Space Engineers

''Space Engineers'' is a voxel-based sandbox game, developed and published by Czech independent developer Keen Software House. In 2013, the initial developmental release of the game joined the Steam early access program. During the following years of active development, ''Space Engineers'' sold over one million units. As of 2024, the game has sold over 5 million copies.
In May 2015, for approximately a year and a half, the game's source code was officially available and maintained by KSH to assist the modding community.
On December 15, 2016, the game entered Beta and was later officially released on February 28, 2019.

Gameplay

In ''Space Engineers'', players begin by selecting or joining a world with customizable settings. These settings determine features such as the number and arrangement of asteroids, the inclusion of planets, and the starting equipment provided. During world creation, advanced options allow players to modify gameplay dynamics, such as tool and machine efficiency, inventory capacity, and whether procedural generation is enabled—effectively creating an infinite universe.

Once in-game, the player controls a customizable astronaut, known as a "Space Engineer," equipped with tools including a drill, welder, and grinder (if enabled). Gameplay revolves around the construction and management of voxel-based structures, starting with the placement of foundational blocks. Players can create grids by placing blocks freely in open space, which form the basis of ships, stations, or other constructs.

Each block has specific properties, serving structural, functional, aesthetic, or interactive roles. For example, armor blocks are the primary building material and can deform or be destroyed through collisions or weapon fire. Functional blocks, such as assemblers and refineries, require power, which can be generated by solar panels or reactors.

Structures and Grids

Players can create three types of structures:

* Small Grids: Used for small ships, rovers, and fine detailing, requiring fewer resources per block.
* Large Grids: Used for large ships, rovers and stations, enabling more robust and complex designs.
* Static Grids / Stations: Immovable structures anchored to a terrain voxels, which can be converted into ships if disconnected.

Grids are classified as small or large based on initial block size. A block intersecting terrain forms a station, and a stationary large grid ship can be converted to a station via the ship interface. Functional connections often use conveyors for resource and power transfer. Grids can connect through methods like connector blocks or landing gear.

All placeable objects can be colored before they are placed using a slider-based graphical user interface (GUI). Players can adjust the hue, saturation, and value of the color, allowing for a wide spectrum of options. There are 14 slots available to save new colors for future use within the same world.

Movement and Physics

Ships can be moved and rotated as long as they have power, a gyroscope, a thruster system, and a cockpit or remote control block. For effective movement and stabilization, thrusters must be placed in all six directions, and inertia dampeners can be enabled to assist in stopping motion automatically. Gyroscopes allow for rotational control, while additional thrusters enhance thrust and movement capabilities.

Astronauts can move freely in all environments using a jetpack, which allows for six degrees of motion: forward, backward, up, down, left, and right. In gravitational fields (natural or artificial), movement is restricted to a standard horizontal plane when the jetpack is disabled, mimicking standard terrestrial physics. "Mag-boots" enable players to walk on surfaces lacking gravity but will disengage upon jumping.

Resources and Environment

The environment includes editable voxel terrain like asteroids, planets, and moons, which can contain numerous resources. Players can mine these materials to craft components needed to make blocks and expand their grids. While asteroids lack gravity, planets and moons feature natural gravitational fields that affect players and ships. Artificial gravity can be generated on ships and asteroids using gravity generator blocks.

Asteroids and planets are made up of terrain voxels, which are significantly different from blocks. While players can destroy these terrain voxels, they cannot create them unless they are in creative mode. Celestial objects, such as planets and asteroids, are fixed in space and do not move. However, rock and mineral chunks that have been mined are affected by gravity and will react accordingly. Asteroids can take on various basic shapes, including spherical, toroidal, and rod-shaped forms, as well as other variations or combinations of these shapes.

Planets are somewhat resource-rich, though extraction of useful products from the surface can be difficult. Resources are spread out, and due to planetary gravity and the inefficiency of ion engines within the atmosphere, the player must build ground-based alternatives. Atmospheric flight is possible even on worlds with oxygen-deprived atmospheres. In order to leave a planet, the player will need to use hydrogen engines with sufficient fuel or build a hybrid spacecraft with atmospheric engines (for liftoff) and ion engines (upper atmosphere to space).

Planets in ''Space Engineers'' were released on November 12, 2015, after being in development since February 2015. There are several types of planets, themed after Earth, the Moon, Mars, Titan, Europa, and an "alien" planet. All of these feature multiple space stations that can be traded with for entire grids and materials or gases. The alien planets feature Sabiroids, hostile 6-legged, spider-like NPCs, and the Earth-like planet features wolves, hostile dog-like NPCs.

Creative mode

In creative mode, players are able to spawn unlimited resources, can instantly build tools and blocks, and are invincible. Some building tools, such as symmetry mode and copying and pasting of ships, are only available in this mode. Players are also able to build and manipulate asteroids or planets using a space tool known as "Voxel Hands." Although resources are available for collection and refinement, they are not required to create new ships or stations. Creative mode was initially the only mode available in the game. This mode eliminates the survival aspect of the game, allowing players to implement ideas quicker and easier. Grids that you build can also be, copied, pasted, or saved as blueprints.

Survival mode

In survival mode, players need to mine, collect, and refine various chemical elements from asteroids and planets in order to craft tools, weapons, and blocks as well as produce electricity. Resources can be mined manually using a hand drill, or by using ships with the necessary equipment. Components are produced by assembling them from raw materials; however, they can also be harvested by salvaging cargo ships. To avoid death, players must monitor their health, energy and oxygen levels. Damage can be inflicted on the player by collisions, weapons, contact with thrusters, meteor showers, or by running out of space suit energy. As the acceleration value of gravity generators stacks, damage from falling can be much more dangerous when multiple gravity generators are active. A player's health and energy can be restored using a Medical Room block, or a Survival Kit block. Energy can also be replenished by sitting in the cockpit of any powered structure.

Materials and items

In the survival mode of the game, all actions, including survival itself due to the power requirements of the space-suit's life-support system, depend on the gathering and refining of certain minerals. These minerals can be found on asteroids or planets, plundered from randomly spawned ships, or recovered from unknown signals. Raw materials are extracted from ore deposits on asteroids and then transported to a refinery, where they are processed into minerals for use in assemblers. The refined materials are formed into various components in the assembler which can then be used in the construction of ships or stations.

Single-Player and Multiplayer

''Space Engineers'' supports both single-player and multiplayer gameplay. In single-player mode, players can explore and build independently within their world, focusing on creative construction or survival challenges by themselves. Despite the lack of other players, ''Space Engineers'' allows players to transfer grids over to different factions present within the game. This allows for solo plays to still partake in combat with AI controlled versions of their grids.

In multiplayer, players can connect with others through various options:

* Dedicated Servers: Players can join (or host) online servers, allowing for cross-platform play between PC, Playstation and Xbox users. Dedicated servers offer persistent worlds with customized settings managed by a server hosts. A dedicated server can only be started from a PC and requires you to have a copy of the game installed to gain access to the dedicated server creation tools. Alternatively, you can hire a server from the official hiring website or join an official server hosted by Keen Software.
* Local Hosting: Players can host their own multiplayer sessions directly from their platform. These sessions are limited to players using the same platform (e.g., PC-only or Xbox-only) and are ideal for smaller, cooperative gameplay experiences between users. The maximum number of players who can join a local hosting world is dependent on the capabilities of the platform used. As a default, it is set to four, but can be extended to upwards of 32.

Multiplayer supports collaborative construction, resource sharing, and competitive gameplay, enabling large-scale projects or faction-based conflict. Server settings can be customized to include rules, mods, and gameplay scenarios.

Modding

''Space Engineers'' features modding capabilities, allowing players to customize and enhance their gameplay experience. The game supports user-created modifications, including new blocks, tools, scripts, environments, and entirely new gameplay mechanics.

Mods can be accessed and shared through two platforms:

* Steam Workshop: For PC players, the Steam Workshop serves as the primary hub for browsing, downloading, and sharing mods. Players can subscribe to mods directly, which are then automatically downloaded and updated through Steam.
* Mod.io: For Console players and cross-platform compatibility, the Mod.io platform provides a similar functionality. Mods can be browsed and installed through an in-game interface, allowing console players to also have access to a range of user-generated content.

The modding community is said to by Keen to be highly active, creating content ranging from decorative blocks to performance optimizations and advanced scripting tools. Players can integrate mods into both single-player and multiplayer sessions, with dedicated servers often running mod lists to create distinguishable experiences. Players can also share their in game grid designs on these websites in the form of blueprints.

Unknown signals

On August 17, 2017, "unknown signals" were added to survival mode. These signals spawn randomly within a certain range of the player, and indicate the position of a small probe via a GPS coordinate and a repeating tone. Each probe contains components and can be disassembled, preventing the player from encountering dead end situations in which they do not have the components needed to produce the basic machines which are essential for constructing components and other machines, effectively preventing a catch-22.

Each probe also possesses a button, which when pressed has a chance to reward the player with a collectible skin, similar to a loot box. The skin can be for the player character's helmet, suit, boots, or tools, and can be traded or sold on the Steam Market. Each skin can be obtained for free in-game, with the exception of three sets: the Veteran Set, which was awarded to players who had owned the game before and played between August and September 2017; the Medieval Set, which is awarded to players who also own Medieval Engineers; and the Golden Set, which is awarded to players who purchase the Space Engineers Deluxe Edition.

Development

''Space Engineers'' was developed and published by the indie video game developer Keen Software House based in the Czech Republic. Implemented as a voxel-based sandbox game set in an asteroid field in space, built on their own game engine, VRAGE 2. Its core feature is volumetricity of the environment. Volumetric objects are structures composed from block-like modules interlocked in a grid and match the scale of the player character. Volumetric objects behave like real physical objects with mass, inertia and velocity. Individual modules have real volume and storage capacity and can be assembled, disassembled, deformed, and repaired or destroyed.

Pre-release

The pre-release alpha build was released on October 23, 2013, on Steam, featuring a single-player "creative" mode. On February 24, 2014, the company announced that ''Space Engineers'' had sold over 250,000 copies in four months. On March 24, 2014, Keen Software House announced that two key milestones in the development of ''Space Engineers'' have been achieved: survival mode and multiplayer. Content updates and bug fixes for the game are released weekly. On October 20, 2014, Keen Software House announced that the game had sold over 1,000,000 copies. On January 13, 2015, the studio announced their second engineering game, '' Medieval Engineers'', a sandbox game about engineering, construction and the maintenance of architectural works and mechanical equipment using medieval technology.

On May 14, 2015, the source code was made freely available on GitHub to the public to allow easier modding. In February 2016 more parts of the game's source code were released. Updates to the public code repository were discontinued at the end of 2016.

Full-release

''Space Engineers'' officially released out of early access on February 28, 2019, alongside The ''Survival Overhaul Update''.

Post-release updates and DLCs

Following the release, Keen has continued to release various updates to the game. In most, if not all cases, Keen has divided each update into a mechanical and an aesthetic component; the mechanical component being released for free while the aesthetic component (new block models, texture overlays, engineer suits, and emotes) have been released as a purchasable DLC. This may be a compromise between the need for a semi-predictable revenue stream for continued support of the game, and the need to avoid creating a "pay-to-win" situation.

Reception

''Space Engineers'' won the "4th best Indie Game of 2013" award from IndieDB, an honorable mention in the "Indie of the Year 2014" and first place in "Indie of the Year 2015".

References

* Text was copied fro
Complete Change Log
at Space Engineers Wiki, which is released under
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA 3.0) license

External links

* {{official website, http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/

Source code
- no longer maintained

2019 video games
Indie games
Keen Software House games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Open-world video games
Video games with Steam Workshop support
Video games developed in the Czech Republic
Video games with voxel graphics
Windows games
Commercial video games with freely available source code
Video games using procedural generation
Fiction about asteroid mining
Video games using Havok
Video games with 6 degrees of freedom
Xbox One games
Space flight simulator games
Space simulators
Construction and management simulation games
Video games with user-generated gameplay content