Space Haven Preview

Space Haven is an early access game developed by Bugbyte Ltd., whose previous release was Battlevoid. Releasing as an Alpha build, Space Haven boasts a long development time with user-input being at the forefront when considering gameplay changes and tweaks. Set up as a combination of RimWorld and FTL, Space Haven sees you take control over a small crew aboard a small spaceship with the main aim of finding Eden amongst the star systems.

Starting off the game you will be allowed to go through a short setup of difficulty, after which you are thrust straight into the game with a few starter tips to create your space ship. As a very early glance into the game, the story is just as short. As you travel between planets and solar systems you will come across derelict ships that hold datapads, containing the story and lore of the game. Following the journey of several other ships, you will come across clues as to the whereabouts of Eden, the aliens that infest the derelict ships as well as a possible way to deal with them.

Depending on your playstyle you can reach Eden within a few hours, jumping from system to system without stopping at all will lead into a run being rather short against a run that has you visit each node on the galaxy map lasting into the double-digit hours.

Space Haven is played in a very similar fashion to that of RimWorld or other settlement sim games. Your small crew have several skills that they are good at, or cannot undertake at all, alongside several perks that make them better in certain fields like combat. You can assign certain jobs to your crew, which they will see through whenever they can. Making sure you have a working crew helps to keep your resources coming in, repairs of the ship and the health of the crew themselves.

One of the main things you’ll be doing in Space Haven is jumping between planets, events and even solar systems. This requires hyperfuel which you can mine from asteroids, or find in derelict ships. Like most of the other resources, you can also purchase it in trade when you meet one of the many travelling ships on the galaxy map.

As you move between sectors in a solar system and the bigger galaxy map, you will come across both friendly and enemy ships. The friendly ships offer to trade, with some currently underutilized friendship meters that you can change via gifts. The enemy ships come in the form of pirates, who attack on-sight. Pirates will blast your ship with their turrets or even send in attack squads to infiltrate your ship and fight your crew personally. If your ship has enough shields and turrets you can overpower the pirates, destroying their ship and eventually scrapping it for materials.

A major part of Space Haven is that of crafting your very own ship, in a blocky manner. With a 2D isometric view, you will place down hull blocks, for flooring and walls, on top of which you can craft work stations, sofas, beds, solar panels and shuttle bays. You will have to manage both ship size, as the ship map is only so big, as well as your system points when it comes to offensive and defensive machines. Similar to RimWorld you will also have to manage heat, oxygen, comfort levels as well the general well-being of your crew.

The musical score of Space Haven is incredibly fitting to the sci-fi genre, with quiet and calming tracks that have prolonged tones. As a surprising addition, you are also able to change the frequency of the tracks being played, from having them go one after another with no delay to having several minutes of silence between tracks. The ability to affect how often music plays is amazing and removes any complaint about not hearing or overhearing music. As the only complaint I could have about the OST is the menu music is a bit too awe-inspiring and choir-like against the rest of the soundtrack, giving me some real old Bionic Dues feels with their menu music.

As you move further away from the starting area you will come across harder derelict ships as well as pirate ships using much more of their systems points. To begin pirates will only have 1 turret, but can go up to 5 which completely decimates any ship with few shield generators. I would say the difficulty is a hard point to talk about as it really depends on how fast or slow you explore, fast being unforgiving and slow being easy-medium. With the ability to flee, as long as you have hyperfuel, you almost always have a way out of a dangerous fight.

Overall Space Haven is shaping up to be a fun space exploration game with an emphasis on simulation. I found no bugs, aside from the bug monsters, with no real issues to speak of stability wise. There could be a lot more in the way of machines and facilities as I had built everything about 1/5 into the game, especially when it comes to gun/shield varieties. Hitting Alpha 8 during my playtime, it certainly seems like the team are focused on updating the game quickly and I am excited to see where the team take it.

You can purchase Space Haven here – https://store.steampowered.com/app/979110/Space_Haven/

Space Haven is available on PC.

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