space-engineers
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MMO Burnout: Engineers in spaaace
I missed the whole Minecraft craze. I was stupidly grinding my virtual life away in various MMORPGs, plus I couldn't get past Minecraft's so-fugly-it's-hip aesthetic. No matter, though, because Space Engineers takes Minecraft's core concepts and dolls them up with pleasing visuals, a nifty near future sci-fi setting, and addictive gameplay that's much more than the sum of its parts.
Space Engineers assemble a million sales
A million people have picked up their Space Engineers license, according to developer Keen Software House. The game celebrates the sales milestone in conjunction with its one year anniversary of availability on Steam Early Access, where it still resides. "Looking to the future, Space Engineers will remain in development for a while longer," Keen Software noted today. "Focusing on adding new features and bug fixing and also continue taking feedback and suggestions from the community who is helping to further improve and expand the game."
The Daily Grind: What did you accomplish in your games this weekend?
This past weekend I played a little Marvel Heroes, a lot of Space Engineers, a bit of War Thunder, and a few other things that I can't justify writing about on an MMO site. I gained some Storm levels in MH and got a few nice drops, but I had the most fun building up my outpost in SE and inviting a friend into my game to serve as my mining slave help me design and craft a few essentials. What about you, Massively readers? What did you accomplish in your MMOs or multiplayer games over the weekend? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Stick and Rudder: Even more sims to fill the Star Citizen void
I was hoping to use this week's column to talk in glowing terms about Star Citizen's newly released racing mechanics. The only problem with that plan is that Arena Commander 0.9 hasn't launched just yet, purportedly on account of a few pesky bugs that Cloud Imperium is still in the process of squashing. Sooo, I thought I'd dust off an old Stick and Rudder standard wherein we talk about which genre games are worth playing while we're waiting on the "best damn space sim ever."
An influx of Xbox One indies: Superhot, Goat Simulator [UPDATE: Many trailers added!]
Microsoft's indie development initiative, ID@Xbox, is bringing in a bunch of games to launch first on console on Xbox One, including Superhot, Goat Simulator, Dungeon of the Endless, No Time to Explain and Smite. Peek the full list of games ID@Xbox head Chris Charla announced during the Xbox Gamescom press conference below:
Joystiq Streams: Space Engineers and the horror of the void [UPDATE: Relive the stream!]
At the moment, NASA is building a new Mars rover to launch sometime around 2020. The little robot successor to the Curiosity rover, who's still chilling on the red planet collecting rocks and looking for water, will cost about $1.5 billion to make. The Center for Strategic and International studies, a foreign policy think tank, estimates that an internationally backed moon base will cost about $35 billion to build and around $7.4 billion to maintain year-round. In short: Space is expensive, y'all. If we're going to get our plans for a Joystiq party house built on Titan by 2017, we'd better get cracking and think economically. Keen Software House's Space Engineers is helping us cut costs by letting the Joystiq crew build all kinds of space ships and exoplanetary facilities in a safe, consequence free environment. Maybe we're going to build an 80-story party house on an asteroid! Who will stop us? Maybe you will, since we're giving away multiple copies of the game at 4PM EST on Twitch.tv/Joystiq. Come hang with us as we stream Space Engineers alongside creator Marek Rosa at 4PM EST on the Joystiq Twitch channel and right here at Joystiq.com. Free games and wild space dreams; what more do you need? Joystiq Streams broadcasts every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST.
Space Engineers touches down on Steam Early Access
Space Engineers, the sandbox engineering simulator dedicated to living out your "what if?" scenarios in space, has made contact with Steam Early Access. Players who dive in now will be able to suggest improvements as developer Keen Software House approaches the game's official liftoff. Exploring Space Engineers is a lot like exploring space, in that you're not really sure how things work until you watch a terrifying movie see for yourself. Players take on daring missions like the maintaining of space stations, constructing ships, and generally trying not to blow everything up. When frustrations peak, the game can also be played as a tactical shooter, but Keen Software expects players "to avoid engaging in direct man-to-man combat and instead use their creativity and engineering skills to build war machines and fortifications." So in other words, if you're going to fight, do it once you figure out how to build an awesome weapon. The forces of gravity and electricity are realistically implemented while building with the game's provided blocks, so it seems like you'll need to think your crafts through instead of just building shoddy abominations. PC owners can currently launch themselves into Space Engineers' universe for $14.99 and will gain access to the full version once it's released.
