Games check: Stardeus – Rimworld in the spaceship – News

while her in Terra Invicta (in the check) wrestles with aliens for the earth, it is in Stardeus long history. And while her in Rimworld (latest extension biotech im Check) want to escape a planet by spaceship, you will find yourself in Stardeus as the AI ​​of a spaceship that is supposed to transport its human cargo (mostly still in stasis) to a new home planet. A small problem with this: The spaceship is ready for scrap. What similarities the game of Kodo Linija with Rimworld and Factorio and how much fun it is, I’ll tell you in this check.

Upgrading the ship into a self-sufficient factory is the core mechanic of Stardeus.

Starship as a star

In addition to corpses, there are also dead aliens in the corridors of your vehicle at the beginning. Did they have anything to do with the battered condition? The ship has shattered into several sections. In one room of the procedurally generated ship, the heater and oxygen engine are still running. The stasis chamber is also still intact. Inside: Your precious human cargo. Stardeus automatically identifies rooms and sections. The sections are no longer all connected to each other. You can either mine them for resources, connect them structurally, or pull them together with a winch to be developed.

Mechanical helpers are actively at your side: construction, cleaning, transport and combat robots. Later, people get involved too. The brain of the ship is the ship’s computer. First you have to restore the energy supply and take care of the well-being of two survivors, i.e. raise food production and ideally equip the two with space suits. Because temperature and oxygen play a major role. When reorganizing the spaceship, it helps that you can move all objects.

Robots and humans have specific abilities, such as building and research. You charge the bots easily in stations, while humans have characteristics and needs such as food, hygiene, fun and much more. However, you won’t bond with the crew as closely as you do with the protagonists in Rimworld. Instead, you will develop a bond with your ship, with the crew scurrying about like drones.

For reasons of space and power, you should upgrade your objects modularly.

Create, create, build ships

The longer a game lasts, the more dangers there are: from meteor showers, to dust that paralyzes the solar systems, pods with aliens or time bombs, to pirate attacks, against which you can only really defend yourself later. Overall, Stardeus is more of a peaceful game. You will get most of the fun from setting up efficient production processes and the resulting growth. The exploitation of the ship, planetary expeditions, trade or particle generators bring you the necessary resources. As more and more people wake up and objects like solar cells have a finite shelf life, there is no avoiding growth and readjustment. Without sufficient energy – you always connect the current-conducting and current-consuming objects yourself at the beginning – there is quickly a shift in the shaft.

The increasingly demanding research devours some of it. If you only have the ship’s computer, you can invest a maximum of 250 kW in research. It needs more research stations with a growing need for RAM, hard drives and energy to research better technology. Building in width is energy-guzzling, instead you should improve computers and systems with modules to increase their performance with the same power consumption. A smaller ship is also more defendable.

No progress without research.

In production, you will initially craft many things, such as microchips and transistors, on a workbench as needed. Later you have machines and furnaces that only need the resources. You can set production limits for this. The machines become inactive when the limit is reached and no longer consume electricity.

You have access to a lot of information and overlays (including temperature, oxygen, why who builds what or why not, prioritization). Building the objects is child’s play via a circular menu that you call up with a right mouse click. If you have the necessary resources, construction will be quick and easy. On the other hand, the production of an upgrade chip can sometimes take two days.

The second launch currently available sees you launch with a healthy ship with more resources and launch tech.

Conclusion

Stardeus is a bit like Rimworld in terms of colony management. The construction of a – ideally self-sufficient – spaceship with many production chains mixes in a pinch of Factorio. The result is a new game concept that gets its very own touch through the “road trip” aspect. I failed early on in my first few games because I first had to understand the various production chains and options for resource extraction, but also the most important research fields.

After that it played very fluffy with the spacy-meditative soundtrack. But the level of difficulty increases more and more due to raids. After a total of around 20 hours, I’m still a good distance away from the final destination. And I haven’t tried the chip that breaks Asimov’s Laws. In addition to the “Balanced” story generator, you can also set it to random or switch it off completely. Stardeus is already a successful, independent colony builder in Early Access that offers dozens of hours of fun.

• Colony Builder
• single player
• For beginners to professionals
• Price: 29.99 euros
• In one sentence: industrial colony builder road trip through space.