Review: Base One Is a Compelling but Flawed Space Station Builder – thirdcoastreview.com

Screenshot: Base One

I always wanted to play a really good base management and/or building game with a focus on space stations. There have been a few Ive played over the years, and even a few I enjoyed like Starbase Startopia. But Starbase Startopia was more like building a gas station or truck stop in space, Base One takes a serious, almost hard sci-fi look at building extra solar space habitats. Its not exactly a hard simulation but its definitely focused on survival and the harsh realities of life living in the void.

Base One is a base building and management game with some strategy and simulation sprinkled in. In it, you play as a station manager who survived a catastrophic event. You and a convoy of ships pass through a wormhole to the systems beyond, hoping to colonize unknown space, but disaster strikes. The mothership is destroyed, marooning the convoy far from home. The only way to survive is to help each other out, and that manifests into space station building gameplay. You have to build stations for many purposesat first its for support reasons, but later you must make more permanent living facilitiesand even fight off those that threaten the safety of your stations.

Screenshot: Base One

To start off, you have a hub buildingthis hub is the heart of the station. If for some reason this hub is destroyed or otherwise rendered inoperable, your station will fail. The hub obviously isnt enough for people to surviveand certainly not enough for the people to thriveso you must build off of it by adding specialized rooms, or modules, each automatically connected by a corridor. Building in Base One is very simple: each module usually only has four points to which you can connect other modules. Sometimes, modules cant connect to certain ends, like in the case of the solar module, or the docking module. Despite these rooms being specialized, you still have to build the equipment that goes into themand you have to make sure theyre connected properly.

One of my biggest gripes with Base One is how everything connects together. I know for sure in the custom game mode, you can have these connections happen automatically. When you build, say, a life support device, you have enter connections mode to connect it to the rest of the station. The way you connect these devices isnt really physical, rather, its more of a logical connection. The equipment obviously needs to be physically connected to function, but youre not physically routing oxygen lines. Rather, the modules all have these connections hardwired into them, and youre merely telling the stuff where to go. You even have to hook up the logistics to the appropriate placeusually the main hubfor these things to function. I would have preferred this gameplay to exist differentlyeither as a menu where you can assign power/O2/heat, etc. based on an available pool, or be required to build physical attachments. The system thats currently in place feels like a halfway point between the twoits a little confusing and not very fun. Despite this, I do appreciate the level of control you have over each of the stations roomsand whether theyre heated, oxygenated, etc. Of course, youll want them habitable if you want people working in them.

Screenshot: Base One

Your station inhabitants will, of course, also want to stay alive. You can also make sure theyre not so miserable, either. People have their normal wants: an occupation, comfort, to be fed, water, and to eat and breathe. There are many dangers in space, however. Things like radiation and pollution have to be mitigated, and there is the threat of asteroids and even pirates. There seems to be an increasing trend in building and management games to add strategy and combat elements to these games. Thats okay while handled correctly, but Base Ones implementation is a little flat, and mostly involves running around building turret defenses. At least explosions look cool in space.

Production-wise, Base One isnt cutting edge, but its also a mix of modern and retro. I always tend to think space is pretty, and Base One doesnt mess it up with appropriate grand space vistasthough you dont get much of a look at them. Base One even has a compelling story, though not exactly original. The story is told in a way thats slightly old school, with animated talking heads whose lips move when they talk, but dont match the sounds coming out of them. It really feels like something from around or before the PS1 era, and while it seemed a little cheap at first grew on me quickly. I just wish I would have been able to see the story to its conclusion.

Screenshot: Base One

My biggest problem with Base One is its campaign. I really wish it worked, but I frequently ran into issues with objectives not completing, even when I met the criteria. In one mission, for instance, I had to build a medical facility to treat patients. I treated four out of seven of them, but then the number of treated patients dropped to three. Mind you, this is in the first full non-tutorial mission of the game. Base One does an excellent job of easing you into its style of building and management, but then it just doesnt work. I thought having the tutorial mode enabled was the problem, so after restarting my mission with it off I was able to complete it. And then the next mission, still with tutorial mode off, it didnt work, despite me doing everything it asked. My workers would occasionally just not perform any tasks, and despite diving into the UI to find out why, I couldnt reason it out. Im hoping my experience is unique, but I struggled to finish the first of three actsand ran out of patience. Sometimes I had to restart a mission three or more times for each step to finally complete successfully.

If Base Ones campaign didnt feel so broken, I would be able to recommend it. It might even be fixed by the time its fully released tomorrowI played it for longer than I had scheduled hoping it was something I was missing. Base One is a promising, more serious take on space station buildingand thats still something I really want to play.

Base One is available tomorrow on Steam.

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Review: Base One Is a Compelling but Flawed Space Station Builder - thirdcoastreview.com