The Spatials Review (PC)

very good
key review info
  • Game: The Spatials
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: No
  • Reviewed on:
The Spatials screenshot

The Spatials is a brand-new indie favorite of mine that blends several genres together in a pretty pleasing overall manner and packs plenty of punch for its minuscule size.

I've always been a fan of city building and management games, especially when you get a sort of Theme Hospital vibe from looking at their screenshots, and all the additional elements around that, such as the role-playing and space exploration mechanics, made me genuinely intrigued.

Having to build and maintain a space resort while at the same time managing a sort of Star Trek-like landing team that goes into missions, getting money and resources on the side, sounds like a pretty challenging task.

All this complexity, together with the fact that indie games tend to sometimes overshoot and spread their focus, also translated into a healthy dose of skepticism on my part. Making Theme Park in space is challenging enough on its own, and adding guns to the whole affair makes it even harder to pull off.

Fortunately, the game does enough right to overlook some of the polish and convenience features it's missing, as no indie darling is without its problems. So let's see what it is exactly that The Spatials has to offer.

Infinite ice cream for everyone!
Infinite ice cream for everyone!

The setting

It's the 58th century and the principles of tourism haven't changed much. Your home is on a piece of rock floating through space, and you set out to create a great resort in order to generate revenue, the engine of progress.

In addition to this, you also have to expand the limits and reach of human civilization, to meet new alien races, entice them to come visit, and discover new ways in which to treat customers, in order to make your business more profitable and extend your domain.

You need to plan your base attentively, from sleeping space to the numerous attractions that your visitors will want to turn their attention to, and, of course, the wide array of manufacturing facilities that those attractions will require.

When everything is running smoothly, your bank account will see a steady flow of credits, and you'll be able to expand more rapidly, and extend the array of services you are able to offer, thus increasing the aforementioned flow.

Gameplay

The space station management part is pretty straightforward. You start out with a handful of potential rooms, and you lay down floor plans, after which your trusty crewmen come and build everything. You then populate the designated rooms with the appropriate furniture, decorations and other amenities, and you're set.

The actual building is very intuitive, as one would expect, everything is divided into specialized categories, and you place rooms, place corridors between them, and then instruct each working station and doodad what to build, how much of it to make, and so on and so forth.

Oh noes, an unforeseen plot twist!
Oh noes, an unforeseen plot twist!

You can even go as far as to designate a specific personnel member as the only one able to use a certain item, and can set up roadblocks so that tourists don't go wandering into production areas and lose valuable time goofing around.

Things are usually pretty clean-cut, there are rooms that make things and rooms that dispense them, so you can separate the shiny front offices and amenities from the sweat shops where your crew members toil, in order to streamline the visitor experience.

Things start out pretty chilled, but then as you progress, you will have to manage incoming resources in order to balance out your needs and make the most out of the limited space on your tiny asteroid homeworld.

The other part of the game revolves around a squad-based real-time quest-solving and space pirate shooting adventure, where you blast things in the face and get resources and money in return. All the shooting and looting action is thankfully happening off-base, in away missions on various planets in the galaxy, and you can move back and forth between your home asteroid and the away team with the click of a button.

This means that you will always have something to do and introduces a neat dynamic where everything is happening in real time, and when you're just waiting for the money to pile up in order to build something new, you can go on a mission or two instead of having to resort to speeding the game up or doing something else entirely.

The missions are also a quick way to gain experience points for your crew, alongside some credits and resources. After you perform the first successful mission on a given planet in a star system, you are able to harvest the resources available there.

Another advantage of doing ground missions, in addition to making new star systems available for exploration, is the fact that you are awarded research points, necessary for getting more stuff for your station.

This all comes at a price, of course, and if the first few patches of land are somewhat affordable, if you want to milk a planet for all it has, the costs quickly ramp up.

This cost can be mitigated by placing up to three administrators in charge of each star system, increasing the rate at which you gain the resources you already paid for, but the catch is that each new star system requires an even more talented individual than the one before.

This means that you also have to train your crew, either by sending them on ground missions or on other kinds of tasks where they can accrue the necessary experience points to level up, alongside some other goodies.

The downside to that is that each of the missions that you don't control has a certain fee associated with it, turning everything into a pretty delicate balancing act that revolves around the judicious use of resources and currency and, above all, proper planning.

Ground missions and pacing

The various missions that you'll be doing on the planets you discover as you venture deeper into the uncharted galaxy looking for new recruits and resources will usually consist of shooting something in the face after faffing about while the characters deliver humorous banter, offering a ton of personality to the game.

The actual format is pretty formulaic, you get to assign a Doctor, Strategist, Engineer, Diplomat and Scientist to your ship, and then you step in and do various things that the local population asks of you on procedurally generated maps.

Pleasing everyone is pretty difficult
Pleasing everyone is pretty difficult

Each of the classes can be outfitted with several unique abilities, from restoring health points to restoring the energy necessary for performing the special abilities, and as you progress, you can also equip new items, making your team perform better in combat situations.

In addition to this, as your crew members level up, they also become more gifted at whatever needs doing around the base, and they can be assigned as ambassadors on already visited star systems, in order to increase the rate at which resources are gathered.

Another advantage of doing ground missions, in addition to making new star systems available for exploration, is the fact that you are awarded research points, necessary for getting more stuff for your station.

There's a pretty big tech tree to explore, but fortunately, with the way the game is laid out, it never feels overwhelming. You get some very basic stuff in the beginning, and then you gradually progress and unlock more things to add to your base and attract more alien races with different needs and objectives.

I quite enjoyed the laid back pace and gradual nature of the game, that organically replaces the traditional single-player campaign that you would go through before heading to the sandbox mode in other games in the genre.

All in all, missions are pretty easy, fun to do, even if a bit repetitive, and it makes for a great way to spend the time needed for your base to make money. However, they're not just an extra, but an integral part of the experience, and if you'd rather not be bothered with anything other than base building, they might be a deal breaker.

The automated Contracts can level up your crew without the need to send them in perilous ground missions, but you still need the research points you get from them.

Sound and visuals

The isometric viewpoint and the cutesy cartoonish graphics are a throwback to the greats of the genre, where everything is simplistic but crisp and neat-looking. The base is bustling with people doing various jobs or hanging out in vacation, and you can follow the little critters around while they do their thing.

The ground missions use a variety of different palettes and effects, and even though most of the wildlife and enemies start becoming repetitive, it still looks bright and fun, especially since everything is so packed with detail.

The simplistic visuals are also of great help due to the fact that everything is pretty crowded and tiny, making it easy to manage your base and crew in spite of the large number of doodads that are on the screen at any given time.

The interface is a little cumbersome, as there are numerous things that can be improved, including having regular reports, statistics and scroll bars, but overall it's pretty functional.

Jumping from shooting a Dungeons & Dragons alien Evil Eye to outfitting your crew, sending them on new Contract missions or laying down the plans for a new cafeteria can be done by seamlessly jumping from one interface screen to the other, which is what matters most.

The music is pretty good, having an eerie feeling that lends itself to the exploration of the great unknown, and the sounds are generally appropriate, minus some of the really annoying blaster noises that can make your ears bleed.

In any case, you get relevant audio feedback for every little thing that you do, which is always a plus, and the sound design does an overall pretty good job of rendering The Spatials experience complete.


The Good

  • A ton of humor
  • Easy to pick up
  • Combat doesn't feel threatening
  • Cute visuals
  • Gets the theme park part right

The Bad

  • Lacks depth
  • Becomes repetitive after a while
  • Feels too casual

Conclusion

The Spatials isn't a terribly challenging game. It instead offers a laid back experience where you relax and explore, playing at a leisurely pace, instead of juggling responsibilities and facing disasters and times of crisis.

Even the combat is pretty stress free, and as long as you don't over-extend, it's never too complicated, as it was clearly never designed to be the focus of the game. However, once you spend more time with it, you start noticing its lack of depth.

In short, you can never fail at the game, just hit a rough patch, or have an unhappy crew member leave. A temporary shortage of resources can never make your dreams crumble in the way it does in other city-building games.

There's no domino effect where a bad decision or momentary shortcoming can have rippling effects throughout the game, which, when combined with the cute and simplistic art style, makes me think that the game would sit pretty comfortably on a tablet.

The Spatials is about building a space base at your own pace and doing a couple of humorous missions while waiting for more money. But it's enough, as it offers enough variety to keep you interested, and if you're not the kind of person who lives for drama, it's a really fun time sink.

The base space colonization / theme park management game is enriched by all the extra elements, making The Spatials a unique and very fun game. It doesn't break any design molds, but it does innovate enough to be a worthwhile time sink, especially with its lighthearted personality.

It does have numerous tiny flaws, the biggest of which being its casual, loose design, but the fact that it's one of the only Star Trek tourist trap simulators out there more than makes up for any minor shortcomings.

story 6
gameplay 8
concept 8
graphics 7
audio 7
multiplayer 0
final rating 8
Editor's review
very good
 

The Spatials screenshots (27 Images)

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