Review: Hardspace: Shipbreaker

destructoid.com:

Do you remember the opening cutscene to Starcraft? No, not the one where Gerard DuGalle watches from a battlecruiser as a Zerg swarm overruns a colony. That’s what you get when Brood War is installed. No, I mean the one where a group of space hicks is salvaging wreckage and a fleet of Protoss show up to cleanse the planet. Have you ever wanted to be one of those space hicks? No, I don’t mean get vaporized by space elves.

There’s something serene about the whole zero gravity scene. Surveying the wreckage, celebrating the potential haul, and dying in the hostile vacuum of oblivion; it’s something that struck me in my younger days, and now Hardspace: Shipbreaker is making it a reality. Err… They’re making it an interactive experience.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker (PC)Developer: Blackbird InteractivePublisher: Focus EntertainmentReleased: May 24, 2022MSRP: $39.99

Work sims have exploded in popularity recently. While managerial games have been around almost as long as video games have, getting down and dirty with a job is a reasonably new phenomenon. There’s the argument of “maybe just get a job doing X” that comes with these games, but I’d rather take bites out of the mud at the bottom of the trenches than pull up a blanket and live in them.

For that matter, it can be hard to hit a special sweet spot with work simulators. It has to be fun, and some of these games equate that as being weird or hilariously janky. The streamer crowd has latched onto these for that reason, it allows them to demonstrate some sort of fantastical ineptitude while still being entertaining.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker is interesting because it’s not particularly weird, nor is janky. It has a sense of humor about things, but it’s not poking fun at itself.