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Space Colony
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Game Name:
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Space Colony |
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Console:
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PC |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
The title of this game a little misleading. You aren’t actually colonising space itself but planets out in space. Any you aren’t really colonising either. Ok, I’ll begin at the beginning. Space Colony is kind of like the Sims but with actual objectives rather than randomly having your Sims wander around the house doing stuff on a whim. Space Colony is primarily mission based; you are put on a planet with certain resources and have to achieve certain objectives. In some cases you might be spending several missions on the one planet; in that case your resources usually carry over from the previous mission.
The resources you have are many and varied – iron, silicon, chickens, iridium and more are your basic resources. Most of these can be gathered if they are found on the planet you are on. Others, like the chickens, can be produced by you. All of them can be sold for credits and in some cases they can be bought as well. To gather or create these resources you need to buy and place special equipment. You need an iron extractor to gather iron for example. However, these things don’t run themselves – you need qualified personnel to operate the machinery and that’s where things start to get nutty.
The colonists in this game are almost all, to some extent or another, crazy and/or eccentric. The main character, Venus is about the only one who’s really sane and well adjusted. She’s just trying to earn enough credits to get home. The others have a variety of odd personality traits which can help or hinder your efforts. Tami for example is an old boot scooting cowgirl who only moves faster than a slow walk when it’s time to go and drink some booze. Candy has a really great personality but almost no useful skills or brain cells for that matter. There are a range of other colonists, each with their own unique traits. Each colonist has certain skills they can employ. This determines what jobs you can assign to them. Each colonist can have a primary job and a secondary job. They will work at their primary job until nothing more is to be done before moving onto their secondary job. In some missions you can teach them new skills – either by having them study or by dropping them into a special teaching device that zaps the knowledge into their head. These skills carry on through the rest of the main campaign (there are standalone missions you can play in which everything starts afresh though). Each colonist also has certain needs like health, social interaction, food, hygiene, pay and sleep. Each of these can be met by various means. For most of them you just need to place down a facility for them to use. For example, they can collect their wages from a money dispenser. Health requires them to visit a medi-bay for treatment, but these need to be prepped by someone qualified first. Social interaction is a tricky one. Each colonist will either be a friend or an enemy towards each other colonist. There is no middle ground. If two friends encounter each other they will have a short conversation and their social interaction will be replenished. If two enemies meet though they will usually tell each other off which lowers their social interaction gauge and they might even get into a fist fight which saps health as well. You can make enemies into friends if you send them to a social area to work out their differences. Entertainment can be tricky as well. Each colonist has a list of things they like and dislike. As such, a particular entertainment facility might fill their need rapidly or it might do absolutely nothing. Finally, certain colonists are needier in certain areas than others. Greg, for example, is a bit of a slacker and his need for entertainment and social interaction needs to be replenished quite often. Mr Zhang on the other hand is an old man who needs to sleep fairly often.
Keeping your colonists needs satisfied is important since it affects their work shift gauge. If they are happy enough then a colonist will spend most of their time working productively. If they are unhappy their will spend very little time working. The work shift gauge is a pie chart broken up into two sections – on duty and off duty time, the chart also has a clock needle indicating where they currently are at. Generally a colonist will head off to work when their gauge moves onto on duty time and leave when they click onto off duty time. You can override these orders though if you see that they have a particular pressing need or if you have something else for them to do. Different colonists have different work ethics though. Some will always dutifully show up to work. Others don’t really care and might ignore their duty shift unless ordered directly. You can order them to work during their off duty time – their ethic determines how long they will keep this up. There is one small problem with a strong work ethic though, when a colonist’s shift kicks in they will immediately head off to work. However, they will do this even if they are in the middle of satisfying some need. I’ve seen colonists get up and go to work, even though they’ve just started eating and are extremely hungry. The other problem with their needs are that some colonists seem rather apathetic. They might be really hungry or tired but they won’t actually go and satisfy that need unless so ordered. I’ve even seen colonists with a high sleep need who sit on their bed in boredom rather than catch some Zs.
Micromanagement is the key to Space Colony. The first part if this is making use of your limit funds and space to build the facilities you need. You especially need to keep your colonists happy, alive and productive. Note that if a colonist does die they are flown off in a shuttle to be revived ready for the next mission. Unless you have a cryogenic reanimation unit on base though, the colonist is gone for the rest of the mission and it might not possible to win with reduced numbers. Some missions allow you to build androids which can do any task but they only have a limited lifespan. You need someone who can build them though, and the right facility and also the required resources. The missions vary in terms of difficulty greatly. To help you out though, you can pause the game and issue orders while paused.
As well as forming friendships between the colonists, you can also form relationships. First you need to have a colonists court another one by taking them off to eat or have a drink or dance etc. There will be a rating given to show the odds of them successfully forming a relationship. This isn’t the same from both sides, you might find an attractive colonist like Venus or Candy has a better chance of chatting up another colonist with less appeal. Relationships are supposed to help out social interaction I believe, I think the couple in the relationship will have their gauge refilled quicker when talking to each other and they will never lose their friendship status. However, being a couple they might feel the need to go back to one of their beds and make nookie – during which time you can’t order them to do anything. Most interestingly (or disturbingly) you can pair up any of the colonists into a relationship (although some are much harder to form than others) – even same sex relationships are allowed. For some reason though, relationships don’t carry over onto the rest of a campaign.
Each mission has certain objectives. You might need to gather enough of a certain resource or train up some colonists or even turn your base into a five star hotel. Generally each mission has a few things to handicap you like time limits, money restrictions or even an army of blood thirsty aliens trying to destroy your base. The game has a main campaign that splits into two separate paths after a few missions. You can play the civilian path missions which are mostly about gathering and building or the military path missions which have a lot more combat. Your colonists do have personnel weapons they can shoot alien critters with but primarily you want to rely on things like automatic lasers. These lasers need to be fuelled with argon gas which they slowly consume.
Your base itself has some needs of its own – power, oxygen, maintenance and cleanliness. Power and oxygen can be obtained by building certain structures. Oxygen has only one structure that can produce it while power can be obtained from a number of structures like solar power plants or lava power plants. These aren’t automatic though, you need to assign someone to control the machinery from the bridge of the colony. Their skill rating determines how much you get out of the machinery. You need to make sure you have enough facilities built so that you have surplus oxygen and power for when your colonists are off duty. Maintenance is for both internal and external facilities – if something breaks, someone needs to fix it. Cleanliness refers to the build-up of junk around the base. You need to have someone clean up around the base. If you don’t then the hygiene level of the colonists will drop rapidly.
It can be quite hard at times, but Space Colony is a very entertaining games. There’s always plenty to do in it. The game also features a mission builder which lets you create your own missions or campaigns. The mission builder has no real documentation though and can be a little tricky to work out.
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