Space Colony Review

You'd think that in the future, your boss could afford some contact lenses.

Within thirty seconds of loading up Space Colony for the first time you will know the tone of the game. The cheesy but pleasant musack kicks in and you’re left with the vista of a space colony, with some kind of furry tribble jumping around in front of it. Serious, no. Goofy, yes.

It’s like one of those maths equations you did when you were at school. If a space ship carrying 'The Sims' was flying from Pluto at 300 km/sec and met a space ship travelling from Earth with the cast of 'Futurama' at 450 km/sec and they crashed into one another, what would be the result? Never mind what speed they were travelling at when they finally met, this game is what the survivors would end up doing when they jettisoned down to a nearby planet run by Sid Meier.

We few, we proud, we downright weird.

Build and maintain relationships to keep your workers productive.

Space Colony is, in other words, a good-humoured micro management game with a cast of twenty (somewhat) likeable characters, where you build and manage their space colony to accomplish a number of set goals per scenario. When you play in the campaign mode, your space colony is carried over from mission to mission right through the campaign. There is also the galaxy mode, which consists of twenty-four extra missions, within sixteen mini campaigns. These are split into three categories: economic, military and people. Colonists are selected for you at the beginning, but you can use points to get extra colonists of your choice. Added to all of this is the Sandbox mode, which basically allows you to build a base and fiddle about fulfilling every space colony-building whim you ever had.

In order to succeed you have to manage your colony crew. Each mission can add or subtract new colonists to your roster. Instead of being simple drones to impose your will on, the designers have seen fit to give each of the colonists an individual personality and appearance. The main colonist is a comely female, Venus, while the rest of the motley crew is made up of, amongst others, a Norwegian biker, a Hillbilly farmer, a phased-out hippy, a chain smoking drunk, and Barbie’s evil twin, Candy.

In Space No-one Can Hear You Clean

The bridge is the center of your operation.

Each colonist can be assigned to a primary job and a secondary job. These jobs include operating the power console, managing the colony’s oxygen, harvesting food, mining and cleaning up the litter in the building. Your job is to keep most of the people happy most of the time and then they do their jobs efficiently. Mostly.

To make it harder, each colonist builds or un-builds relationships with their peers and you will need to keep an eye on them to make sure things don’t fall apart. Add to this the task of training them and keeping them happy by buying them things and you will find plenty to keep you busy on the personnel front.

Have I mentioned the aliens yet? Right. There are aliens that keep trying to invade and you need to build your base while keeping them at bay and repairing the damage they inflict. This includes repairing equipment, and personnel as these aliens range in damage infliction definition from 'Mostly Harmless' to 'Downright Menace'.

Don’t worry; you do have defensive lasers, missile solos and mechanical guard dogs to help you keep everyone safe. Of course, that depends on the unhinged owner of Blackwater Industries (i.e. your boss) deciding to release the funds for them.

I’m a doctor Jim, not a Human Resources Manager.

This scenery looks interesting. Make your mark with the world editor.

Sound like hard work? It’s really quite fun, if rather old school gaming. In fact it’s not only the gameplay that seems a bit nostalgia laden, but the developers have chosen to forgo the usual 3D interface in favour of an isometric viewpoint with large colourful 2D graphics. Each character is large and distinct, right down to their custom bedspreads.

The characters have distinct voices and custom comments depending on their mood and their surroundings. Some of these do start to get a bit irritating after a while, but it’s not a major problem. The sound effects could have been pillaged from a dozen eighties sci-fi TV shows. Musically, there is a blend of elevator style music that sets the tone so that if the silly characters weren’t an immediate hint, you pretty soon get the idea that the game is definitely not taking itself too seriously.

Although Space Colony doesn’t push the envelope when it comes to gaming, it’s a pleasant enough diversion for a while. Whether most gamers will be up to playing such an old school game is going to depend entirely on their tastes. On the other hand, it’s not particularly violent nor complicated and younger gamers could play it too.