in making it feel homely.

There is a lot of comedy in the game, but it never overstays its welcome. It is always within reason and it’s not overused. It breaks up the somewhat tedious at times gameplay to keep you invested and investing your time into the game. The narration is mocking, the cutscenes are humorous and the overall style of the game is just a joy. It makes what can be a somewhat slow-paced game easy to invest the required time into it.

It offers you three difficulties of play, and even on the lowest difficulty the game will offer a certain level of challenge you might not expect. I found the more I expanded my areas, the more and more panicked I became. More aliens arrived, I needed more staff, needed to build more things. On higher difficulties it amplifies this feeling of running out of time and keeps you in a somewhat tense situation in later stages of the game.  

The campaign does a good job of introducing new concepts with each stage. Each campaign stage will take you between 15 to 45 minutes on average. There’s a fair bit packed into it too, and it gives you the option of jumping to any previously completed stage if you want to go for the completionist playthrough and get the challenge achievements for each stage. There’s easily 20 or so hours’ worth of gameplay in the campaign alone, and if you aren’t a fan of free play in these style of games, the campaign will keep you busy.

My biggest gripe came about four hours in, and this is very much a personal issue. I am not a fan of introduced combat in these style of games. I understand that for a greater audience, RTS style battles in management sims are a good idea, however, I do not enjoy it. The combat becomes more and more prevalent as you progress and I found myself floundering because I just didn’t enjoy it enough to truly invest into the system. The general encounters are usually solved pretty quickly by the automatic response, but when you get to “boss” style encounters, the game requires you to be focused on the combat more.

The mechs that you can build look really cool, and there isn’t a lot of requirement in having a lot of them. Two of them can generally win any encounter. Yet, I always found myself lacking the materials to craft them, or by the time I had upgraded them enough to make them viable, the level was completed. I could never find a middle ground that made it enjoyable for me. I had a similar gripe with Per Aspera. Thankfully, Spacebase Startopia does a good job of slowly introducing you to the combat and a really good job of smart navigating itself to complete encounters without too much direction. Just personally, I would have much preferred to have focused on the economic sim aspect of the game, without the combat.

To revisit an earlier point, each stage taking 15 to 45 minutes seems to be intentional. The game would really benefit from a 2x speed option, or some method of speeding up time. There was a lot of moments where I was sitting and waiting for prestige to tick up, or to get enough energy to open a bulkhead to build more areas. There’s a huge amount of downtime, that could easily be mitigated by a speed increase option. It’s not a huge problem, and I definitely feel it’s intentionally left out to pace the game a little bit better, but in the earlier parts of the stages, it would be nice to be able to speed it up just a little.

Spacebase Startopia, or as I kept saying it in my brain, Starbase Spacetopia, is an interesting and unique approach to the economic sim genre. There is a lot to unpack in the game, and there is easily upwards of dozens upon dozens of hours of game here, for those people who really want to dive in and enjoy all aspects of the campaign and the freeplay options. There’s a lot to explore and it’s definitely a game that the more you play, the more efficient you’ll get at it, I definitely felt like I understood how the game worked much better after just a few hours, but after many more, I felt more in control over everything. If you are someone who enjoys a sim experience, where you can weigh up choices in the hopes of them being balanced, then this is one game that you should take a hard look at, because as it stands the game can only go up from here.

The Score

7.5

Review code provided by Kalypso Media

The Pros

+An insane amount of gameplay

+Great humour

+Aesthetically pleasing

The Cons

-Combat is wonky

-Early parts of levels too slow

-Music gets repetitive