Unitystation is the latest attempt to make Space Station 13
The space sim cult classic deserved a bigger audience
I fear that at this point, a lot of people will look at Unitystation and think, "Oh, it's an Among Us rip-off", but no! It is in fact another attempt at making Space Station 13 happen again. Specifically, it's an open source effort to recreate cult classic Space Station 13 in Unity, and its latest development video suggests they're making good progress.
The video shows lots of recently added features, including new playable antagonists such as space wizards and a sentient blob that can spread and take over the ship. There's also a blue banana peel that you can stand on which will teleport you to a random location - with the possibility that the location will be outside, in the vacuum of space.
As always, it's the UI updates I'm most interested in, and it looks as if they've made several changes that would make the game easier to play.
That's important. Space Station 13, if you're unaware, was a topdown, science fiction, multiplayer roleplaying game. Every player selects a role to perform onboard a space station, from captain to engineer, bartender to janitor, and a lot more. Almost every object in the world can then be picked up, manipulated or used in some way.
Around ten years ago, this was a recipe for a lot of fun roleplaying stories and cult success. Quinns (RPS in peace) had a go at being a galactic bartender, with fun results. But the game was also fiddly to play, never found the enormous audience it maybe deserved, and there have been multiple failed attempts to revive it since.
Unitystation seems to be going well so far. There's a rough alpha build available, a Patreon for those who want to help fund its creation, and it's aiming to launch in an early access form on Steam before the end of 2021.
If it still looks a bit too rough for you, the next best thing is probably Barotrauma, a thoroughly modern submarine jape sim that Nate enjoyed a lot.