Hardspace: Shipbreaker

The addictive ship salvage sim gets its first major update.

- Andy Kelly

Some of my favourite games feel like a second job. Ferrying cargo between systems in Elite Dangerous, doing shifts on the forklift in Shenmue, driving a truck around Europe in Euro Truck Simulator 2. So I always knew Shipbreaker would appeal to me. It’s a game about a regular working stiff on a mission to clear a mountain of debt by scrapping disused spaceships. It might all be taking place in a rich, vividly realised sci-fi setting, but you’re still clocking in for the nine to five and breaking your back for The Man.

I love this about it. Science fiction games rarely focus on what it’s like just existing in these settings, and it’s refreshing to spend time in a universe like this without being a hotshot fighter pilot, a space knight, or the chosen one. You’re just some person. One of thousands of shipbreakers bobbing around in orbit, quietly turning abandoned old starships into the precious raw materials required to make new ones.

If you’ve never played Shipbreaker, it’s pretty simple. You’re an astronaut floating around a huge orbital platform above the Earth. Below you there’s a barge for storing expensive, reusable items like airlocks, chairs, and control panels. To your left and right, a recycler and a furnace. The furnace is for melting down cheap, soft metal; the recycler is for more advanced materials. In the middle, a ship. It could be a large cargo vessel or a small one-person station hopper. And it’s your job to tear it apart using a variety of tools, and toss the carved off parts into these three receptacles.

THEM’S THE BREAKS