Stationeers

Outstanding game! You need to watch the youTube content to get going but once you start making progress it's very satisfying. No bugs, runs smoothly. I'm playing on easy, but I'm not looking for a hardcore experience, more interested in the engineering and problem solving that this game provides in spades.

I think I played this game long enough to say ….. ITS Fu*king awesome.
Yea it’s true it’s challenging but it’s extremely realistic and it make a lot of fun to discover new ways to do something like pressurising the Base or getting power. I played it on Standard and brutal and even after nearly 400 hours of playing the game, I still discover new ways. I hope the new Update will come soon because the maps are the only thing that’s a little bit annoying. But the game is just awesome … and if you do not understand how the atmosphere works…take some books and read or check the information about the earth atmosphere you are currently surrounded by.

It's charming, quirky, and I'll likely keep playing it, but I cannot recommend it in its current state to anyone else.

Nothing is explained. Nothing is intuitive or just FUN. I remember several moments in other crafting games where discovery of a mechanic lead to excitement and cheer. Discovery of new mechanics is Stationeers is almost always frustrating, and results in several trips to the wiki or to the in-game encyclopedia, which still leaves you with several questions about how to implement this system correctly. While this eventually leads to an interesting game system that handles simulated volumetric gasses and liquids (which is awesome!) the payoff is not worth the friction it takes to actually learn how even the most basic mechanics of the game operate.

All of this could be solved by simply adding better tooltips to most inventory items, about what is required to spark certain interactions, but the devs seem to think tooltips are bad or something.

Only 10% of players have made it as far as building a station battery. A station battery is the bare minimum progress to START operating a space station in this game. I think that's a good tell of the kind of complexity and uncertainty you're signing up for here.

Nice engineering game / chemical engineering good for space lovers

8/10
Would be 10/10 if there was a better tutorial and better learning resources.
You tend to either completely overthink or have absolutely 0 idea how anything works.
All 15 hours (at the time of this review) I've sunk into the game has been over the course of a single 24 hour period.
It is very addictive and swings between absolute zen and absolute stress.
I look forward into dumping more hours into the game.

I left a nitrogen bottle in the sunlight, a few days later the base was a ball of fire.

This game is great fun and extremely punishing. I recommend starting off with online tutorials as the in-game ones don't cover many of the necessary knowledge but otherwise the discovery arc in this game is amazing. You can make your breathable athmosphere by either using pre-build filtration systems, or you could use varying temperature and pressure changes to condense and isolate certain gas types, or you can just plant your way into fresh air.

Already my new favorite game. I was hesitant about the price but im a cheapo but im glad i pulled the trigger on this one. If you have a brain give this one a try. Fair warning though its not for a casual gaming session, its very in depth and "complicated" if you're not in the right mindset.

"If you fail to plan, you are planning to... perpetually refactor ever increasingly complex impossible machines in a vain attempt to prevent a crater being named in your memory"

This game should be mandatory in schools. For real. If you know someone struggling with maths or physics, make them play this game.

Pleasantly surprised to come back after 12 months to find this gem has been further packed with new features. This is how EA is meant to be done. My only criticism is the printers in game list DLC items that you can't print if you don't own them. FOMO stuff like that irks me.

The most fun I've had playing a game - I like Space Engineers but this is more my style for a survival sim. I may not be a huge fan of food mechanics, it works seamless with the other things you can and have to do to survive.

What is it like?

1) Your buildings are in a cube like style but leave you with some control where you place objects, machines, wires, pipes and the like. It makes a happy balance for game play vs being too tedious or like a minecraft game.

2) Take breathing air for granted! As this game helps you understand the complexity and dynamic range of liquids and gases. The game computes things on a cube level to keep things simple yet, if like me, you enjoy the challenge of making the right balance.

3) I love a game where you do not get the best things in just a short while, it takes time to build the resources, then as the advanced items become available you are enticed to try to build the next thing that will help you expand your base of operations!

After watching someone play for about an hour I was hooked, and getting/playing the game has filled a longing I did not know was missing. Now... when I'm not playing it, like hunger in the game, a little voice comes out and reminds me to get back to it!

Great game! And a fun way to learn about physics.

This game is amazing. There is so much to do and it’s unlike any survival game I’ve played. I picked it up about two weeks ago and can’t get enough. Hard to believe it’s early access. It definitely doesn’t hold your hand and force you to play a certain way. The tutorial could use some work but that’s what YouTube is for. There’s a ton of content creators with loads of tutorials out there.. Definitely give this game a shot because once you start playing you won’t want to stop!

Yes i only got 40 Hours and yes i worked on my automatic atmosphere regulation system for 20 hours... Great fun! Had to scrap everything more than twice after seeing that tanks have a data port and that you can program stuff...

Really looking forward to automate literally everything.

I bought this game to support RocketWerkz as they work on KSA- However, as for this game itself, I want to like it and I can feel the inspiration from SS13- however, if you are going to play this game you must be prepared to either have a PHD in Science or be willing to read a lot of guides/watch guide videos. It's not a game you can just 'figure out' and even with guides, it's a pain. So as much as I want to like it, this game is just too much for a casual player.

I like complicated stuff, I love space, this is it.

it is nice and really complex but fun

It was watching a friend put together an airlock that convinced me to buy the game, and I'm very glad I did. Years later, that delightfully complicated building system still works and has an elegant atmospherics and fluids system. It's really the only game I have that lets you build a working phase-change air conditioner from its component pieces by understanding the principles. (And a lot of other cool stuff too!)

I've heard this game be described as having a difficulty wall rather than a difficulty curve, and that is more or less true. This game is quite challenging, and I'd even say it has gotten more challenging over the years that I've played it as Rocketwerkz has added new features. That being said, it is immensely satisfying to climb that difficulty wall.

Do not play this game if you are easily frustrated.

Long story short: This is a game for engineers.

Do you like building pipes, electric networks and survival games? This one is for you.
Do you enjoy fixing a pipe system that suddenly explodes in your face because you forgot that, for some reason, the gas filter also behaves like an infinite power pump and it overpressurized everything? This one is for you.

It is like space engineers without combat but with proper engineering. If you enjoy playing in survival there and building space stations or bases, controlling the gas and mining, then you will like this game.
If you have played Space Station 13/14, it is like that but without a traitor: just build and survive.

Overall, it is an amazing game. It is the kind of game I tried to develop on my own multiple times but never had enough time to focus on. Glad someone did it.

However, not everything is great:
- Physics is a bit clunky at times
- It is in constant development (for good and bad) so things come and go (like vehicles..), and worlds break
- No proper tutorial. You get some basics of "this is how tools work" and then you are in your own. Expect quick death in your first few games.
- Some components are not clear what they are for and the documentation is pretty poor. There is an unofficial wiki but it also needs some more love.

It is really fun to play alone or with friends. How you play it changes significantly, but both are really good! I am very looking forward to further development.

a lot of learning and trying. I'm not the smartest or most science minded person but this is loads of fun trying to figure everything out. i have 718 hours and climbing. It is a fun challenge.

Not a lot of tutorials and you are kinda thrown to the wolves once you start your own world. But there is a certain satisfaction in mastering all the skills and building techniques needed to survive.

Awesome survival game for those who enjoy similarly technical games like KSP, Space engineers or Gregtech. Figuring out how to manage your atmosphere and power systems is very satisfying because of how realistic the mechanics are, and its a pretty cool survival game on top of that.

If you like Engineering type games, like ONI or Space Engineers, this is the game for you. Interesting Gas Physics.

Excellent game. Well made. Get to play with gases, liquids, pressure, temperature, phase changes. All values are real world. Increase oxygen percentage of interior by extracting N2 with a Filtration system, and pressurizing into N2 tank. Transfer N2 to one of my "cooling loops", because N2 doesn't freeze at any planetary temperature. I am a physicist IRL.

If you are reading this, then this game might not be for you. It's a special beast. I love it. It's complicated, it's out to kill you. Everything requires about 60% more effort then you would expect.

But then when you do get things done it is so rewarding.

One of my more fun experiences was when I was out mining, turned around to my base, and noticed all the stuff blowing out of it. Yes, I was filling it with oxygen, too much oxygen. You'll need to watch gas compositions, temperatures, pressures. Build airlocks out of smaller parts. Setup filtration systems. Yes your plants will die for 5 different reasons.

If you like kerbal space program, you'll likely like this. If you think factorio is easy, you'll likely like this. If minecraft is complex enough for you, you won't like this.

spend hours making a base just to die because I forgot to change my nitrogen air filter
10/10 would recommend this game, thank god for respawns.

SS13 for introverts

It's good without a shadow of a doubt, but it only adds to my sorrow.

I've barely scratched the surface of this game and it's already impressed me beyond anything I had expected. I usually HATE these kinds of super technical crafting survival games, but Stationeers has won me over completely. My first couple saves were rough but with some youtube tutorials and wiki reading I've started to really grasp the basics. I can't wait to see the kinds of things I'll run into next!

The tutorials and UI tooltips are awfull. They will test your patience. I am slowly getting over them (It's my first hour in the game so far), but I should'nt feel angry at a developper this early in a game. I am willing to give the game a shot but man.... Take another shot a polishing those tutorials you developpers....

Example: On the third tutorial, you have about 20 seconds to fix the issue or you die and you restart the tutorial... Come on, I'm reading the stupidly written instructions during that time and I'm already dead.... And when you try the tutorial again... It's broken because for a reason, the game decided not to provide you with the EVA suit anymore... When you try again a third time, you realize that your character seems stuck in a place where you can't move because the ceilling is to low or something and can't get anywhere to fix your suit.... It's like the game is asking me to give up and die already

This is a 'Great' game. Unlike most 'survival' genre games released today, this one doesn't focus almost solely on building. Instead it combines building, strategy, and creative problem solving (i.e. scripting, resource management, base layout and alternative solutions) that appeal to those of us players who are looking for something more cerebral.

Yeah, this isn’t a casual game, but once you understand it, you’ll get hooked on playing Stationeers—especially the logic behind it and the challenges on each planet. You can also learn a lot of science from Stationeers, and that’s the main point.

This game has been in development for a long time, and I really hope it meets my expectations of being a realistic yet balanced game. One of my biggest hopes is being able to travel to other planets with a rocket and return—if that feature is already available, I haven’t tried it yet. But what I want the most is the ability to terraform planets.

I’d also love to see scenarios like when Stationeers was first released. Hopefully, the game will reach version 1.0 soon with exciting features that keep it from getting boring. For me, Stationeers is the best game I’ve ever played.

Unfortunately, in my country, not many people are interested in playing this game.

Very fun, but also very technical. I love how you have to manage infrastructure and resources while building a base. Keep things sectioned and it can prevent massive damage from destroying your whole base. Some of my mistakes have been some of the most fun I've had in this game. It's definitely a thinkers game.

Refunding this game due to null pointer exceptions keeping me from actually exiting it. But that issue was just the final straw.

I see all the reviews that say "this game doesn't hold your hand". OK I get that. I even looked forward to the challenge. But there's a big difference between not holding your hand and just being obtuse and cryptic because the game is sadistic. For example, the tutorial says to equip the welding torch from your tool belt to your hand. I open the tool belt and there are seven low-rez pictures of tools. A few are obviously not the welding torch, but like 4 of them COULD be the welding torch? There's no mouse over to tell you what an item is. So I equipped one of the tools, but there was no message saying something like "equipped tool XXX". I had to equip each tool one by one and attempt to use them until one of them gave me a bright white light (which I assumed must be the welding torch). The building materials have a similar problem. They all look alike (I have a RTX 4090 and a 4K monitor... I think I have more than enough graphical HP to play the game in it's best possible representation?) Anyway, I'll never be able to keep frames/walls/panels straight from the icons alone.) But that's OK, the tutorial explicitly tells you how to figure out what things are what in the game. The tutorial tells you to try things and then when you get them wrong a message comes up and tells you what to do (So you now know the thing you thought was a door frame must not have been the door frame!)

The point of this game is memorizing all the obtuse graphical icons and control keys (don't even get me started on the controls... read the other reviews). I was hoping for a space survival game about building habitats and machines and stuff.

Without being too mean, I know there are a lot of factory games and engineering games out there that kinda don't have anything to do with actual engineering. It's always output -> conveyor belt -> input. I feel like this game is the first one to actually bother introducing some actual physicalized mechanics. Gasses have pressure, water pools on the floor, plants need sun and CO2 and a warm comfy base feels truly earned: not by your grinding but by your ingenuity and willingness to engage with the systems at play.

The first dozen of hours of this game are rough. In fact, if you lack some basic physics knowledge it might be outright overwhelming. I stuck to tutorials at first. I started a few different bases. But after I got it down, all you need is some patience and the in-game manual and a lot of creativity.

This game has some incredible devices to build, a lot of player expression potential, and the best enemy ever developed for survival games: harsh environments that actually require a lot of creativity to overcome.

Just as RocketWerkz says "Stationeers is an exceptionally complex game", but in that complexity is where the fun is found. While there are a couple of wrong ways to do things, there's no real right way.

One of the best building games I've played. It's very deep into the science of building, right down to fluid dynamics, air pressures etc. You can even program you own equipment to automate pretty much anything you can think of. Truly a gem in a genre that has no competitors that come even close

I'm a huge fab of Icarus, and this game looks just as promising. There are a few bugs with the food recipes that need to be worked out, but this is a fun game to play. This is a smart person's game. You have to consider how you will solve the challenges of surviving in a non-Earth environment. But, the solutions are based on real science. I had hoped the characters would be more realistic looking, like in Icarus, and not as cartooney. But all in all, this is a fun play.

After 1330 hours, I figured its about time to make a review.

Build stuff, don't blow up, don't die, and stay alive. Casual survival to extreme survival, its your choice. Be it surviving on the moon where there's no atmosphere, moderate amounts of ores to gather and build your base, all the way up to the high pressure and high temperature unrelenting environment on Venus where if you build wrong, the pressures will crush your base like an aluminum can, and yes that's literally crush your base. Over pressurize your base on the moon, and it'll blow out your walls, but on Venus you'll get crushed from the pressures. No idea how your own suit protects you from the high pressures, but it does somehow, or go to my favorite extreme planet Vulcan where you're orbiting a beautifully rendered black hole on a planet that goes from 127c at night to well over 1100c during the day depending on the time of year and where you are in orbit. I've spent many seasons around that black hole. Its a really fun challenge to live on Vulcan and there's ores everywhere but its not easy at all for new players. Stick to the moon, maybe go to mars for a level 2 challenge, work your way up to Europa and its extreme cold temperatures that drain your batteries over time if exposed to the cold air. Once you master that you could try your hand around Saturn on Mimas where sol is so far away you barely get any power and must rely on fuel generators to stay alive, maybe even a sterling engine or two...

Building your base is even more complex as well. You run every wire, every pipe, setup every system to provide your base with oxygen, and power, and take out the waste gasses you produce to survive. There's several different gasses along with oxygen like nitrogen, hydrogen (called volatiles in the game), carbon dioxide, pollutants, and nitrous oxide. Each of these gasses can be mixed together, like mixing volatiles and oxygen in a 2 to 1 ratio will produce fuel, replace the oxygen with nitrous oxide, and you'll make a jet fuel. Plants need carbon dioxide and nitrogen to survive and produce oxygen, break down the waste product of your spoiled plants in a composter and it'll produce volatiles you can mix with the oxygen for fuel.

Tired of doing everything by hand? No problem! There's a complete logic system you can setup basic logic circuits to do simple tasks like turn your solar panels to face the sun, up to complicated processes like automating a full ore smelting system in your base where you push a single button and your system will grab your ore out of a storage, send it to your furnace, melt it down, and get all the various requirements for a product, send those ingots to your manufacturing machine and build you whatever you asked for. Setup gas sensors all over your base warning you of toxins in your air, or detect those toxins and activate an air filtration system to take those toxins and pump them outside to clean your air. Program rockets to fly into space and mine ores from asteroids and then soft land at your base and automatically dump all the raw ores into the ore processors and store the raw materials so you can build more.

Grow huge fields of plants, cook various foods, drinks and have yourself a birthday party with a nice chocolate cake too. You can now even make a full on swimming pool in your base if you want. Just be sure you leave your tools behind... you can genetically modify your plants to be able to survive with low atmosphere, little light, and no water. You can increase the yields by putting down fertilizer (which you create with the composter) and based on what you put through the composter you can also increase the speed of growth, or maybe even increase the yield. There's a lot to the genetics and what you can tweak. You can basically make super plants if you want.

Game is constantly changing so beware of older YouTube videos that showcase systems and operate tools because things have changed a lot. The game has a full on in-game guide that'll give you a "mostly complete" guide of how everything works, but you will need online resources to fill in the gaps. Stationeers has a full on wiki page that has a lot of guides most of which are still good but again, everything is changing a lot so some things may not work. Join the discord to talk with people directly who have more current knowledge and who are probably reading this right now. - Hello discord folks!

Buyer beware there is very little hand holding in this game. There are some basic tutorials that'll get you started on the general controls which are complex and cumbersome to learn. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature. You will not fully experience this game in the 2 hours steam gives you to refund the game. You will unlikely get thru the tutorials in that time. After that, you're thrown to the wolves and its on you - and your wits - to learn how to survive the game. That's half the fun of it. If you're really into science this game is for you 100%.

Overall worth a purchase. Keep in mind the game is available on itch.io as well. The devs get more of the money if you buy off there which helps them out to HOPEFULLY KEEP MAKING MORE FREQUENT UPDATES TO FIX THE BUGS. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!

This doesn't cover even remotely all that you can do in the game... but hopefully will help you get an idea what you're up against. Enjoy!

110 hrs and i finally understand the game, and i have a livable space...so much to do, so much to learn, and so much to improve on..its good, steep learning curve that gets steeper

Better than every other simulator I have ever played. I've played a lot of simulators.

Incredibly immersive. Refreshingly complex. Explosions are a great thing. I have been gaming for 40 years and i cant say I've found a better entertaining waste of time.

Very fun can play for hours on end learning new stuff

Very addictive, this is not for the faint of heart. Hardcore game, very rewarding game loops, there are a few bugs here and there but very enjoyable.

Love the engineering details - models gases, temperature, pressure, has heat transfer with convection/radiation. Only wish the UI was a little better, but small price to pay for such a detailed simulator.

Stationeers is a gas flow simulator that you survive in. You need to manage your base's air pressure and temperature, so that you can breath and grow food. You need to generate power, and you need to get and smelt the ores necessary to do all this. Problems have multiple solutions, and you may stumble across creative solutions that the game will allow you to find for yourself. If what I just said interests you at all, consider buying.

A lot of people will bounce off the UI. Moving items around inventories feels very awkward at first. Eventually you get into a bit of a "flow" with it.

You have two active slots, one for each hand. You often need to use both slots together to build things, meaning if you have the wrong item out, you need to put it into your inventory, put it onto a shelf, or drop it. Interfacing with your inventory is awkward, and you should minimize how often you go into your bag. Eventually you figure out that dropping your items onto the ground is the most efficient way to keep them "ready". After many other survival games have taught me never to randomly drop items, it's cool that Stationeers changes up how survival games should be played. Areas where you are building actually look like construction zones. Thinking ahead and having your items slotted where you need them is rewarded with cleaner build projects. Still, this UI demands a learning curve, and if you are easily frustrated, I'm warning you to move on.

One strict negative is the lack of documentation. Sometimes you just can't know how some items work. It can be handy to check objects out in a creative world, before using them in your survival world. As of right now, it can be difficult for new players to, say, know what to do with an airlock chip when F1 will leave out important details. This game can demand patience and some time with google. Hopefully as the game grows in early access, more complete documentation can be included.

A stricter negative can be the bugs. Many major bugs have been squished at this point, and my single-player survival world works well. Yet, there's been a few times where loading an autosave had become necessary, and patience has been needed at times. The real bug-fest is the multiplayer. As far as I know, the current beta contains a lot of multiplayer fixes, so I personally am hoping multiplayer gets less buggy soon. As of right now, multiplayer is difficult to play. Luckily I am finding single-player a lot of fun.

Despite some of the negatives, I have had a ton of fun creating bases that I feel are unique to my own playthroughs, and growing them despite harsh conditions, and threat of failure. There's a feeling there that other survival games fail to capture.

This game is not for a wide audience.
It is for nerds and autists who, like me, thrive in tinkering for hours with intricate device that does the same thing as a simple AC unit (which they could slap in 5 minutes and be done with it).
The game is not nearly done, but don't let this "EA" label deceive you: it is remarkably stable. During almost 300 hours of gameplay I encountered only a handful of bugs, most of which were only a small disturbance and didn't break the game. Yes, tons of content is either missing, or is legacy and subject for removal later. And yet it already has potential for 300+ hours of gameplay. Be warned though, that at least third of this time you'll spend with either notepad or pen and paper, planning, calculating and evaluating your next project.

Would I recommend buying it? Hell yeah!
If you are among its target audience, you'll hardly regret it.
First of all, you'll get hours upon hours of fun exploring the mechanics of the game (and learning some coding and physics as you go).
Second of all, you'll feel this incredible feeling when something you've been working for hours actually works. It's that pride incomparable to anything.
And last but not least, you get to support independent developers that seem to actually care about their game even all these years since initial launch. We don't see a lot of those lately.

Needs to put the fun back in "failing is fun" and dial back the "realism" in design of the UI.

I went through the three tutorials then restarted on the moon a few times trying to get the hang of the two slot hotbar UI. Seriously you get two slots for tools because you have two hands, get it. Others will say hey you get a tool bet. Yep, you get a tool belt, where you need to drag the tools to and from your two hand slots with the mouse each time you want to change tools. Not a fan and an this was an early "its realism people!" downer I glossed over.

Anyway I was slowly trying to build a 3x3 basic base on easy mode. While reading tool tips, trying to figure stuff out, running back and forth swapping materials out of my two slots, On the two slots for one slot you will need a tool loaded at least half the time, the other that has the building material ranging from iron frames, iron sheets, glass sheets, plastic sheets, door kits, wall kits, pipes, cables, and probably dozens of other materials I never got to, Remember the UI has a two slot hotbar.

So I was trying to place pipes on my airlock setup when I get the message that I am unconscious. I am given the option to cancel and stare at a black screen some more or give up and respawn. While sitting in this near death state I looked around the UI and tried to figure out what I died of. The UI is a bag of garbage. I am expecting a big red bar that looks super low or empty or something but there is not much going on. I probably was getting some sort of audible warning but its hard to pick that up when you have a tutorial video running trying to explain the game to you that has the same warning sounds going off, which YOU WILL NEED for this game. There is a a huge learning curve.

After not being able to determine why I collapsed into a heap and failed, which I think is a fundamental required mechanic of survival games, I decided it was time for bed. I don't feel like ever restarting the game again. That was 2.6 hours of play time so 0.6 hours past the refund threshold. I spent most of the time playing through the tutorials and playing with the game paused while I googled starter guides and you tube videos. Enjoy the money. Update: I was issued a refund. Good on them.

I am a huge fan of factorio/factorio se mod, satisfactory, oxygen not included, dsp, rimworld, subnautica and many other base building survival craft games. Some of the most hilarious, fun moments in my gaming history were realizing when my first ONI colony was my doomed due to a food shortage because I printed too many dupes or getting ran over by a train three times on three successive corpse runs in factorio. In those games there is no question on how you screwed up and looking back you can see it. l bought this game based on other reviews that said it was a good system game like oxygen not included. If the game is going for the "failing is fun" theme you need to do a better job of feedback and making the failure a learning experience.

Love this game and with the upcoming new terrain patch I think it will make it all that much better.
It is very hard to get your head round some of the MIPS programming as well as the phase change of Gas and liquid but there is no other game like this.

Would be nice to be able to use your rockets to go to the other planets and start with what ever you take there as well as being able to choose your starting planet.
But I am sure the Dev's will be looking into this improvement soon.

Really like the challange of the game, but its not for the faint hearted.

If you've ever read the book The Martian and wanted to do everything in that book yourself, plus more, this is the game that does it. Survival, construction, experimentation, mining, exploration, botany, and learning real world physics with ores, gases, liquids, pipes and rockets. And they have a programming language that gives you total control over the automation of any process in the game. Amazing.

great game for those who like to build and solve logical problems...still in early stage but lot of fun