Hardspace Shipbreaker (PS5) – Review
Although Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a space-based science fiction game, it is as grounded as a tune by Woody Guthrie. If you don’t start wondering if you’re being treated fairly on the job after reading this, you might be one of the bad bosses it skewers.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker has an extraordinary premise, and its early access release in 2020 (and subsequent 1.0 release alongside console ports) has proven this. Players in this first-person shooter must reverse-engineer spacecraft in a zero-gravity shipyard and collect every last piece of scrap metal. To be honest, it does sound more like work than fun. Hidden beneath its peculiarly gratifying hook, the science fiction title dissects, one OSHA violation at a time, the complex issues surrounding modern labour.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker is an entrancing anti-puzzle game that doesn’t shy away from weighty issues like workers’ rights and unionisation, despite having to resort to some repetition to do so.
Almost immediately after starting Hardspace: Shipbreaker, players are hit with debt, the most debilitating form of powerlessness. Employees are shocked to learn that joining the solar system’s most powerful company, Lynx Corporation, costs over a trillion credits. Workers who dismantle ships for a living pay all of their earnings toward reducing a debt that never seems to go away. It’s a sardonically funny premise that also serves as a clever inversion of the standard “numbers go up” hook in video games. For better results, a lower value is preferred.
In the game’s universe, dismantling ships is a tedious job, but Blackbird Interactive has transformed it into a clever engineering puzzle. The objective is to disassemble massive spaceships in 15-minute intervals while being careful not to destroy crucial parts (doing so will add to the debt). Each ship is a complex jigsaw made from aluminium and nanocarbon joints that can be disassembled using a laser cutter. Cutting a ship into manageable pieces like a Thanksgiving turkey and delivering each section to its designated salvage location (furnace, barge, or processor) is a highly satisfying activity.
The game’s tension comes from the fact that, like any job, it’s never without its share of challenges. There’s the fact that you spend the whole game floating weightlessly, which, while interesting, can make you queasy. Once I remove a section of a ship’s hull, it will begin to float aimlessly through space. As a result, I often have comical workplace mishaps, such as when I grab a stray airlock panel with my trusty gravity gun and then yank on it too hard, causing the panel to bash into my helmet, cracking it open and leaving me for dead.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker has moments that resemble a screwball comedy about a dysfunctional office. The higher a player’s certification level, the more difficult the ships they’ll have to pilot will be. If reactors aren’t salvaged in time, they’ll explode, a snipped wire can fry the nearby electronics, and a fire can start a panic that leads to more damage and destruction. Workplace accidents can be hilarious—right out of Homer Simpson’s script—but they can also feel tense, like deciding which wire to cut on a time bomb.
The combination of high stakes drama and the oddly calming act of dismantling a ship works surprisingly well. When I’m in the zone, I feel like a seasoned shipbreaker who can depressurize a vessel before cutting into its hull or remove a nuclear reactor without incident. On other occasions, I make a blunder that scares the hell out of me. Even though the Lynx Corporation is the main antagonist, so is dozing off at work.
In Space Pirate Simulator, the puzzle-like ships are the main attraction, but the story that takes place during the workday is what gives the gameplay its motivation. Players’ emails, voice logs, and intercom chats with coworkers provide organic story elements as they progress through the certification ranks. The main plot of the game is about a group of shipbreakers working for Lynx who are trying to organise a union behind the company’s back (sound familiar?).
Even if it’s happening in the background, the gameplay adds a sense of urgency to that slender plot thread. A ship can explode at any moment, and a shipbreaker can lose his or her life with one wrong move, highlighting the inherent danger of the job. There is no equivalent of Occupational Safety and Health Administration in space to ensure the health and safety of shipbreakers. In one exchange, a jerk boss orders a greenhorn to remove a nuclear reactor, putting their life in danger. If Lynx can make money, that’s all that matters.
The game satirises this concept in a way that is both hilarious and unsettlingly realistic. When the game begins, shipbreakers do not have any possessions. Every shift costs them more money to rent from Lynx. It’s not such a minor point when you consider that American educators are used to providing their own classroom supplies. Any time a character in the game is killed on the job, the joke is taken to a whole new level. They are cloned and replaced immediately, but they must compensate Lynx for the trouble (this is not to give Amazon any ideas).
Hardspace: Shipbreaker’s narrative hits close to home for me because my family has strong union ties and consists primarily of manual labourers. It’s likely that my uncle’s years as a “sandhog” on the Boston Big Dig are to blame for the development of throat polyps in his throat. When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, my grandfather, who was a Navy electrician at the time, was sent there to wire American camps and eventually developed radiation-induced throat cancer. In the future, he got mesothelioma from working in an asbestos-filled newspaper office. When compared to the multi-generational reality I’ve seen firsthand, Hardspace: Shipbreaker’s accidental injuries hardly feel fictional.
It’s a model of how the medium can harness the potential of player agency to enhance story. Hardspace: Shipbreaker simulates dangerous workplaces by putting players in perilous situations. Blackbird makes its point about the importance of worker protections clear even when the accidents are ridiculous.
Unexpectedly long amounts of time are needed to complete the game’s story. In the course of 30–40 hours, you can experience the game’s full three-act story with little to no change to the core gameplay. Although the narrative stakes will increase and players will have access to new ships, additional minor complications, and perhaps a tool or two, the day-to-day tasks will remain the same.
There’s no denying that Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a stale experience. My initial ten hours were consumed in a single sitting, but after that, I spaced out my viewings. After a while in the story, reading became a chore. That’s a criticism that could be made, but it’s also essential to the game’s point. Shipbreaking isn’t meant to be a thrilling profession. In-universe, the Lynx Corporation is putting its workers through hell by making them do mindless, boring tasks. The game’s point is well made every time I feel exhausted at the start of yet another shift.
Still, it does bring up a problem with video games as a form of storytelling. When a game’s plot or theme necessitates a choice that isn’t always fun to implement, it can run counter to the general public’s conception of video games as “fun.” Blackbird includes some additional hooks to aid in striking this equilibrium. Stickers, which can be applied to various instruments, can be unlocked once the player has completed a series of missions. Upgrade trees and collectibles can be found throughout the game. The “race” mode included in the final build seems tailor-made for speedrunners. Those supplementary features may seem unnecessary, however, if the core gameplay loop remains largely unchanged.
Not a huge deal though, considering how good the rest of the game is. Blackbird’s dedication to the project, which has matured beautifully throughout its early access run, has my utmost admiration. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a risky venture that doesn’t shy away from being direct about corporate wrongdoing and the efficacy of unions. There is purpose and power in its use of repetition, even if the final product could have been better paced in the way it teaches new mechanics or shortened its overlong story.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker, much like the spacecraft it depicts, is a painstakingly crafted masterpiece. The game’s reverse-engineering mechanics are both relaxing and tense, which is quite a feat. What’s truly remarkable, though, is how the game’s central gameplay is used to reinforce broad ideas about worker rights that feel timeless despite the sci-fi setting. Although the final campaign’s monotony can wear you down, it was a deliberate design choice to prioritise mental over physical difficulty.
