Space Crew review
Space Crew’s bouts of tactical damage control are a masterclass in controlled chaos. They’re hampered by a lack of choice in the management segments between them, but not enough to put too big a dent in the fun.
- Developer: Runner Duck
- Publisher: Curve Digital
- Release: October 15th, 2020
- On: Windows
- From: Steam
- Price: £TBC/€TBC/$TBC
When three-man studio Runner Duck released management-tactics game Bomber Crew in 2017, it was rightly praised for turning the “move people around the parts of a large vehicle in an ever-increasing state of panic” aspect of roguelite classic FTL into a whole game. Followup Space Crew takes the action back into space. And while there’s a superficial level of similarity to FTL, with reactor power bars to be allocated, fires to be extinguished with atmosphere vents and all the rest, it’s a different beast.
Crucially, it’s built around the time-honoured structure of bracketing missions with time in a central hub, where you use space coins to upgrade your ship, its crew, their gear and their skills. That back and forth between frantic space missions and dopamine-soaked downtime at HQ is what makes Space Crew so compelling – but it’s also the source of some major, if fixable, limitations.