Published 29/12/2022

Hardspace: Shipbreaker

Sometimes, titles will come out that are incredibly, insanely me-core, and I’ve just genuinely never heard of them before. Maybe it’s to do with it’s several years in Early Access, or I’ve just somehow dodged any idea of existence, but one way or another, I’m glad I’ve finally stumbled upon one of my sleeper hits of (technically) 2022, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, a title about one thing and alone - unions, and how goddamn evil corporations are. Oh, and uh, I guess cutting up and salvaging ships. It’s kinda a side project to the aforementioned, uh, rising up against evil corporations angle.

In the nearly twenty-seven years I’ve been alive, probably the longest-running hyperfixation I’ve had involves space, the universe, and everything in it. Obsessively watching documentaries, devouring books, and chain-reading wikipedia articles. In any case, whilst my obsession with all things space has lessened ever-so-slightly, my deep love of space as a setting in movies, books, and of course, gaming has never wavered one jot. And whilst I love your Star Wars-esque, more fantastical depictions of the final frontier, I have a lot more love of ‘harder’ sci-fi… and, funnily enough, Hardspace: Shipbreaker fits all my boxes to a T. Somewhat grounded, theoretically solid foundations? Check. Gritting, almost ‘space-poverty’ aesthetic? Hell yeah. Nightmarish, cyberpunk-level overarching corporations? Oh yeah, it’s all coming together. Hardspace: Shipbreaker, whilst obviously playing fast and loose with the natural laws of physics, just drew me in from minute one just from its setting. And that was before I actually dug into the gameplay itself!

At its heart, Shipbreaker is just about that; you take the role of ‘52’ a technician trained to manually cut up, pull apart, and salvage an entire starship. You’ll be tearing off hulls, hoarding valuables, and most importantly, not getting yourself killed by breaching a vacuum, or blowing up the bloody ship with the reactor. Yes, what you get is what is on the tin, and in that sense, Shipbreaker is kind of this twisted physics simulator. Using a kind of gravity-grappling-hook kind of doohickey, you’ll be tugging pieces of salvage into one of three collectors, two for various forms of scrap, and a third for valuables like chairs, computers, reactors and whatnot. But pulling a ship apart isn’t easy, oh no no, we’ll get into the dangers soon enough.

The major form of progression of the game comes in a ranking system - for each ship you disassemble, successfully salvaging enough materials will reward you rank-up points for reaching certain milestones, and earning enough of these points will promote you to the next class. As you raise your rank, you’ll be getting more and more complicated ships to disassemble. At first, you’ll be working on simple, low-tech ships, with easy to remove reactors and no crazy dangers to contend with. Quickly, though, you’ll be having to deal with completely different threats and configurations of ships - gigantic oil tankers that one miscut will result in other the ship going up in flames; electrical nightmares that might wipe you out in a moment if you try and pull the wrong appliance; and, late in the game, AI-wired ships that’ll do lovely things, like lock you inside compartments, or try and vent you back into space. These more complicated orders, as opposed to the simple act of cutting up and salvaging scrap, are where the real tension of the game becomes apparent, requiring stringent procedures to avoid blowing yourself to kingdom come. Thankfully, with how stressful these titanic hulks can be to disassemble, you never really lose access to these smaller ships, and honestly, you can probably reach the normal ending of the game dealing working on these smaller ships, albeit with a much longer playtime. But at the same time, engaging with the harder ships can feel really rewarding - even if trying to remove a top-level reactor, or trying to extricate all the fuel containers on the big oil rigs is potentially the most terrifying thing I’ve done in a game this year.

Ranking up will also lead you to being able to upgrade your various tools, though for the most part these don’t really change the game - think more ‘hold more tethers’ or ‘your oxygen lasts a bit longer’ - at the end of the day, they’re just ways to increase your debt, and whilst they are useful, I find they just serve as ‘timesavers’, since you’ll just not have to fly back to your base to resupply as often. This ranking system is also the main way of progressing through the story, and what a story it is. At times, I could describe Shipbreaker as a kind of more metal, dystopic, and just honestly more hardcore version of Power Wash Simulator, but that game’s narrative is more of a background element to that wonderful experience. Shipbreaker, from minute one, is almost as about its story as it is, y’know, about breaking ships.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker, takes place in the relative future, where humanity has colonized the Solar System and seemingly beyond. Whilst the universe beyond the Solar System seems to be a golden age for humanity, the solar system itself - especially Earth - is nothing short of a derelict, rusting, corpo-infested hellscape. The player character, alongside their fellow Shipbreakers, are employed by a monolithic, de-facto ruler corporation of Earth, who task them with cutting up and scrapping decommissioned ships for spare parts and profit. Due to the incredibly, lethally high death rates on working with dead starships, Shipbreakers biological data are inserted into a system that essentially clones them upon death - creating in some ways, the perfect employee, the one who can never be freed from the debit of corporate ownership. I say ownership, because Shipbreakers are basically under wave slavery, with the training, gear, cloning tech, and every other little thing the corpos can squeeze out of the Breakers being billed at over a hundred billion dollars.

In your attempts to pay back your titanic debt, every day you’ll be flying out to the yard at the same time as your fellow Shipbreakers - though, you all work on different hulks, so you won’t be physically seeing them. This small squad of Breakers are like a small found family, working closely to keep an eye on one another, breaking up the monotony of their endless existence. Weaver, the de facto father figure and mentor of the team, is easily the best of the bunch, having an incredibly wholesome vibe every time he chimes in on the com. Pretty much every time you’ll be going out on a shift, even if you’re only half-way to a rank up, you’ll get a bit of chatter between the various Shipbreakers, maybe honing in on a bit of their backstories, their interpersonal jokes and rivalries, or some of the horrifying, middle-manager schemes employed by the wonderfully terrible supervisor Hal. Half the reason the characters are as likable as they are is thanks to the stellar voice acting, especially from Weaver and Hal - these mid-game chats never get old just because these characters feel like friends, co-workers and family all at once.

Also, I’ve never seen a game push the concept and necessity of unions more than Shipbreaker, and goddamn, I salute it for it. From minute one, Shipbreakers story is about corporate overreach, wage slavery, and the rights of workers. About people who are just trying to find a way to exist in this dystopian cyberpunk living hell. Perhaps the most harrowing elements of this story are the way the corporation pushes back against attempts to unionize; ranging from the implementation of middle-managers, all the way to disregarding the basic human rights of their workers. This union-storyline culminates in one of the funniest, exciting, stressful, and downright amazing levels in any game I’ve played this year; I won’t spoil it, because it’s simply that amazing - but I swear to god, if you pick that -other- option, I will hunt you down, and I will lose respect for you. Seriously. Don’t be a scab.

And I just really appreciated that the universe of Hardspace: Shipbreaker felt rather well realized - humanity has soared beyond the stars, a golden age of exploration… but Earth is still a shithole. Through hidden audio logs, you’ll learn of people living their lives, both mundane and exciting, but these pale in significance to some of the best content in the game - the AI logs. Whilst I won’t spoil them for you, these tapes detail an increasing number of lethal situations involving AI, and implying the existence of some kind of pseudo-deity known as the Machine God. I’m usually not one to really engage with text logs unless they’re directly thrust in my face, but the writing of these supplemental materials are fantastic and do so much to make the world the Rookie and the rest of the Breakers exist in feel real.

Chiefly, I used Hardspace: Shipbreaker much as I used PowerWash Simulator; basically a chill-out relaxation game. The difference is that whilst Powerwash was nothing but relaxation time, Shipbreaker has kind of two-phases to it. Breaking a ship is complicated business; at first you’ll be peeling away the outer shells, cutting up hulls and pulling out computers and whatnot to make a tidy dent in your debt. You’ve also got access to ‘tethers’, devices that you connect to pieces of debris to tug them in a certain direction here or there, somewhat automating the process of moving larger pieces of scrap. Using the tethers makes your life a thousand times easier, and some of the most satisfying moments in this game was disconnecting all the clamps from a ship, and just letting the tethers pull the ship apart like some kind of cosmic ballet. Incredible. All this is what I would describe as the chill-out phase, where you can kick on a podcast and just let the hours melt away… at least until you get to the real guts of the ship. As you slowly disconnect the reactor, switch off the power grid, remove the AI nodes… your pulse will creep up, your fingers will tighten on your controller, knowing a single mis-twitch will spell destruction for your ship, your profits, and even your life… These threats are where the real intricacies of the game become apparent, as doing certain tasks in the wrong order can irrevocably spoil your attempts to efficiently salvage these hulks. It can be frustrating to, say, disconnect the power before jettisoning the engines, thus making salvaging the reactor that much harder, but when these issues are never the fault of the game - it’s up to you to manage this autopilot mindset for the quieter stretches of the game, whilst bringing your brain back out for the proper procedures.

This auto-pilot mentality might be the game’s biggest problem. Whilst it isn’t a super long game - my run clocked in at around 20ish hours - it perhaps does overstay its welcome a bit too long. Whilst what you’re doing is consistently enjoyable and there is some variety in the different kinds of ships you’ll be salvaging, there were times I found myself getting a bit… I dunno, bored? The story was so engaging, and the actual threats of the ships fun to disassemble, but there’s only so many times you can cut up a hull, or empty a room full of chairs and computers but it grows a little mundane - and whilst I enjoyed the smaller sections of banter between the Breakers, I found myself pushing for those rank ups less for fun but rather to see the story, and when I was done with said story, I didn’t feel a need to max out my rank or go for any of the extra objectives, though your mileage may vary.

But ultimately, these downsides are minute compared to Hardspace: Shipbreaker’s numerous high points. With a wonderfully chill, yet demanding gameplay loop, genuine fantastic storytelling and one of the most important messages of the year, this game is a genuine surprise on pretty much every level. It can overstay its welcome at times, and the slow pace of how the story rolls out can try and make you rush these salvage jobs, but if you’ve got any love for space, pseudo-cyberpunk settings or just some fantastic vibes from lovable characters, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is worth a try. It’s a gold standard for a full release of an Early Access game, and I’m not short of elated at the idea of what the developers could be working on for the future - be it a sequel or follow up to Shipbreaker, or something else entirely. Either way, Hardspace: Shipbreaker impressed me enough that I’ll be here, no matter what they bring.