Asteroids: Outpost Is Not The Next Great Steam Survival Game

Should I care about Asteroids: Outpost? Not really. Not yet, anyway. You shoot asteroids, collect crafting materials from them, upgrade your base, and pester other players (if you want). It’s aimless and kinda boring.

What’s it about? It’s Atari arcade classic Asteroids re-imagined as a first-person survival game for some reason. Up to 64 players can inhabit a server, and each gets their own base. You can expand yours with things like turrets and factories by blasting asteroids and collecting the materials contained within their nougaty centres. You can also upgrade your character with better tools, armour, and even vehicles. When you get bored of being a space farmer on Planet Barren Spacefarm IV, you can introduce yourself to other players by waltzing up to their bases and unleashing a polite “how d’ya do” from the barrel of your assault rifle. That’s pretty much it, as far as I can tell.

Here’s some footage of me playing it:

Why is (or isn’t) it so cool? It quickly became boring when I was playing. There didn’t really seem to be an ultimate objective. Sure, I could build my base big enough to blot out the stars, but… then what? The land was barren to the point of desolation, save for tiny settlements other players had built. Barging into other players’ bases made for a brief change of pace, and I could steal their ore. So I could make money either by shooting at the sky for a few hours or mercilessly griefing people (because an economy built on griefing sure does sound fun, right?). Either way, there just wasn’t much to it. At this stage, Asteroids: Outpost feels about as barebones as survival games get, and that’s saying a lot.

Also, it’s super glitchy. Entire features just… stopped working while I was playing. I had to restart the game, at which point different entire features wouldn’t work.

And yeah, if it isn’t already apparent by now, this game has next to nothing to do with the original Asteroids. All of the name (plus an entire other word!) and none of the fun.

Oh, that’s unfortunate. Yeah. It’s in Early Access, so things could change, but even the planned additions don’t sound particularly exciting. Per the game’s Steam page: “We have a number of systems in development including additional environmental hazards, new base modules, expanded suit and rover development and much more.” Sounds like more of what’s already there. What’s already there, unfortunately, is kinda snooze-worthy.

Should I buy it (even though there are a million-billion other Steam games I could spend my money on)? No. Definitely not yet. Maybe the developers will squeeze a diamond from this coal-coloured piece of space rock in the future, but right now there are far, far better ways to spend your time.