Space Station Alpha

Bought this game when I was 7, it was fun then but in hindsight its kindof a shit game. 10/10 if you are autistic, 3/10 if you are a functioning human.

I've always wondered what happened to this little game. I enjoyed it alot, but sadly due to the content and bugs that are left, repitition is not doable for this game. It's not worth purchasing anymore... I would recommend it if it were filled out more, but it was just abandoned without any closure.

You know how you buy a game think its gonna be great fun and it is until you find all the bugs that make the game totally unplayable and the devs have stopped working on it? Well that would be this game.. The game is partially playable but over a year and a half and the developers have stopped doing anything with this game including updating the community on fixing of the bugs. This is a fun game and has tons of potential but AS IS, i cannot recommend UNLESS its onsale for 50 Cents. Which it was. That alone should have told me something.

I thought huh, 6 bucks lets try it. I quit playng quickly, get a value meal and some love handles instead. This was boring, glitchy, and graphics are terrible.

I've had this game for quite some time, and when I first got it, I played for several hours. It has now been well over a year since it has been updated, there are a few bugs that are usually game breaking, and the overall depth of the game is not much. You can normally get to the "endgame" within a couple of hours. It has potential, I think, but the creator seems to have left the game to drift away in space, just as your space station you build does.

Could have been a good little game if finished. But it most likely will never be finished. No one works one finishing it. It´s allready sold as full version and no hint on any developments to come. So for your money you´ll get a few hours of clicking. Got some good ideas, like the air venting system, but all in all a small, dull, boring and very, very short game experience. Spare it and get yourself Startopia instead.

Fun game, especially if you have a bit of engineer in you.

You build your space station by keeping balance between spending and earning. At the start its constant strugle to get enough power. When you open commercially, you also have to maintain oxigen. How you build will help or hinder later, plan ahead. And there is that dreaded asteroid strike with fire or vacuum to fix in a flash, or see your visitors asphyxiate. The worker robots can be switched between five duties. You can build staircases and open upper floors. You can mine nearby asteroid, research better equipment, and although I have not reached that far, there is diplomacy, commerce, prison, and probably more to come.

So far no game crush, errorous behavior, annoying lag, But my station is also rather small, two floors, two permanet residents, eight visitors, nine robots. (My OS is Windows 7)

In all I already had more fun with this game for less money than with a movie premier.

This game is really enjoyable for a casual player. The only downers that I have to admit to are these:

-Work Bots will stop in a single location and stop working on their given tasks and When that happens I am forced to quit the game and start a new one just for it to happen more and more.
-The bug above also causes shuttle not to continuously take off bringing more passengers in.
-Mining asteroids is buggy, bots will mine the asteroids but if I were to re-task that bot to do maintenance for example that bot will then come up with an error status and will become useless.

Now I haven't gotten far enough in this game to have any real useful advise because I usually get 10 to 35 days in and bots will stop tasking. Whats worse is that when asteroid showers occur and I task bots to build and they just sit there with their thumbs up their butts, I am again forced to start fresh games.

I really hope that these bugs with get addressed so that this game will stop me from wasting hours of my night starting new games. I only start fresh because I honestly see potential for a very fun game and because of that I will recommend this game for others to enjoy on their own.

This game is really awesome from a one man dev who's way more active than most large companies with the updates.

He's constantly adding heaps of new features, and most of the issues people have mentioned in other reviews are already resolved which is great to see. He's pretty active in the forums, I don't know that he knew they existed initially.

As for the game, it's already pretty awesome so far and with a bit more polish and functionality will be excellent.

As it stands, I'd say it's well worth the asking price of $5.99 USD.

Why can't I destroy equipment? Additionally, why do I keep getting, pathing errors. I love the idea but the execution... I suppose it you do say it is an alpha but I can't believe these issues have not come up before. Also, why is there always a brawl every group of passengers you get? That seems a little bit high. At this point I would say wait and see... I won't play this game again until I get an update.

UPDATE

I haven't played a ton recently but I thought the game need a revisit since my last review. I am pleased to report that the pathing issue was fixed. And the game plays better now. I will need to play some more, but I think this game deserves that chance.

This game really upsets me. I really like games like this one and Prison Architect but neither are finished games I can just play. Prison Architect (a really great game by the way you should buy it now or when released) crashes and Space Station Alpha is nearly unplayable due to workers getting perpetually stuck unloading.

What happens is sometimes when a shuttle lands it will not be unloadable. Up to 4 of your workers will try to unload it, some freezing right where they are instead of going to the shuttle. At this point the launch pad cannot be deleted and 4 of your workers for the rest of the game must be stuck unloading" nothing. Deleted workers causes new workers to "unloading" the unloadable shuttle. You can try various things like not accepting deliveries, closing your station, waiting a really long time, turning off your launch pad, etc. but none of those will fix your issue.

The only way to get past this is save the game, close game, and load your saved game. You will have to do this often. I usually use this trick to remove things i mark for destruction but never actually seem to get destroyed. I simultaneously enjoy and hate this game. I keep comming back to some of the same issues.


2015-06-05
bugs not fixed. super annoying to have workers just stand in one spot for enternity while your shuttle on the launch pad waits for said worker for eternity.



2015-03-20
After 69.0 hours I am happy to say everything seems to work as it should ingame. It is always a good feeling seeing certain bugs being juicily squished by a devoted creator.



2015-03-12
After 52.3 hours these are the nasty: Saved game bug makes saves somewhat worthles. Shuttle stuck on launch deck and is no longer destroyable bug. workerbot stuck in invisible and remote area of the map-but-is-thankfully-destroyable bug. The somewhat difficult process of placing floor to align the way I want too not-actually-a-bug-I-have-OCD-sorry bug.

My take is this game is fun (if you like these type of games) but still needs polish. As evidenced in the comment below, the developer is accepting feedback to make the game better. This game is his beloved creation. If you help him test it, he will fix it. Even after just a few days, many things have been patched. My outlook for this game is rosey, I just hope it can get some attention and more positive reviews as time goes by.



2015-03-05
After a mere few minutes playing I only encounterd one bug so far and it occurs when you try to load a saved game. I am thumbing this game up with the expectation this will be fixed.

Mkay... So after playing for a while, and unlocking some achievements...

I'm gonna have to say, that at the current state of the game, I wish I hadn't spent the game. This is basically a VERY basic "Apartment Management Sim", and it really shows. It has potential, but the limited number of features, lack of ability to decorate the station in any manner, lack of ability to attract specific aliens, limited number of alien races, and just in general, how bland and dark and gritty everything looks...

It's a very plain, very basic game. It feel unfinished and unrefined... Too unrefined for them to have pulled it out of "Early Access". I'm very disappointed at this time and REALLY wish I hadn't spent the $5.00 on it now.

Interesting concept, horrible realisation. Bot's can't find path to door that is right in front of them?

And this very, VERY annoyng sound of dental drill that you can't turn off (yes, you can set music level to 0, set effects level to 0 - and yes, all you will hear - is that drill sound).

So, I checked the game out yesterday. The game is one of those semi-roguelike basebuilders, not that different from Prison Architect or Banished. However, compared to those titles, the game is quite shallow. You generally deal with money, power and oxygen. Money comes from residents and visitors, power comes from solar panels and is used by components on your ship, and oxygen is generated by some of these components and flows through your ship depending on the status of your doors.

And for just that, the game is quite easy. Getting a net profit is not that hard, and getting power consists mainly of building lots of solar panels. Oxygen is easily managed with air locks.

The only real problem comes from random events (of which there are not that many it seems, I got some of them multiple times in my playthrough) and meteors. You eventually research equipment to deal with that. Until then you have a cycle of buildup -> damage -> people die -> buildup.

To make things interesting there is research, but there are only 7 or so subjects which do not offer more in-depth mechanics. The game suffers from the same problem I had with Banished. After a while the real challenge is out of it and you can just expand until everything eventually crumbles apart. On my second try, at took me 1,5 hours to build every facility there is, net 2k each day and I did not have to care about asteroids or supernova's. Getting the last achievement would only consist of me walking between my pc and the couch to check for random events and otherwise let the game run at max speed.

Add to that the fact that the user interface is functional but a bit weird, and that the game lacks explanation. Yes, I think pointing out after the tutorial that "the hand-holding comes to an end here" is very clever, but I could not find a way to use the stairs to actually build a second floor. The game just "lacks", it lacks content, it lacks challenge, it feels like an early access game with way too less stuff to do.

Is it worth the money? Well I got 3,5 hours of minimal fun and I feel like I've done everything there is to do. Since the game cost me 5 euros, it was not a complete waste. But I don't think the game is good by any means, maybe a 5/10 for effort and only considering the low price.

You want something like this? Get Prison Architect. Maybe Banished. Or Dugeon Keeper. Or Evil Genius. Just not this game.

This game has a lot of potential, and so far i love it. This game needs a bit more proformance wise and more to the tech tree and such, but it came out 4 days ago, and one of the best space station sims ive ever played. Great job!

There isn't a lot to the game but what is there is fairly well polished. There are a few annoying bugs, in particular that a fusion generator can catch fire before it's even built, and the game runs very slowly with even a moderately large station.

Overall the game is okay, it's only $5 so you expectations aren't particularly high, but I got a good hour's entertainment out of it. That being said however, the replay value is close to nil.

A few pathing issues, graphics not the best etc as said in the last review. but it does say that it will be updated.
As long as the devs dont do what i read happened on Space Base DF-9 then its going to improve.
This cost £4 and my house mate has had more than 4 hours playing it so money well spent. really looking forward to what this can become and finding out what the "mysterious z plane" will be when the stairs are used. =D
keep up the good work.

I actually tried to break the game; multiple crossing halls, singular pathways for multiple activities, equipment build in the path of critical systems, etc. Nope, worst I got was someone moved their bed into a common room next to the vending machine. Fun little game, lots of room to grow and become amazing but well worth the current $5 price tag especially since basic inspection of the options and controls lets you customize and ease movement speeds and camera angles to fit your computer's abilities or personal gaming style.

Are there some improvements needed imho, of course, its early access. Doors have to be left open to move air between rooms instead of a vent system, no que system for construction (it is done as you add it to the "blue print/design" so lay it out in the order you want it built) and single plane of construction rather than multi-level (personal preference but easier to view and control as is).

Basic first impression review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heP40_lXKB4&list=UUg6fyxrbkNbAkxoNEoZGsqw

Maybe, some day, it will turn out to be a nice space-sim.

But there are issues to resolve.

Performance is bad if you bluild a big station.
Camera is moving all over space, very fast, even more illogical: out of control: (need a "Home"buttton)
pathfinding

Screeninfo (no info pop-up rollover): Who is Who.
Harsh gameplay:
Equipment can not be moved.

Looks like a game right from the seventies.
Please move up to the present day.

If this was an early access game, then yes, I'd say go for it... but it isn't. This game seems unfinished. It's fun, cheap, but it leaves you expecting something more. The research "tree", for instance, is very small and quickly completed (no teirs, just a few boxes to click on the screen). The settings menu lacks any controls for sound volume. Instead, it lists a series of screen resolutions which happened to be missing my 1920x1050 screen size. The game also lacks any real documentaiton on how to play after you get your first resident. There are also parts that have no purpose, mainly the stairwell.


It could be a fun game, but it needs a little work. It feels very much like an early access game, but it isn't being sold as such.