Saturday 26 September 2015

Player Preview - Edge of Space


Title: Edge of Space
Developer: Handyman Studios
Release Date: 17/Sept/2015

Official Site: http://bit.ly/1FmROBF
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1F8drpE



Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the 2D Survival Sandbox game, Edge of Space, developed by Handyman Studios. After crash landing on an unknown planet you’ll have to build up a base and craft weapons and armour to survive the harsh environment.

Edge of Space falls into the same category as other similar games like Terraria and Star Bound carrying over between them all very similar main game mechanics. Most of your time spent in the game will be mining and building with the same kind of foreground and background layers to manipulate. The mining is pretty stock standard with a basic laser to mine a 1x1 area at a time, later on you can craft alternate mining lasers that have a sort of balance to them for instance 1 mining laser can mine materials from a fair distance away but slowly while another can mine a bigger area but is restricted to a shorter distance. I will say that mining the background can be a little annoying as it requires an empty block to start mining so you can be down in a mine and come across a vein of valuable materials but you would have to mine the background all the way from the top to reach it.

The building in Edge of Space is the same kinda thing only you can place some more interesting construction pieces via crafting along with quite a bit of decorative craftables as well including lab equipment, kitchen gear and more. On the functional side of building, the stuff with purpose, there are multiple crafting benches, each dedicated to crafting certain equipment like the Cloning Tank for crafting mounts and pets, and the Computerized Assembly Workshop for more advanced technologies. Some of the more interesting machines you can build include the skiff pad that when coupled with rare data entries will gain you access to some of the games bosses and dungeons. Once activated you will be able to attempt the dungeon or boss for a limited amount of time before it expires. Another interesting building mechanic or more of a power management mechanic is setting up electricity loops to power things like lights, doors and the skiff pad. You are given numerous different gates and logic blocks to work with, allowing you to create some pretty crazy power set-ups however while it is a pretty complex system there aren’t many uses for it outside of automatically opening doors or turning a light off and on.

On the combat side of things you have numerous types and styles of guns as well as swords if you feel like getting up close and personal. For the types of weapon you have sniper rifles, assault rifles, shotguns, lasers and beam weaponry. The style of weapon is divided into 3 different groups that you can research with projectile based weapons that are explosive and are the only weapons that require ammo to use, energy based weapons that take environment energies and weaponizes it and finally phase weapons that basically act as laser weaponry. Due to the research requirements for each weapon style in the knowledge tree its best to focus on only one so you can get to the really good stuff faster rather than spreading your experience points between them all. The same is true for your armour as there are also 3 styles of armour with fighter armour, explorer armour and builder armour, each set giving you extra bonuses in their respective areas.


The aim of the game outside of the usual sandbox, do whatever you want style, is an overarching goal of going deeper into the planet’s surface. The further you get the more dangerous the environment becomes so you will have to be prepared for it. Luckily the game offers a limit to how deep you can go via an exposure level that is indicated by this line. The lines position is dependent on your armours stats, moving further down the higher tier armour you have equipped. Going past this line, your exposure level will slowly rise and once you are fully exposed you will start losing health so it’s not really possible to get much further than the line. Basically everything above the exposure line you will be able to deal with in one way or another. If you do end up dying it’s actually not too bad as you don’t lose anything on death and are teleported to your bases cryopod to continue on your journey. Outside of the game main goal there are some side missions provided to you by NPC’s found around the world or in your base like this laser shark. Once you complete the NPC’s side missions you will be able to recruit them to defend your base which is important later on when you’re further down in the world with more aggressive mobs. There is also a billboard that provides random quests for you to complete for rewards that refreshes every so often. Lastly there are just random events like zombie hives and crab clusters that you will have to clear out and then destroy with explosives.


Other features of the game include single player, multiplayer and Co-Op play modes with the game quite obviously designed for Co-Op play more than anything else. While the game is fully playable in single player and multiplayer, the different weapon and armour styles are better tailored to a team of 2 or 3 working together and utilizing all the different equipment plus it will make completing the games objectives a lot easier. To go online for the multiplayer you will have to have the server details to input as the game doesn’t have a server browser so you will have to go looking for an open server to play on.

Altogether Edge of Space is the kind of game that you zone out to and just chill while slowly working towards a variety of different goals depending on your play style weather that be building up numerous basses, clearing out dungeons or just attempting to go deeper into the planets interior. Once you have set yourself a goal time can go very quickly while playing this game. It can be a little bit grindy at times however if you are playing with others it will be significantly faster to get things done. If you’re after a game similar to Terraria or Star bound that you can unwind too then Edge of Space is worth a look. 

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Edge of Space. The game is officially released on the 17th of September and is available to purchase on Steam for $13 or your regional equivalent. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next time.

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