PREVIEW: Space Crew! on PC

Preview by Jon Donnis

I was sent a preview key for Space Crew on Steam (PC) by Renaissance PR

The first thing you will notice about Space Crew is it is clearly a salute to Star Trek.

You take control of a small space ship, your job is to defend Earth and mankind, and to boldly go where no "crew" has gone before. Sound familiar?

This is the most important view you will have while playing the game, and it is the one that you will need to get a grip on. You click on various crew members and give them instructions, whether that be to control the weapons while fighting alien invaders, using the tractor beam, fixing the engines, tackle fires, repair systems and so on, you control the character by either directly clicking on them, or using the panel on the left side of the screen.

Each action you do does have an effect on parts of the ship, so if you put all your power into the shields, then you will lose gravity, engines and weapons, so sometimes you have to make a choice and decide how to balance your needs.

I have played through the first few missions in this Preview release, and my initial thoughts are that although the controls could be better, the game does have potential, you will fly between Earth and Mars on the initial mission, you switch between the internal view of the ship and an external view, on the external view you can select enemies to fire at, or warp gates that allow you to travel between areas, you will transport goods and so on.

Once you complete missions you can upgrade your crew with various equipment, appearances and so on.

You can also customize your spaceship, improve the shields, engine, weapons and so on.

The Good

The graphics are clear, and everything is perfectly fine in the looks and sounds department.

The Bad

The controls could be better, I wasn't keen on them and was forever trying to figure out what to click to get back to an option I previously had on screen, however the more you play the more you will get used to them, I just think they could be a bit more fluid from the start, although the game will "train" you how to play, what to click and so on as you go along.

Summary

The game has a lot of potential, but it also has a long way to go to be the finished article.

I am reliably informed that there will be a DAY 1 patch for Space Crew which will include bug fixes, quality of life improvements and additional gameplay content, so I look forward to seeing what extra they add to the game.