StarRupture Preview: The Survival Game with a Dark Mystery

StarRupture is a base-building Survival game set on an alien world known as Arcadia. It's pretty much exactly as you'd expect for the most part, plus the very Factorio setup with all the machinery you'll be building as infrastructure for your benevolent corporate overlords. This game comes from Creepy Jar, the creators of Green Hell, another survival-based game that's done well over the last five years.

There's deep complexity in the base-building with various buildings and structures to make moving around your base easier, but the fascinating part is exploring the world of Arcadia. You aren't condemned to just one or two bases, and you'll need to make a lot more if you're hoping to get those corporations' help.

With a bit of humor and interesting back and forth between characters, the world of StarRupture feels alive, at least for a bit. There's a lot jam-packed in here, like base-building, survival, and even some dark mystery. It's all waiting to be discovered as you slave away for the corporations you owe debts to.

A World of Danger

Arcadia isn't a place without danger. While creating an efficient process of creating items is the main focus, there's a need to explore and deal with the aggressive alien life around the planet. These Vermin are annoying and come in a few different shapes and sizes, filling out various niches of enemy types.

For now, that's the biggest threat on the planet, but the game is in early access, which means plenty more will be coming at some point. While Vermin are a primary issue while you're out adventuring, there's another big issue: the Rupture. The massive star in the skies of Arcadia will occasionally explode, setting the entire world on fire for a few minutes at a time.

This rupture scorches the planet, killing enemies and burning away any sort of greenery that was present. The first few times, it's visually stimulating and an interesting mechanic to get you to explore the world post-explosion. It seems like this system will have different kinds of weather effects applied, other than burning everything.

While it was visually awesome, it became more of a nuisance as time went on. Each time this goes off, you pretty much have to be inside a habitat or some building, otherwise you'll quickly burn to death. It does create a necessity for planning your journey across the planet, but it also keeps you a bit tethered to bases you've made.

A Factory in Space

The actual base-building part is good. You can control the height and orientation of basically every item you can build, which provides a lot of variability in how you go about setting up the transit from one building to another. It starts off simple with just a few ingredients needed and eventually gets significantly more complex.

It required some real thought into planning out the way the supply chain should go. There were several times I ended up just scrapping half of what I had and remaking it better. The efficiency of everything was a must, given how progression works, but more than that, it was a lot of fun to make it work the way I wanted it to.

Creating the perfect setup does take a good bit of time, and as the game progressed, it became more cumbersome to keep starting over from almost scratch to get things the way they needed to be. This was magnified by the slower progression, as you basically ran back and forth between your bases for particular resources.

It doesn't take an incredible amount of time to run around from base to base since you actually move quickly, but it was frustrating that there was no way to get to and from one base to another quickly aside from running. Perhaps in a later update, they'll give you a vehicle to use for transporting goods, but for now, it's the old-fashioned way.

Those Nasty Corporations

One of the main aspects of the game is that everything you make is sent off-world to a corporation that repays you with access to more tech. They each have different wants, and in return, give you various kinds of buildings based on the company. For instance, one is a combat-focused corporation while another is survival-based.

This adds a layer to planning where you need to ensure you're meeting at least a couple at a time; otherwise, you're just wasting resources while they sit idly by. It gave progression deeper meaning since you couldn't progress them all at the same rate, as you would need certain unlocks to get access to other products.

The huge problem with this is that to unlock most of the products produced in these buildings, you'll need to collect a ton of the resources used in their creation to feed into a machine. Basically, if you want the next level of product, you'll need to gather up anywhere between 300 to 600 resources and give them to a research computer to actually unlock them.

At first, it's not too bad, but as you need more and more complex items, it becomes a longer process to get those items. For some people, this is a good grind where you can go and explore the planet while you wait, but for others, it will be something holding them back from exploration as they try to unlock more buildings.

A Hostile World with a Story

While the planet itself can be obtuse at times with monsters and scorching suns, there's an underlying story scattered about in Arcadia. Much like in No Man's Sky, it isn't particularly the main part of the game, but it is a nice addition to keep you guessing.

Scattered on both the surface and in underground tunnels, only accessible after the planet's surface is burned to a crisp, are tons of bodies and various structures from previous crews who were sent to Arcadia just like you. They provide not only information about the way the world works, but also about the various companies and people who put you there.

It's a bit dark with a light-hearted tone that helps to make it seem more humorous and less disastrous. It's a great way to add a layer of narrative to a game that doesn't technically need one. More than that, the characters you play as in-game will often talk to each other, even in single-player.

This made the world and story feel more alive as you wandered around aimlessly looking for something to discover. They had a good rapport between them and worked in background about the characters themselves. While unnecessary, it was nice to get information on the characters as they had their funny interactions.

Looking to the Future

StarRupture currently has plenty of things to keep you occupied and busy for a good chunk of time, around ten hours or more, depending on how fast you move. For now, this is pretty good, and if you're really dedicated, you could probably keep messing around with all the various kinds of buildings for significantly more time.

As it stands, StarRupture is a good game that's going to be in Early Access for at least another year. The concept and world are there, but some things still need polish. Once the issues get ironed out, it'll be a game that engages both left-brained and right-brained people as they each try to make a factory setup that suits exactly what they're after.

This game isn't easy and requires serious dedication to get through, but once it all clicks, it gets really fun. You'll find yourself getting a little lost in the world and the building. Even when things feel a bit grindy, you can always just focus on the aspects you like while you let your automated factory do all the hard work.