space_engineers_square_1024If you love Minecraft and space, you need to check out Space Engineers. Two things I want to warn you about before you do though. One, it’s an early-access game on Steam so this is a more like a pre-Mojang Minecraft experience, and two, it will suck you in. Seriously my Steam client shows 171 hours played.

Space Engineers is a game by Keen Software House about building ships, bases, and anything else you can imagine (for instance an AT-AT that walks) using armor blocks, thrusters, pistons, wheels, etc. It’s been integrated with Steam’s Workshop for a while for sharing maps with custom build, and just released full mod support on Thursday. The SE community has hit the ground running with 260 mod entries already. To me the most impressive thing about the game is how Keen has managed to keep up an insane schedule of releasing an update every Thursday with fixes and new features.

Not being an insane building genius, I’ve been enjoying playing in survival mode. This involved spawning into a single player map with a default ship, finding an asteroid to set up ship in, and then progress from manually mining ores to building a series of small ships for mining and constructing larger ships. All in the safe shadow of the asteroid I picked as I have meteors turned on, which means periodically a storm of rocks comes hurling from the sunward side of the map. On the bright side, meteors leave behind all kinds of nice deposits.

SpaceEngineers 2014-08-11 22-14-33-76

 

Day 11 of Blaugust

Space Engineers
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5 thoughts on “Space Engineers

  • August 12, 2014 at 10:08 am
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    Space Engineers is on my list of games. It’s already in my Steam library.

    Single player is fun. But I have more fun playing this type of game with friends. I know it’s on the developers road map.

    So… this is not a rant by any means. Just a hopeful comment about the game and a chance to give you a shout of thanks for your blog!

    regards,
    Waldy

    • August 12, 2014 at 12:49 pm
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      Not sure if you know but multi-player has been available for a little while now including running dedicated servers. It’s still kind of buggy (or so I’ve heard), but they’re actively working on optimizing the netcode.

      Anyway, thanks for the comment!

      • August 12, 2014 at 2:14 pm
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        Wow!
        Shame on me for not checking their forums and instead relying on the server provider I used for 7 Days to Die!

        I’m currently looking at Blue Fang Solutions for my server (mentioned as authorized on their forums). They also provide 7DTD so I should be good.

        I’ll let you know how it turns out! or.. want an invite?

        Waldy

        • August 12, 2014 at 9:21 pm
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          Definitely let me know how it works out for you. I’d be happy to pop by sometime to hang out but I’m trying to play too much for the next few months. I tend to get sucked in just like I do with Minecraft and I’d like to get caught up on some other games.

          • August 13, 2014 at 9:49 am
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            I understand your reluctance. I’ve been gaming since EQ in 1998 and know what the term ‘sucked in’ means! The problem nowadays is that there are too many games. Syp’s blog really struck that home for me yesterday. http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/monogamy-and-the-mmo-player/

            Let me know your Steam ID. I’ll be glad to add you to the group.

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