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Hardspace: Shipbreaker review: moreish sci-fi work sim sticks the landingCut above
Cut above
Friends and loved ones will agree, I have big “background character” energy. If I lived in the Star Wars universe, I wouldn’t be a Jedi or a Sith inquisitor. I wouldn’t even be one of those rebels who wear the long funny bike helmets. There would be no “Liam: A Star Wars Story” premiering on Disney+. Instead, I’d be the guy who changes the bedding at a grungy BnB on Tatooine. I would spend my days just sort of vibing on the fringes of all the excitement, blissfully unaware of the very important adventures occurring in a galaxy very-very-close-actually.
Maybe this is whyHardspace: Shipbreakerappeals to me so much. As a cutter, a nameless employee of the LYNX Corporation, you’re about as important to this particular vision of the future as the lad who polishes the floors on the Death Star. You are a nobody. But Shipbreaker relishes in how much that still makes you somebody.
Hardspace Shipbreaker Is Our New Space Sim ObsessionWatch on YouTube
Hardspace Shipbreaker Is Our New Space Sim Obsession
But, despite the game’s trailers featuring more bangs than a Michael Bay flick, Shipbreaker is not an exciting game. Not if you’re playing it properly. It is - and I mean this in a positive way - dull. Deliciously dull. Purposefully mundane. Stuffed full of menial tasks that are hugely satisfying and deeply rewarding.
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It’s intoxicating stuff. Repetition breeds familiarity, and before long you’re tearing apart craft twice as fast with the deft hands of an expert breaker. This feels like good honest work, despite its fantastical context. It helps that everything seems tactile and believable, each ship put together in such a way that appears deliberate and functional. These hulking wrecks are scratched, burned and bruised, but it’s easy to imagine them in their prime, soaring through the great unknown. It’s quite the feat.
As you progress through the ranks, a surprisingly pertinent tale of unionisation and workers' rights unfolds, told mainly via conversations between your fellow shipbreakers. The conclusion to Shipbreaker’s storyline is the big-ticket feature of the game’s 1.0 release (as well as the ability to retain your current craft in-between game sessions, which is a welcome addition). I didn’t find these sporadic interruptions hugely essential, though they do serve as a welcome distraction from your day-to-day workload. Everyone is well realised and likeable, which certainly helps.
Early on, you’re subscribed to a secret newsletter about the benefits of unionisation. Cutters are forced into a debt of over $1bn for the privilege of being hired, making the game’s staunch stance on worker’s rights particularly potent (you can read more about it in Edwin Evans-Thirlwell’sinterview feature).
Like you, they are nobodies. “Workers”, in the broadest most othering sense of the word. Folks who are struggling to survive in a world that is seemingly thriving, except not in a way that benefits them. Indeed, take a moment in-between slicing aluminium panels to glance up and you’ll be treated to a dazzling spectacle. Enormous freighters pass slowly through the inky void. A sparkling machine of some kind hangs eerily still in the distance. What is its purpose? The question remains unanswered. It’s none of your concern, after all. Some wrecks do contain audio logs, data drives and other subtle narrative tools that go some way to fill in the gaps, but the world of Shipbreaker remains largely unexplained.
What a thrill, to exist on the sidelines. To look longingly out towards the stars and wonder what’s going on beyond your little corner of this expansive universe. To understand a society purely through its waste products. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a truly marvellous thing to spend time within.
I quite like being a background character, it turns out. Being the hero is overrated. If Shipbreaker has taught me anything it’s that the satisfaction of a hard day’s work beats saving the universe every single time.
