Hardspace: Shipbreaker - Pay Your Debt or Die Trying
After two years of Early Access development, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is coming out of early access. Blackbird Interactive’s spaceship salvaging game will be officially released on 24 May for PC and will be also available on Microsoft’s PC Game Pass service on the same day.
Welcome to LYNX. Across your career, you’ll have the privilege of paying your debt to us by purchasing salvaging rights to increasingly large and valuable ships. Cut them open and extract as much value as possible. Good luck on the job, cutter.
In the distant future, humanity has colonised the Solar System, and the Earth is plagued with various issues, such as civil unrest, food shortages, and climate change. Your character, desperate to leave Earth and relocate to other colonies, signs an exploitative contract with Lynx Corporation to become one of its shipbreakers, who are responsible for salvaging abandoned spacecraft in search of useful materials.
After signing the contract, you become the official property of Lynx. And whenever you die on the job (and you will die a lot), Lynx, which also owns your DNA sequence, will reconstitute a clone for you, and you’ll have to return to work. Not even death will spare you the debt to Lynx.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a simulation video game being developed by Blackbird Interactive and published by Focus Entertainment. Played from a first-person perspective you play the role a “cutter” employed by the Lynx Corporation. You need to salvage useful materials in abandoned spaceships in exchange for credits in order to pay off the massive debt you owe to Lynx.
Your LYNX adventure starts now! Account balance owing is:
1,252,594,441.92 Credits
Start paying that debt! Good luck, shipbreaker!
The ships featured in the game are procedurally generated, and each of them features potential hazards that can kill you. Accidentally cut through electrical wires or coolant pipes = huge explosion = you die.
You are equipped with various gadgets to help you cut through the toughest ships. A scanner can help to identify possible hazards before you start cutting. Slice and dice with your laser cutter and then use the tether tool to move the parts and components to the deposit bay.
In every ship the most valuable and prized item is the ship’s reactor. Once you manage to find it and pull it out from its coolant casing, you’ll need to get it to the deposit location as quickly as possible or else it will melt down and trigger a huge explosion. You’ll die. Again. And will lose the chuck of credits that the reactor would have contributed to paying off your debts.
As you explore the ship, you’ll also need to keep an eye on resources such as oxygen and thruster fuel. All missions were timed, but there is also an Open Shift Mode that removes the time restraint (but reduces the value of the salvage too).
After every job that you successfully complete, you’ll get Lynx Tokens, which can be used to upgrade and repair your tools and equipment in your personal habitation pod. The pod is also where you select the ships and jobs you want to work on next. Complete work orders to earn Certification Ranks in order to unlock new tools and access larger and more challenging missions.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker was conceptualised in one of the Blackbird's internal game jam sessions after the studio completed the development of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, and then officially announced in February 2020 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The first Early Access version was released on Steam's early access program in June 2020. The game is scheduled to leave early access on May 24, 2022.
Now, after two years of Early Access development, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is coming out of early access. Blackbird Interactive’s spaceship salvaging game will be officially released on 24 May for PC and will be also available on Microsoft’s PC Game Pass service on the same day.
Find the game on Steam right now. Xbox and PlayStation versions will release in a few months' time. Find out more about the game here: Focus Entertainment.
