The ship was burning. While I fought half a dozen Legion vessels, my crewmates were off-ship, taking the neighboring defense cannons to support our fleet. I wasn’t sure how long I could stay by myself, but the fire would get me if they didn’t. After locking in cruise control and pointing our C-3 Catamaran’s bow away from the battle, I exited the pilot’s seat and turned to see that the majority of the top level was on fire. Not much better were the lower decks.
I snatched up the nearest extinguisher and ran across the ship to put out the fire as quickly as possible. Luckily, Legion ships allowed me to catch my breath. After the fire was extinguished, I flipped us around. The remainder of my crew needed assistance, and cruise control had moved the Catamaran considerably further away from the activity than I had expected. We still lacked core integrity; a few strong impacts would make us simply another floating hulk that we had to pass to reach this area. However, I lacked the necessary supplies for repairs. You play the cards that are handed to you, even if it’s not a terrific hand. I turned on the boosters, prayed, and aimed the Catamaran’s nose toward the cannons and the Legion ships that surrounded them.
When you and your crew are just making it through a fire, fixing damaged thrusters, creating ammunition as quickly as your weapons can shoot it, and fending off attackers who have just jumped in to destroy your day, Jump Space shines. While the failures are typically at least memorable, the successes are thrilling. However, the limitations of the early access edition are evident on almost every task, much like a run that finishes early and leaves you wondering what may have been. The potential for an epic game is undeniable; the only questions are whether it will be realized and how long it will take.
But for the time being, Jump Space is unquestionably worth a quick journey through space.
Although there are characters in Jump Space, I couldn’t tell you their names without doing some research, except for your ship’s AI, Iris, and Buddy, a cute robot that goes on missions with you if your crew is lacking. In between missions, they offer you objectives, rewards, and some background information on the history of a robot revolt that forced mankind into exile, but as soon as you choose a mission from the galaxy map and leave, they swiftly fade from your memory. In situations where you and your team are barely making it, Jump Space shines.
A roguelike-style run with multiple jumps, each selected from a few paths on your route from your base to your destination, makes up each objective. Every decision closes some options and opens others, and every jump has its own rewards, such as ship parts, pieces of maps that reveal new areas of the galaxy, or artifacts that offer upgrades for that run, like healing your crew when they are near each other or returning damage absorbed by your ship’s shields to attackers. To maximize the items you’ll need for that run and what you want to bring back to the hangar as a permanent get, picking the appropriate route is essential.
Whether you’re navigating other ship wrecks and dodging a nearby star’s solar flare, fending off a fleet of Legion ships patrolling the sector, or just exploring an uninhabited sector and gathering supplies from the floating hulks around you before continuing, every jump also presents its own challenges. Playing, jumping out of your ship into the unknown, flying through space powered by your suit, using your grapple to drag yourself to a nearby buoy, or boarding a ship after disabling it is what makes this game so much fun.
While mastery enables you to effortlessly transition between zero-G flight, on-foot fighting, and piloting your spacecraft or manning its cannons, there’s also a sense of relaxation in searching a floating wreck that is fortunately free of malevolent robots or just enjoying a pizza that you prepared in the ship’s food processor with your crew. In many respects, Jump Space functions as an interactive chat room and a fun way to spend time with friends while playing a lighthearted cooperative game with a space theme.
Until the Legion appears, that is. Except for the “What just hit me?” or missile-barraging Corvettes, the majority of Legion ships Snipers can be easily dealt with one-on-one, but their numbers present a problem, as their name implies. Whether you’re avoiding tiny spider-bots that dart up to you before launching their flamethrowers or floating bots that swarm you from a distance, as well as anything from bipedal walkers to spider-tanks, it’s more difficult to navigate on foot. The on-foot assignments aren’t inherently more interesting, even though they can be far more challenging.
Except for movement choices, which aren’t always available because you require a point to grapple to or a location to activate the jet drive boosters in your suit, Jump Space is a very basic shooter with standard weaponry like machine guns, shotguns, and rifles. The game wouldn’t be noteworthy if it consisted solely of these foot-to-foot battles.
The best moments, however, combine all of that: fighting other ships, repelling boarders, or leaving half of your crew to activate an objective while the others protect your ship from attack; organizing repairs and who is in charge of what; using your limited resources to craft the right thing at the right time; and choosing to disassemble it to build what you need right now or save scrap for permanent resources when you return to your hanger.
Repetition is the main problem, which should be fixed in further content upgrades. It results in some enjoyable improvisation. When my crewmates needed to move between the cannons we were attempting to capture and hold, I wasn’t even landing the ship to pick them up; instead, I was just getting close enough for them to grapple to the ship before I got them close enough to launch themselves to the objective. This is how chaotic the mission I described in the opening was. We were too busy to do anything else. Repetition is the main problem that should be fixed in the next content upgrades, whether they take place on land or on a ship. It’s exciting the first time to move a lot of batteries or locate and put nuclear fuses to power a door, but it becomes less enjoyable after a few hours of play, and you can already approach a region and know precisely what the objective will be because that’s what always happens there.
Because you know what you’re going to get from the mission select screen and can avoid one if you’re sick of it, the big, run-ending finales—which can include defending a capital ship, firing those cannons, grabbing and ferrying cargo from a downed ship before Legion forces jump into the system, or even something as simple as playing King of the Hill to establish communications—hold their novelty longer. Unfortunately, since your decisions may force you to meet specific goals, it isn’t always true for the tasks you’ll need to complete during the en route leaps.
Then there’s early access to everything. Some of it is adorable, such as placeholder text that reads “Not Made :(” in the absence of an asset. Others, such as the instances in which Legion ships and bots transcend Euclidean space and pass through walls or asteroids unhindered, are less endearing. My initial reaction was, “Man, I wish I could do that!” until one of my friends really did, but got stuck in the ceiling during an on-foot segment, which isn’t as amusing as it sounds. Perhaps I missed something in the mythology that permits them to do that. It’s difficult to conclude that Jump Space’s airlocks are completely sealed when you add in the regular disconnects and crashes that frequently cost my buddies’ progress.
Additionally, it lacks some features that you might anticipate from a game of this type, such as the ability to purchase artifacts for your runs before they begin (they are teased but not yet available), the restricted number of ships that can be piloted, and personalization choices. In almost fifteen hours, it was the only additional item we discovered that appeared to be helpful, but I really enjoy being able to mount another railgun on the Catamaran. I haven’t yet seen a reactor that is comparable to the Split Reactor you start with, but yes, more reactors are cool (and it’s interesting to play Tetris with your components to figure out how to power everything).
The way Buddy uses his little pistol to defeat the Legion bots and then trash-talks them? Perfect.
The Catamaran feels superior to even the second ship you receive, the faster and smaller DT-4 Dart. I can see why it would be appealing to single or two-player players, but from what we could see, it lacked important features like an ammo replenishment station, and it was nearly impossible to move about the outside of the ship—a problem when you have to go outside to fix something. My crewmates detested it so badly that we abandoned the ship and switched back to our cherished C-3 halfway through a run.
However, there are also many wise choices. The missions scale well with the number of players, and it appears that having a crew of two is much less likely to result in serious ship problems than having a crew of three, which is easier to handle. I also adore Buddy, who will not only assist on the ship when only two humans are playing, but will even get off the ship to assist you in an on-foot battle if you’re flying alone. And when you hear him disparaging the Legion bots after he defeats them with his small pistol, or when he brings you back to life and then gives you a little fist bump? Perfect.
There, that’s my boy. Ride or perish. I had assumed that performing solo would be a chore, but Buddy made it anything but. In between missions, you may even play soccer in the hangar, complete with speech for when you score or unintentionally kick the ball into the next canyon. Even if you are downed because you held an irradiated fuse for too long and are pleading with your buddies to save you, or if you are unable to escape an exploding spacecraft in time and are left drifting in space, waiting to be revived, it’s still an amusing game. And being able to sit on the toilet and survive a jump that requires you to be seated? Talk about taking risks.
Beyond the technical issues and early access growth pains, the length of some missions is my biggest grievance. Although there are missions that last 20 minutes, most of them begin at 40 minutes, and you will frequently come across ones that last an hour or longer. That’s a significant commitment, particularly if you fail and forfeit the majority of your gains. The starter gun isn’t horrible in and of itself, but you notice when you lose all of your other, more expensive weapons and have to make new ones or find them. This also applies to a mission that you may need to repeat. I don’t mean that failure and friction shouldn’t occur; I just wish there were more short missions for when I’m not ready to spend an entire evening on a single run.
Verdict
Even if your beginning ship is still under development, I really like what’s here after finishing Jump Space’s first early access chapter, testing out both of its ships, and spending about fifteen hours traveling the stars. It’s most enjoyable in a group, partly because cooperative games are nearly always played in groups and also because there are many calm moments where it’s essentially a peaceful chat room in space. Even when things became busy or glitchy, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying playing this ship almost all the time, even though some aspects require some work.
If you and your team cooperate, play intelligently, and get lucky, you can overcome the situation even when it seems hopeless and everything is on fire. Although there is still work to be done to get Jump Space shipshape and add variation to its mission objectives, the game has already demonstrated that its premise is successful. This is the kind of moment a game like this needs to be able to produce if it is to succeed.
