Space can be a cold and lonely place. Especially when you accidentally ram your spaceship into the docking station by accident.
The quirks of exploring, surviving and building various outposts and other feats of engineering in space is more or less what Space Engineers is about. The game first hit Steam back in 2013, and only finally came out of Early Access this week.
Over that time, it’s managed to remain one of the more popular games on Steam. The sandbox simulator has a 87% user rating from just over 50,000 reviews, with approximately 10,000 average players over the last month.
The construction game has added oodles of features over the last few years, like planets, the ability to drop from space onto a planet (if, y’know, you don’t mind dying), LEGO Star Wars fleets from absurd amount of stuff.
Unsurprisingly, it’s that level of simulation that has kept fans around for several years. Positive reviews have praised the depth of the game’s sandbox, construction mechanics, the versatility in multiplayer, the range of ships available, and the general “Minecraft in space” feel.
Detractors noted that the game’s performance is still sub-par, particularly when it comes to multicore support, the lack of severity in the survival mechanics and an inadequate tutorial. Some users also complained about a lack of complexity in the physics model, as well as some instability with multiplayer servers.
Here’s what users have said about Space Engineers:
Comments
11 responses to “Space Engineers, As Told By Steam Reviews”
I don’t get this shit of playing over 4000 goddamn hours and this user says it’s not worth your time.
You played nearly 6 months of your life, obviously feeling you liked the game enough to blow 4g of hours on it…. But you don’t recommend it?
People are stupid.
Unless he left his game running as a server and Steam recorded that time
Yeah that could be it. He does say he tested it for over 4000 hours himself though in his review. But it’s possible.
LOL 4 gig of time what a measurement. Not sure how anyone sticks around that long and despises the game so much.
I feel like many WoW addicts have had exactly this kind of experience…
Yeah that is actually quite true.
Exactly what I was thinking, but in a way I would take his opinion over someone that played for 20 hours, even though his negativity might be exacerbated by the shear number of hours he played and all the disconnects/lag/lack of content etc he probably experienced.
@lemonmule I can understand why you would think that, but it’s because your thinking of it as ‘playing’ and not ‘beta testing’ which was what was actually happening. Trust me, there is a BIG difference. While I was not at my desk for the full 4300 hours the time actually spent was not going “Poggers this is so much fun GJ Keen” and was more like “what an amazing concept and opportunity that I hope my suffering will help mold into a spectacular final result”, only to have my hopes crushed after all that time.
Objectively, there is not a single aspect of this software that you can point to and say “this is good enough”. Not one. Really the game experience feels like a concept demo and not a finished game.
The praise people have for SE is not because it is good, but because the concept is, and it’s the only example of it out there. That, or it’s a Sunken Cost Fallacy which I refuse to fall prey to. Also, it turns out based on the support site and subreddit that many of the bugs that were reported 3/4 of a year ago or more are still in the ‘out of early access’ game so I don’t know what else to tell you other than take my word for it, or don’t.
Love the game, it’s one of my go to itch scratchers when the building bug takes me.
It’s true though, the physics aren’t really as good as you hope, I built a mech once that tore itself apart just trying to move.
Thanks!
Oh woah, no, thank you guys!!
You let me be a space engineer when nobody in their right mind would do so.
It was a sacrifice to Clang.