Space Haven is an Early Access game that blends together elements of FTL, RimWorld and other such building and survival sims to create a promising mix of space exploration and people management.
After entering Early Access in May following a successful Alpha period for backers of their Kickstarter campaign, Bugbyte continue to expand the gameplay systems. It wasn't enough to deal with space pirates, ship to ship combat and aliens that pinch your crew members and put them into cocoons—you now have to deal with Space Hazards like: Solar Flares, Micrometeoroids, Siren Worlds (they mess with crew brains) and Nebulae to add a little more variety to your exploration.
A Solar Flare in action.
These Space Hazards can be tweaked and turned off, as thankfully Bugbyte want to ensure you play the game your way.
A lot more came with Alpha 9 including Crew Fights if they annoy each other enough and a lot more interactions possible with the various factions. Space is a lot more, well, alive. A new character status is in with refugees, who might be stranded when their ship is destroyed. You can pick them up and have them as a member of your crew for a while. Factions will now reach out to you to ask for all sorts of things, with a new signalling system along with faction requests like needing resources, delivering refugees belonging to their faction that you picked up along the way and more. You can also now choose to lie about refugees and keep them for yourself, perhaps they're good workers. Oh and other ships can now scan you, to see if you're lying. Get those turrets ready.
You can buy it from Humble Store, GOG and Steam.
Honestly I think it's a fantastic start, with some seriously cool sci-fi artwork going for it. Screenshots don't do it enough justice, you really need to properly see it in action. Space Haven is probably one of the most promising in-development games available for Linux and Bugbyte are a developer worth supporting.
If you've not seen it yet, check the original trailer below:
Direct Link
Space hazards give bit of risk factor to resource collection. Solar flares and micrometeoroids chew shields relatively quickly, so in areas with hazards like that you can't really go and pick everything you can get hands on. When shields are gone, ships tend to get full of holes or fires start appearing around the ship. In worst case both at the same time, though smoke should escape through the hole...
Not sure about refugees yet. So far only refugees have been forcibly rescued pirates and I wouldn't let them go even if asked...
I think disasters can be turned off, which should be good for those that like bit more relaxed gameplay. If ship gets destroyed, it's not game over, but rebuilding missing parts of ship can be quite time consuming (I haven't tried to that all the way through, I just loaded earlier save).
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