To me this was an addictive game with a few cool aspects to it.
Most planets offer their own set of natural challenges, ranging from land-hogging space weed, meteor showers, mutant bees and sometimes frustratingly dangerous space monsters. You generally render the previous useless through straight forward means, consisting of fire, lasers and stuff that blows up.
After the world outside of your comfortable base is taken care of, you have to manage the inside. There are 20 unique characters in Spolony, with their own skills and needs. Some, such as the Texan, Tami, are lazy, overfed and as un-space worthy as a dodo (which, for the record, are extinct, which further proves my point), yet they still manage to just hold everything together.
Each character comes from a different part of the world, bringing a little of their own culture to space. It is quite interesting to watch these characters as they all have dozens of unique dialogue lines with accent and all, and interact with each other using anything from threats and insults, to cheerful compliments.
To be kept happy, which in turn affects their working hours and mood, these colonists must eat, bathe, socialize and have a regular turn in the virtual boxing ring. Thankfully it doesn’t take 8 hours of sleeping time and days of boring discussion to satisfy these animated geometric shapes, nor do they spend 2 minutes trying to walk around each other, which is all a big step up from the Sims, as now they can actually get some work done.
To keep your base running smoothly, you require a number of things. Firstly is a power supply. Power fuels anything that our household electricity fuels, with the addition of laser guns and virtual reality chairs. Next you need oxygen, otherwise your colonists can’t breath, capiche? Then there are the beds and the showers and the highly controversial plants. “How am I to pay for all this?” I hear you ask. Well, I have the answer. Labour. Yes, that’s right, labour. Putting your colonists to work to produce goods which can later be sold to produce a positive income for future survival, just like hear on Earth (plus the addition that in the game you generally earn a steady income just for having a base). As most colonists are specialized in different fields, it is better to do a bit of research before you start assigning them to tasks. Stig, is better at mining then at cleaning, so best to put him behind the silicon extractor.
A word from the wise; it isn’t wise to trade away all your resources, as some are required for the running of the base.
Then there’s the story mode, which is interesting enough to follow. Your main character is Venus, a hardworking woman with all the cliché characteristics of a protagonist. You follow commands from Blackwater Industries, a company striving to use as little business ethics as possible, oh, and to own every part of space.
I sometimes wonder why I loved this game so much, and so many others threw it on the trash heap. This brings my recent lame theory into the fray. “If you expect something to be outstanding, or even good, and it delivers to your expectations, it is 40% less enjoyable than if you had no expectations…” Yes, that’s it, but it works out most of the time too. I never heard of this game until the day I saw it in EB with a 50% discount, so I decided to give it a try, with low expectations.
Then when I started playing it and explored the different game modes, I was immediately hooked. No question.
This game isn’t for people who like aiming and shooting, as all the weapons are AI controlled, and it definitely isn’t for NASA geeks, as they’d probably be offended by the amount of ignorance to actual space procedures present in this game.
Though many won’t enjoy this game as much as me, I believe it will be a fun experience for most of you, and I recommend you at least try it out.