Space Engineers is a lot more than just Minecraft in space, but to be honest I haven’t played Minecraft with all of the crazy mods currently available so maybe it is more similar than I realize. Right now the game is still in “Early Access” stages but Keen and I both really love what we have experienced so far. There’s a lot I can talk about so I’m just going to break down some of the really cool aspects of the game.

Gravity – There is no gravity in Space Engineers unless you build gravity generators. You get a fancy jetpack that lets you zoom around and control your positioning, but that doesn’t do a whole lot to help you when drilling into an asteroid. All of the chunks you break apart will go flying off in all directions which forces you to desperately try and fly after them. Some people probably think that this doesn’t actually sound enjoyable, and it isn’t, but it does force you to come up with creative options. The easiest thing that we discovered was to extend the gravity field that is generated by your starting ship and park right above the spot you want to chip away at. It was really satisfying to come up with a solution to that problem.

Mining, Processing, & Assembling – Everything in Space Engineers requires some kind of raw material. I’m not sure exactly how many different kinds there are but so far we have encountered rock, iron, silver, gold, platinum, magnesium, uranium, cobalt, and probably one or two more that I’m forgetting. Once you collect some of these materials you can process them in a refinery. Once you have refined ingots, or whatever, you can use an assembler to create components like construction pieces, metal plates, computers, displays, etc. All of those objects are then used when creating the various pieces of ships and stations. (more…)