Classic Fallout fans might enjoy Space Wreck, which launches out of early access today
Fight nobody or everybody in vintage-styled space CRPG
If you've been gunning for a CRPG in the classic Baldur's Gate or Fallout vein, and you don't have many leisure hours to spare, you might get a kick out of Space Wreck. Created by Latvia-based Pahris Entertainment, it launches out of Early Access today with a brace of Very Positive reviews, tantalising perma-hungover Disco Elysium players like me with flirtatious mention of "an intentionally short", very non-linear campaign in which combat is totally optional and there are "three to eight ways" to complete any quest. "It's okay to fail," you say? Every NPC can be killed, even those apparently central to the story? Be still my beating heart.
As you may have guessed, Space Wreck is set in space - the post-apocalyptic kind of space, with a peeling-paint aesthetic that is more reminiscent of the Baikonur Cosmodrome than Alien. It unfolds across the drifting fragments of a trashed space station, two decades after a massive war between factions of asteroid miners. Having created a character by assigning points to such skills and traits as Charm, Physical and Computer Skills, you are given more-or-less free rein of the map, zipping about in a spaceship that resembles a beheaded Space Shuttle.
Your character does have a single overarching objective - get the hell out of here - but it sounds like you can come at it from any angle. "There is no single true path to the end," the Steam page notes. "If you know where to go, and what to do - you can try to sequence break the game. Combine that with multiple solutions to every quest and you've got freedom to spare."
Interested? There's a demo on the Steam page - helpfully, they've labelled the in-game area it covers on the below image.
I'm not sure whether we're reviewing this, but I do like the looks of it. The in-game methods of mission completion described are quite familiar - hacking, pick-pocketing, win people over in dialogue, etc - but I really like the environment art.
I'm also quite keen on the HUD - a fetching assemblage of square LED fonts and crackling MS-DOS/Macintosh-style character portraits, with animated flourishes like hands rolling dice when you perform a skill check. It helps that it's quite cheap right now - £12.14, $14.44 or €14.01, including the launch discount.
Update: Hang about, Sin's already written up the early access version of this! Though you'll need to be that most enlightened of beings, an RPS Supporter, to view her thoughts. Sin's pre-1.0 verdict was that "if the bugs can be ironed out, and perhaps more crucially, the save system reorganised, this could easily become one of the best RPGs of its kind."