Starmancer was revealed this week. It’s a star base management game that’s coming to Steam Early Access on August 5, 2021, and it looks like it’s worth waiting for. There have been star base management games in the past, but almost every one has failed to generate enough interest to justify continued development. Instead, they’ve collapsed under their own vision and now exist in an unfinished form on Steam. It’s tragic, but this happens quite a lot on Steam, so developers need to be careful. Starmancer has a publisher though, so development is secured, and the Early Access phase is going to be a lot of fun.
The general idea in Starmancer is to create a base that can sustain life, grow colonists, and then send them on their way. You have a potential 8000 colonists to get through in any game, so you’re not going to see a lot of repetition. However, it’s not all about the straight process of nurturing and then seeing of your colonists. There’s more to it. You can experiment on them, seeing how much of one type of food they can eat before they go mad, or put them into situations that might change who they are, making them stronger.
There’s a lot going on in this game. Of course, your colonists can die and you’ll have to regrow them, but the bulk of the game is actually about creating the society you want. The colonists come and go, it’s the base that’s permanent. You can build a place where you as the AI are worshipped. Or, you can make a utopia in the stars. Some of the hazards you’ll face include invasions, and those are what colonists are going to have to battle against. That can lead to some serious issues, and mess up your plans for the future.
I really love the look of Starmancer, and it feels like it’s quite well built for an Early Access title. The game itself is going to be a lot of fun when it launches, but with all that potential for growth, I think it’s going to end up adopting a community that will really take it to the next level.
