[h1] A heartbreaking waste of potential [/h1]
[b] TLDR Review: [/b] Not worth your money.
This is one of those reviews that hurts to write, truly. At a glance Ostranauts looks like an awesome game, at a glance this game looks like a GOAT in the making, at a glance this game [b] [i] should [/i] [/b] be a blast but it's just not, and sadly it's much worse than it first looks like at first glance.
There are so many issues, ranging from small, to litterally fundamental to the game's conception that I couldn't possibly list them all, so instead I'm going to hammer on the main points that I think need to be addressed. With that said, here goes.
[h2] What is wrong? [/h2]
Like I mentioned, it's a lot, but let me start with the main thing that does this game in for me, the game design itself. Now, that might sound harsh, and yes, it is, however let me explain what I mean, and why I'm so irked by this.
[h3] Pain Point #1 - A false sandbox [/h3]
So here's the first thing, Ostranauts is presented as a kind of hardcore sandbox space sim, a game in which you have to sit down and seriously consider your intentions, weigh your options, and take decisions that affect your life a spacer. Sounds cool, sounds awesome even, sign me up, I want this.
Here's the problem, all of that doesn't matter, at all, let me explain. The problem is that the salvaging gameplay loop that is intended to get you out of debt and onto Venus ends up becoming the only thing really worth doing at all, because once you do end up going to other planets the other options just can't compete, for instance trading has a pretty large buy in and can only really compete if market conditions align well, racing doesn't even scratch the surface, and mining isn't really worth it either. Now, people might want to point out "The Gigs though?", however the problem there is that the more profiatble gigs have an even bigger buy in to be profitable since they require you to build for speed in order to cash in the big bucks. As a result, you effectively become locked into salvaging gameplay for the early game AND the mid-game, with a possibility of making some okay money on an occassional trade when the stars align.
This in turn creates several problems, first is that it means that litterally every single character you make will start the game in the exact same way. Second is that it means that you end up not being able to actually experiment with different ways to play the game until you are well into a save already, at which point you are already optimized for salvaging. The third issue is that those two issues thus effectively push you towards pursuing the end-game content instead, since the mid-game content (mining, trading, racing) just isn't really worth it time/money wise in most cases. Lastly, this also essentially also kills much of they joy with character creation, since the only real skills that matter are hacking, zero-g ops, and eva specialization, in that order, every time.
All of this stemming from 1 bad decision, namely forcing the player to start as a salvager, and not giving them any other options at the start. Consider if instead the player could partake in salvaging, mining, racing, piracy, and anti-piracy early on? All of a sudden your character creation options matter. If you were able to join law enforcement or become a pirate in the early game, then combat skills would matter in the early game. If you were able to begin racing then navigational skills matter. If you were able to begin mining then mining skills matter, so on and so forth. Instead, we're left with this, truth be told, depressingly bad design choice of limiting the player to "the one thing" and nothing else.
This kind of railroad-y design unfortunately permeates the entire game, if you can do something, there's one way of doing it and no more, and most of the things you'd want to be able to do, you just can't even do at all.
[h3] Pain Point #2 - Poorly thought out and implemented systems [/h3]
The next thing that really detracts from the experience is just how disjointed the various gameplay systems are, wether poorly designed, poorly implemented, or both, Ostranauts suffers from a bad case of the player having to "fight the game" to do what they want to do in many cases. For example, if you try to rebuild your ship at a station, the Crew AI will continually walk out of the airlocks without a helmet on while on auto-task, forcing you to save them, wasting your time. At the same time, they'll refuse to do certain tasks and complain about needing EVA helmets [b] when they are already f**king wearing them [/b] and stuff like this is [b] CONSTANT[/b]. For every enjoyable moment in Ostranauts, you will have 9 others that are just frustrating, annoying, or worse.
The Crew AI in general is just a pain to manage, from their overall behaviour, to only really being able to see one crew member's needs at a time, to their behaviour when it comes to zones, to how they consistently walk outside without a helmet, it all just serves to frustrate you instead of invite deeper engagement with the system.
Another thing that "sounds cool on paper, but was implemented poorly" is the interactions system, save for a specific interaction with law enforcement, and getting better hiring prices, friendship and other relationship milestones don't really matter.
[h3] Pain Point #3 - "It doesn't matter" [/h3]
This is probably the main crux of my gripes with this game, very little that you do as a player actually matters, for a game with at first glance seemingly such potential for player driven interaction, emergent gameplay, and meaningful player agency, it has almost none of it. You're railroaded into the salvager > trader/miner/racer > combat progression, and while sure you can stop at any point in that progression, that really just means you don't get any more gameplay. Initially you're driven by a need to repay debt, but that debt will clear pretty quickly once you start salvaging smart and your ship grows so you can salvage in larger quantity too.
Combine that with the fact that most POI's are mostly empty, and with nothing really unique going on, and the issues outlined in #1 & #2 really just end up creating this feeling of apathy towards the world in general, which is sad, because the ship building and piloting is actually pretty cool.
[h3] Pain Point #4 - A sandbox game trying to serve you a story [/h3]
This I think feels more like the Developers salting the wound than anything else. You've got this wonderful setup for a sandbox game, you've got the ship building, you've got the piloting, you've got a moderately interesting character creation system, and then... you build a mostly empty world, railroad the player harder than some story driven games I've played, and make any real build beyond "Hacker with EVA Skills" litterally worthless. And then, the icing on the cake on top of that, they tack on story content that most people don't care about. Like f**k man, you were the supposed to be an emergent story & gameplay type of offering, not yet another linear story space sim.
[h3] Closing thoughts [/h3]
Ultimately, Ostranauts promises big and delivers very little, and as someone who can see the potential of the idea that hurts to see, a lot. One or two good ideas is not enough to make a game, and Ostranauts is a good example of that. Now granted, I don't think that this game beyond saving, but this is not a 1.0 game, and we're probably talking a good two years or so of contuinous work to turn this around.
[h3] Final Verdict - [b] Not worth your money [/b] [/h3]
I hope that sometime in the future, perhaps in a year or two, I can buy this game again, and revisit this review, but until the Devs sit down and have a long, hard talk with themselves, and start making sweeping changes to the gameplay and especially progression structure in favor of player agency, then I cannot in good faith recommend this game to anyone at all, sadly.
