The Admin Oversight Update for Hardspace: Shipbreaker is here and I’m excited about all the new stuff that we get to see now! It’s been a while since the last bigger update, so 0.6.0 really came in clutch to bring us more juicy content before I’d run out of stuff to do. In case you didn’t know, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a game set in space where you work on repaying a tremendous debt for a company called Lynx by breaking apart ships! It’s very good and fairly polished. Check out my review of it over here!
With the latest update (0.6.0), the developer added a new character named Hal Rhodes to the story as well as other stuff. In Act 1, you essentially got to know all the different characters in your station and you’re informed about the Worker Union before Lynx eventually ends up forbidding any formation of a Union! LYNX Administrator Hal Rhodes arrives, kicking off Act 2, and well… I actually don’t know yet what’s gonna happen with our crew now that there’s an actual supervisor/admin watching over us… but I’m sure it will be interesting!
The next big feature is the 3D Hab that was added for the time between your shifts! You can still do all the things you did before but now you actually do that in your habitat and you get to decorate your kitchen, bedroom, etc. as well by replacing LYNX’ questionable decor with your own posters, salvaged from the ships! I hope that this means that there will be new posters in the game, potentially with more references. Looking forward to that! Obviously, this really is just a bit of eye candy but I love the idea that you actually see the player wake up before the shift and that you get to check out the kitchen or workshop instead of just navigating a menu… Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!
A key element to the Administrator-Player-Union-dynamic in this update will be the Armadillo Utility Rig, a classic ship that may become a golden opportunity for you if you manage to scrounge together the parts needed to get it ready for gate travel. The idea of this is actually quite cool, although I have yet to see how this turns out. My big issue with these campaign updates is that the developers delete our save files and I end up having to play through it all again but a bit slower than before. Naturally, with the game being in Early Access and progress feeling slow, the developers adjusted the speed of the certification mode to be about 40% faster than before. Progression is gonna get improved in future updates even more but for now, we’ll just have to deal with this system and see how it works and feels! The other feature added here is btw the revamp of the scan modes’ clarity and readability. It makes it just a whole lot easier to use these. At the same time, the power now works more logically in ships and reactors are now immune to fire and electrical damage (thank god!). Oh, and there have been a bunch of bug fixes as always.
So, personally, I’m really excited! I loved Act 1 and the characters and how everything developed. The characters are lovely and the idea of the game is still great. I’m looking particularly forward to seeing more interactions between the different crewmembers in the game, especially with the administrator joining as well now and watching over our every step. As my save file has just been deleted, I obviously have to make some progress through the story and certification ranks again but I’m looking forward to it regardless of that! I’m intrigued by how they implemented that Armadillo Utility Rig, to be honest. I wouldn’t have any idea as to how they’d do that… but I can imagine that there would be a lot of complications, especially with Rhodes sniffling around. The Ship Doctor program needed for that is apparently accessible in the HAB partway through Rank 8, so… I gotta make my way up there! The new scan mode looks a lot cleaner and easier than before… but I really do hope that they add more ships or even other cool features like Mod Support or Steam Workshop in general to the game. I mean, imagine breaking apart Community Ships! Wouldn’t that be rad?
Either way, I’ve been looking forward to the new update and I’m honestly quite glad that it just arrived as I would have had to look for a new game otherwise. Hope you enjoyed this post! Have you been playing Hardspace yourself? If so, have you checked out the update yet? Let me know!
Cheers!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
Indiecator 
Leave a Reply