RetroSpace

Sometimes you shouldn't try to do everything at once. However, RetroSpace does a lot of that, and actually in a good way. If the game had competed at a high graphical level, it could truly have been a gem. The level design is fine, the gameplay features are extensive, and the mix of various game genres works more than well in itself. The beauty lies primarily in discovering areas and then combing through them to unlock parts of those areas and progress further. At a certain point, you also have to escape from sectors, causing areas to evolve through destruction or whatever else. RetroSpace is therefore a refreshing game that is well-developed in terms of setting and RPG elements—which remain fairly limited but are more than sufficiently developed. If, in these busy times, you are looking for a game that manages to combine the aforementioned franchises and throws a light Half-Life sauce over it, then this is truly an unexpected winner.

While I might be hesitant to recommend this game to those who haven’t played an entry in the genre before, RetroSpace's unique blend of weirdness and sheer satisfaction is enough to win over any heart, mutated or otherwise.

RetroSpace is uneven, but its strengths are easy to remember: a compelling station to explore, a weird story I wanted to understand, satisfying weapon progression, and enough interactive tools to make me think creatively. I wish more of my improvised solutions worked, and the later navigation, menus, bugs, and performance all need improvement. Still, the good outweighed the frustration for me.

I firmly believe the Aurora 5 will one day be entirely worth boarding, but for now it needs to come out of the black hole with a drastically improved map and many bugs squashed. This is a mature, well-told story aboard a genuinely brilliant space ship which is fun to explore in any way you wish to approach it. RetroSpace needs a handful of updates before I can offer the 8/10 I’d have loved to give.