Dimensions: Dreadnought Architect – If you want to build spaceships then February is your month

Did you know that one of the pioneers of independent games is coming out with a new game? Sometime in February, Introversion will be releasing The Last Starship: a kind of Prison Architect (also from the British) in procedural space. But that’s not all, because Dimensions: Dreadnought Architect is already launching into space today – just like the competition, initially in Early Access on Steam. And I have to say, that’s a good thing.

Building and flying spaceships doesn’t really feel that well-rounded here. The concept is exceptionally promising. After all, in the familiar roguelike manner, you maneuver your spaceship from one node to the next to fight opponents, repair the plane or buy new ammunition and fuel.

What attracted me to it, however, is the fact that you are supposed to control the spaceship as a kind of captain – which is why you set the direction and general behavior of the weapon systems, for example, but these processes then take place automatically. So you set priorities and set the direction before you then observe how the individual parts of the cruiser and destroyer harmonize as a whole. The idea reminds me of the famous Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, an all-too-overlooked real-time strategy gem in space.

In any case, you specify the X and Y alignment of the target on two axes and also determine how much the ship rotates around its own axis. This can be important, for example to turn the core of the ship out of the line of fire, and it’s really fun to let the big barge fly past an enemy, but tell the “rudder” to keep its nose pointed towards the enemy turn. I think this indirect control is great.

Ok… so far so cool.

At this point, I was only suspicious, because that’s basically the end of the intervention. You can tell the weapons to fire on power, propulsion, or other targets on the enemy ship, but that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference to me. You always fly towards an opponent in the same way, the cannons start firing at some point and then the ships face each other for a while until one falls apart into its individual parts. There is hardly any point in letting your own boat fly certain manoeuvres.

While you can choose which of your systems to power up first if you run out, there aren’t really any specific situations to react to. Apart from flying towards each other and shooting at each other, nothing happens that makes the fight interesting. The AI ​​has no tactical understanding, reinforcements are not arriving either.

Too bad, but in this state, Dimensions is unfortunately only the rudimentary diagram of an idea that still needs a lot of time and content to function as a game – not to mention a number of translation errors and the non-existent tutorial. In roguelike mode there is no variety apart from the fights. There are no narrative events or even tricky decisions, such as leading the crew.

Now some of this is definitely planned – I spoke to the Solo developer especially. He’s ambitious, a little naïve in a sympathetic way and simply implemented his idea of ​​such a ship simulation. However, he still has a long way to go to fully develop Dimensions.

Only one thing works now: assembling your own ships in the editor, which was a bit idiosyncratic at first but quickly became quite catchy. There you screw together prefabricated engines, hulls, bridges, rocket towers and more to create self-made spaceships, which you can then even use in the campaign. Of course that’s cool! Now the rest just needs to get similarly cool.