Space Engineers: In Review

Do you like to mine asteroids? Do you like to shot stuff? Do you like to build space ships? If you answered yes to any of these questions Space Engineers might be for you. Now you might be saying to yourself but wait isn't that a crappy voxel based mess of a game still in early access on steam trying to take my money? I heard the same thing last year when I first heard about the game. Reviews were poor and the game was still very much in development. Fast forward ten months.

During the Steam Summer Sale I saw it on the list, watched a few videos, and decided at the current sell price it was worth the risk. Even in the past several months significant updates to the game have been made. With the addition of a survival mode I was all in. I am a Minecraft junky and this game seemed the perfect cross over from Eve Online to a voxel based game. The survival mode play is very fun and engaging while at the same time you realize that you need tons of minerals to build things.

The stand out of the game is the realistic physics engine. Similar to what Star Citizen is trying to do in ship to ship dogfighting. Once you get used to the controls you will find yourself hurtling through space mining, building and fighting in a 3D environment. The graphics are stunning and the voxel based interaction is very smooth and doesn't distract from the immersion of the game.

While the game is still in early access on steam the game lacks nothing that Minecraft didn't in its pre 1.0 versions. A fun game and a must play if you enjoy aspects of Eve mining or industry. You can get Space Engineers for $19.99 on Steam as of the writing of this post.