Space Station Tycoon is a management sim about building up your own space station. I do have to mention that the normal game mode feels very slow. The rate at which you earn money and research points as well as the rate at which ships visit your station is painfully slow. It’s slow to the point where you won’t be able to actually build up your space station at a decent pace and you end up having to wait a long time before being able to do anything at all.
This is a shame because if you play the game in creative mode, you get to see the full potential the game has. Honestly speaking here, I think the game is infinitely more enjoyable playing in creative mode. You can spend all your time designing your ideal space station or experiment with different layouts. Everything is unlocked in creative mode (other than jump gates) and you have infinite money so your imagination is the limit here. You can even unlock most of the achievements in creative mode.
The space station building part is actually fun when you have unlimited funds and everything is unlocked. There’s an ever increasing upkeep you have to consider as you expand your space station. A larger station means you need more power generation to power all the buildings. You also need more shields and turrets to protect against radiation storms, asteroids, and pirate raids. You need more facilities to support the growing traffic of incoming ships and this means more employees and more employees means more housing.
The game must be set in a realistic universe because you can put up massive billboards around your station and then sell the ad space to companies once you meet their requirements.
As you build your station up, you can expand your access to the galaxy map and network jump gates from different planets to your space station. This is also quite fun. It’s a simple challenge but you need to network the gates in such a way to reduce traffic jams. There’s actually a lot of fun to be had here, sadly it’s only in creative mode.
If I may make one suggestion, I hope the creative mode will track money earned so that level five of the tech can be unlocked. In creative mode the only things locked are the more advanced jump gates and unfortunately it is locked behind a tracker that tracks money earned. Profit is not tracked in creative mode so it will always be locked. Also, there are some achievements linked to credits earned so it would be nice if all achievements could be earned in creative mode as well.
One other small problem I’ve run into is that this game seems to be horribly unoptimized. I can’t speak for everyone but I have a 2070 Super and while this graphics card isn’t the latest and greatest, it is by no means a low end device. Despite this, the GPU was utilized at one hundred percent and I could hear my computer physically struggling to keep up with the game.
If this game embraces the sandbox aspect, you can see the potential of the game and there’s definitely some fun to be had here.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324270/Space_Station_Tycoon/
Review Score: 67% positive with a total of 140 reviews as of this writing (12/07/23)
Developer: Lunheim Studios
Publisher: Lunheim Studios
Release Date: Oct 29, 2020
MSRP: $19.99
I received a key from keymailer. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 3.1 hours
Achievement Score: 17/32
Ducky Obrien 