For some Mark and Chris need no introduction. Their game company, and Youtube channel is well known around the Prison Architect fans. Their indie game studio is also behind games like Darwinia, DEFCON and Uplink.

Recently they published a second update on their upcoming simulation game The Last Starship. Currently the game is (almost) in Early Access, but it's still not playable to everyone, including me unfortunately! But I have managed to literaly scrap some info and shots from the update videos. Don’t worry, you don’t have to wait until the planned release date in late 2022. Just got over the Steam page, and press the 'Request Access' button!

It clearly state on the stoare page:
We anticipate being in early access for several years...
Fear not! This two guys, along with John Knottenbelt 'Johnny Programmer' and Thomas Arundel they would surly deliver the promise. Not every game the studio made is an instance success. Turns out I didn't like Scanner Sombre as much as the rest of Steam community.

But this time it sure feels like a superstar to me. I mean, considering with their latest experience, and tiles like Space Haven around with many positive reviews.

The Last Starship is a game around building space ships, with battle and resource gathering mechanics. Currently the crew is just used as peons to move resources around, but they place to introduce role desegnations that will make them more like RimWorld.

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The ship design and building mode looks familier for Prison Architect fans. And the external (zoomed put) view has some nice engine, miner, and weapon effects already.

There is also a strategic view what shows ship damage and damaged areas, weapon ranges, and the state of ship's armor. Inspecting the game menu you can find: CONSTRUCTION, TRADE, CONTRACTS, POWERGRID, FTL, SECTOR MAP. That gives us some indications of the other mechanics the game would offer.

The Strategic View

In the following image you can see a hostile ship in the strategic view, along with projectiles and weapon rage circle:

Goals of playtest

The lucky ones who got access to the playtest, can just build their one ships in builder mode, without any restrictions to resources. They mentioed in the update, that they wanted to check during the playtest what people like to do more. Is it just designing ships? Or creating them as part of a progressive gameplay? The conclution turn out to be very clear: people like both, and this was they will focus on providing.

Another goal would be to check what aspects make the game more, or less playable. There are concepts like: Money, Crew, Accommodation, Oxygen, Water, Food, Fuel, Ammo, and a somewhat mysterious thing called Data. So for example, if your generators are down, you will start losing life support. You will not be able to produce oxygen anymore, but i your tanks are still full, Nothing critical will happen in the short term.

However, if you won't fix your power, ogxygen tanks might get empty and your crew will die. But that makes you wonder, what if you have some robots on board, will they still be able to operate the ship even if your whole crew is dead? And do the robots have some kind of battery? There are many directions they can take the game from here...

Some more details when you zoom-in

Zooming in reveals more details. For example, area designations and names, indicators on power and oxygen generators, and power connections.

There are tooltips what show what the building is of you hover on it, And text on the facility itself that shows what it is currently producing. There is an indicator on the spacesuits with their CO2 level.

Expectations and final words

Yes, my personal expectations are high of this one, partly because of my disappointment with Space Haven. Another part is what I'm a big Star Trek fan, I've been waiting for this kind of game for years! Unfortunately, I don't have so much time to play games this days, and this means I need to choose my battle more wisely. As an example, I got Elden Ring, and even an Xbox 360 joystick, but I managed to play it for only a few hours.

My hopes are that The Last Starship will be a game I will be able to invest at least 300 hours in, knowing that with that investment I will know to play only 50% of the game. All information and screenshots for this article were taken from the progress Update #1 and Update #2 videos. There is also the Introduction video.