Game Review: Space Haven
My whole crew died in the tutorial. I swear it wasn't my fault.
Do you like Dwarf Fortress? Skip to the end of this review. You will probably like Space Haven, but we will never understand one another. Space Haven is a management sim with a twist. The player is put in charge of managing a starship and it's crew. Gameplay is closer to something along the lines of a Tycoon game (think Rollercoaster Tycoon or its ilk) or the Majesty series, rather than a more direct control style like FTL. The player will give instructions to the crew, but has no direct control unless the player "recruits" that crew member for specific actions, like combat. The player can choose what things to build on the starship, what resources the crew should gather, and how the starship should be expanded by building out the hull. There is also an element of exploration. Starships can travel to different maps and the maps contain resources and other points of interest such as derelict spaceships which can be explored for more resources, specialized equipment, or even new crew members in cryostasis.
The learning curve is steep, and the tutorial gives only basic information about what is happening. I would often be building machines because the game had told me to do it, not knowing the why of it. The tutorial also doesn't pause as it gives you instructions, a fact that led to my entire crew starving to death on my first play through, as I thought the game was paused and left it running while I made lunch.
The art style is retro-pixelation, but often gets in the way of itself. The UI can be clunky in places, and a lack of color variety makes visually identifying objects or people difficult. However the animations, while simple, are clear and convey action and don’t detract from the experience.
While the game allows you to be creative in your starship design, there didn't seem to be any benefit to it. Instead, a large square was just as serviceable, or even better, as there was more space to build things. In a game about modifying your ship to survive in the harshness of space, it would have been nice to have my choices matter more than “I needed more space for things and now I have more space.”
What was most frustrating about this game was that I could see there was a good game behind all the noise. People who like a challenge and want to dig into a game’s mechanics and figure it out for themselves may find a lot to like in Space Haven, but for the rest of us I would give it a pass.
-The Clever Coyote