Habitat

I really wanted to like this game, but I couldn't. It suffers from the sadly all-too-common problem of being unable to decide if it wants to be serious or funny, and in trying to do both it fails to do either. The plot is so thin that, if it is ever discovered, will revolutionalize the world of particle physics. Glueing random stuff together to make funky spaceships seems like a winning formula and it would be if it meant anything, but it doesn't. The glue is a system of support beams to make sure that nothing ever actually touches, so your dreams of a hodge-podge junk ship quickly dillute into a flying, 3D flowchart. The missions, combat, and trivial amount of other gameplay elements cannot hope to hide that they were all added as an afterthought to the main game, and the main game is a one-trick pony. A gimmick. A novel idea, sure, and one that is being used in other games out there. But it is still just a gimmick, and gimmicks do not make for good gameplay cores. So what is there besides attaching random modules to a space station, flying it around and doing a few random things to advance the "story?" Well, let's list them all: So now that we're done with that list, I will conclude by saying that if this is what a "complete" game feels like then I give up. This would make a fine Smartphone distraction to goof around with while sipping a beer and waiting for your date to arrive and probably worth the $5 you paid for it, in such a context. In the context of a PC game in the 21st century? Let me put it this way: If a good PC game is like an order of nachos deluxe with all the toppings, this is game is a few saltine crackers with some cheeze whiz on top. Not bad as a snack, but not very filling, and certainly not a real meal.

This game is good fun for about half an hour - you can build a wacky ship and mess around with fun weapons but that's more or less it. The flight is really difficult, though made a little easier by proper booster placement and hotkey assignment. Maybe some kind of inertial dampening block would be handy to stabilise your ship. (Edit - an "emergency full stop" isn't really inertial dampening...) As far as the combat goes, you clumsily maneuver yourself into a position where you MIGHT be able to attack a station and then fire your lasers - the station is dead more or less immediately without putting up a fight. You then realise your next target isn't that far away, were it not for the difficulty in getting that short distance - you will spin all the way around at least 2 or 3 times. Once you're there, same story. There isn't much incentive to build beyond your initial working ship - maybe an engineer limit based on habitat pods would be more of an incentive. Oh yes, the ship will also bump into nothing, causing a change in trajectory, when you had only just got it pointing the way you wanted. Don't get me wrong, it's fun and it has a fair amount of potential but at £11 the price is much too high for a game which offers little at this stage and has no save feature. EDIT: It's worth pointing out that by now this review is fairly old and the game will continue to develop with time. I had felt that at the time my review was fair but should have been taken with a pinch of salt because I am more than aware of how games in alpha are. It is also worth keeping in mind that with early access the old "alpha/beta" defining lines are somewhat blurred and "it's an alpha" is not a blanket excuse for exclusion of basic features. This game is fun, keep an eye on it - but be aware of the limits of early development.

Habitat is a bizarre and lovely experience. At first it seems very simple, but a few minutes in and the depth of the experience is unavoidable. This sandbox spacestation construction set is very slow paced but so obviously full of potential. Be warned, if you are not a patient person, don't bother with this title. On the other hand, if you have a little patients, and are the type of person to delve into a sandbox and make your own fun, you'll love this game. Essentially, you fly around a 2D section of space collecting garbage and attaching it to your space station. The junk you find will range anywhere from burger joints to old retired satilites. Within moments of firing up the game I had already attached an old sherman tank to the front of my station. What's better is that this junk isn't just garbage, they are upgrades. I could use the tank to fire cannon balls at other debre floating through space, for fun and also to clear a path. Later, I found a lunar lander and tossed it on the back of my station and used it's engines for some extra speed. Many elements of Habitat remind me of RTS games. You have resources that must be collected/generated, such as Omni (money), Electricity (power), and Fuel (more different power), and the amounts you generate depend on how you've built up your station and what junk you've attached to it. So, rather than sending some peons to go gather coal, I attached a solar array to the back of my station so that I generated more electricity. Part of the strategy involved in this title is balancing your ship build. If you have too much weight/mass on one side or the other, the ship will fly crooked. This ultimately lead to constant corrections by firing my boosters on one side of the ship in bursts while the other side remained at full blast. I realized later that I could actually adjust the individual output of each of my boosters so that all the engines could be left on simultaniously and the station would still fly straight, that is until I added more junk! Did I mention you can also control where the power in your station is distributed? There are three catagories, Weapons, Boosters, and Power. More energy in weapons... actually, I haven't tried that, so I don't know what it does, but more power in the Boosters makes you go faster, and more power in Power, gives a bonus to your resource generation. It is a unique experience and a lot of fun, but it definitely takes some time to get used to, and it takes even more time to accomplish anything! As of this writing, the game is still in early release, so hopfully the pacing is tweaked a little before release, but even if not, I still wouldn't pass it up. Good game, great experience, and I'm looking forward to watching this one come along as it gets closer to release and beyond. TL;DR? If you're patient and enjoy playing in a silly space sandbox full of junk and potential, then this game is definitely for you. If you're not a patient gamer, and/or sandboxes and making a bit of your own fun aren't your thing, then give this one a pass.

The game is not without fun and I did enjoy it for a while but I found that there was no real purpose to ship building beyond small weapons platforms. Currently not enough depth to it but it is an early access game and I will check in now and then to see how it is going So please consider my Not recommended as possibly changeable. I hope to change my opinion in the future.

A year later (after my purchase) and the "full release" is upon us; but despite improvements it feels like nothing has changed, aside from features that I'm not sure anyone really asked for (More engineer micromanagement? An engineer camera?). It technically works, but still feels broken and unfinished. Even after improvements to the controls and tutorial, what systems there are in the game seem obtuse, and controlling your crafts is still too finicky and unpredictable to take seriously or strategically, and too slow and management-intensive to be silly and fun. The constant building of your ship is equally too detail and control heavy to be light and easy, while the constant RE-building of your ship quickly saps at any enjoyment from the design and strategic planning (struts are not fun!). Thankfully many of the tasks for the engineers are automated to some degree, but ordering them to do anything specific becomes an exercise in frustrating hunt-and-click vs the camera. It might still be worth it to pick up (on a heavily discounted sale) and play around with in the sandbox, but the campaign is a farce. Which, considering the tone of the game and what little I was able to glean of the 'story' in-game, could actually be intentional in some brilliant meta-design by the creators, but I very much doubt that. One can only hope that this game's developers will continue to support their game and all the promise the idea had, and perhaps reevaluate some of their design decisions. I'm incredibly bummed I can't get a refund for this. I guess this is my own personal lesson on supporting Early Access games on faith and interest in a concept.

[h1] Game is Unfinished and Abandoned- Don't Waste Your Money [/h1]

Game has been abandoned by Dev for YEARS. DO NOT BUY!

DEAD GAME AND ABANDONED

This game ended up being no more than a proof of concept. The game is buggy. UI and controls seem unfinished and eventhough the idea is highly entertaining the poor execution, lack of content and polish makes me not recommend this game. Not to mention the campaign breaks more often than not.

ABANDONED