After nearly a decade of development and years in Early Access, Space Haven finally reaches 1.0. Bugbyte’s sci-fi colony simulator delivers exceptional ship customization, tense survival systems, and some of the best emergent storytelling in the genre, even if its complexity still demands patience.
Just started playing it last week and the thing that really struck me so far is how well done the tutorials are. They’re broken down into separate sections that form one continuous development sequence and you can stop and start anytime. Also, they give you the perfect amount of control in each tutorial without letting you derail the process (which I will do every time, given half a chance).
So far my favourite has been the Storage Management tutorial, because when it’s over it doesn’t pull you back out to the menus and you can just observe the crew of the two ships going about their business, click on all the equipment to see what it is and get a sense of good equipment placement for as long as you like.
I’m 3 hours in and still haven’t left the tutorials yet but that’s my issue cos I get overwhelmed really easily.
That’s good to hear, I feel like the ramp up/onboarding is the Achilles Heel of many indie games.
I also often mess up tutorials by something different. :)
Wow I completely missed the 1.0 release.
Have been playing this every now and then and I’ve always loved the atmosphere. It’s relaxed, yet tense at times, with a great art style.
It has always felt more immersive to me than something like Rimworld because objects and items don’t just pop in and out of existence when they get picked up for example. Instead there are animations showing how the items get carried and fed into machines.
The same goes for your vehicles which gracefully dock with wonderfully animated RCS thruster plumes.Unless you’re really into these kind of games, you don’t need to buy it now, but I would recommend getting it on sale some time.
Side note: IIRC the game is written in Java which you don’t see every day. Never had any performance issues with it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a proper bug. The devs know how to write and release good software.
Have you played Stardeus?
Its on my wishlist but I haven’t gotten around to trying it.
I was quite interested when it first launched into early access but there didn’t seem to be much content at the time. I’m sure things are looking better now.
I learned about this game just now with the 1.0 release, will probably get it after I read few more reviews so I know more about what to expect. I didn’t immediately find out if I can avoid combat entirely, for example if there’d be customisable sandbox mode which I didn’t see see mention of just yet. This game has existed for a while and there’s lot to find out.
I’d like to just build and gather but I think I can deal with some adventure if necessary.It looks cute and system requirements certainly aren’t too demanding.
Fired it up and checked for you. You can edit the difficulty to turn off individual enemy factions (including environmental hazards such as solar flares) and thus can disable all enemies altogether.
Thank you very much! I didn’t manage to find time for games quite yet but I will get to it in couple of days surely.
If it turns out Space Haven doesn’t have a peaceful option (I believe they don’t really support mods either), check out Stardeus.
You can definitely get Stardeus to be peaceful or with limited combat. I have about 200 hours in Stardeus and I like how you can build out enormous spaceships (the spaceship map size seems a lot bigger than in Space Haven).
I do admit that Space Haven has nicer graphics.
I also play with almost no combat, as I treat Stardeus as more of a economic strategy and building game (e.g. highly efficient designs that also are aesthetically pleasing and not just a rectangle).
I am also actually curious about your question.
I will look at Stardeus too. Thanks! Maybe I’ll get Space Haven soon and keep following Stardeus for a while since they are currently redoing the UI. I might take a look at Stardeus demo since they seem to have one.
