Exciting news folks, it looks like Space Engineers may not be limited to just the standard Windows PC platform. Gamers excited about the physics-based space exploration game, Space Engineers, can take some solace in knowing that the “Minecraft in space” crafting game could make an appearance on the new gen consoles and SteamOS once it gets out of the Early Access program.
No sense wasting time. We contacted Keen Software House and their marketing manager George Mamakos revealed that...
“...yes, porting the game into next-gen consoles is something that we are considering (among other platforms as well, such as Mac, Linux), but for later when the game will be close to its completion. There are other priorities for the team now and we are trying to focus just on them.”
This is awesome news for anyone who has become a fan of the game or wanted to become a fan but was limited by the hardware specs on their PC. Despite using angular voxels to design and craft space ships, the game is extremely taxing on PCs, even high-end rigs with a lot of graphics processing power.
The reason the game takes up so many resources is because unlike Minecraft, the game's creations can move. That's right, you can design and build a ship, make it as big or as small as you like and then make it go “vroom!” by putting some propulsion reactors on it and a few big laser cannons to ward off the baddies.
But that's not all...
There are a ton of Minecraft clones out there that let you build things, some of which even let you make them move; but Space Engineers takes it a step further by allowing for procedural physics-based destruction. What this means is that your ship can take damage based on the amount of mass that interacts with it. If a small ship bangs the side of your titan-class destroyer, the only thing that will happen is that the small ship will put a small dent on the side and then blow up. Now if you take a medium sized corvette and charge full speed into the side of a dreadnaught, you'll actually get some hull damage, maybe even a large enough breach where the insides start falling out.
As you can imagine, if you can mixing and matching those concepts, you can easily see how Space Engineers has a huge amount of potential for emergent, multiplayer gameplay. Throw in custom made star stattions like the Deep Space 9 outfit or titan-classes from EVE Online and you can see just how intense, dynamic and unpredictably fun Space Engineers could be. Multiplying that fun on new gen consoles could be even better.
Also, I'm going to go ahead and say it: this would be wicked awesome on the Wii U. Using the Gamepad to construct and build while the main screen is used to control your space engineer would be pretty awesome.
I'm still putting in my time with the game so I'll toss out more hands-on impressions as I play through it, but for now you can at least take some solace in knowing that the new generation consoles are not off the table for Keen Software House's Space Engineers. You can pick up a digital copy of the game right now from Steam's Early Access program (and the game really is still in early development stages, so it's still quite bare-bones despite being uber-fun) or you can visit the official website for more information.
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