This Latvian RPG captures the heart of classic Fallout games - Space Wreck Quick Review

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it, as long as you can handle some of the bugs and lack of polish that come with an early access title. I’m not one of those snobs who hates Bethesda’s modernized, first-person take on the Fallout franchise, but playing Space Wreck really reminded me of the good ol’ days of Fallout and Fallout 2. This hardcore RPG from a two-person team in Latvia puts a serious emphasis on the roleplaying, and while it’s not quite finished, it’s already showing an absurd amount of potential.

TIME PLAYED

I spent four hours exploring the early portions of the KROGUS space station, desperately hunting for fuel for my stranded spaceship. In its current form, Space Wreck is on the shorter end for an RPG, so my current save is probably around one-fourth complete. However, the game is super-replayable, and presumably more content will be added up until the game comes out in full.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Character creation. Like any good old-school RPG, Space Wreck has a deep character creation system. You can choose from a number of premade options or build your hero from scratch, with the ability to focus on diplomacy, stealth, combat, tech skills, and more. I played a streamer named Joanna who had high charm but couldn’t hold her own in a fight at all. I loved how this choice shaped every aspect of my time in Space Wreck.

• Optional combat. Wondering how a character like my Joanna could survive in a dangerous world like that of KROGUS? That’s all thanks to how Space Wreck handles combat, which is to say, it’s never the only course of action. Maybe you can sneak past enemies. Maybe you can hack into security bots and use them to keep you safe. Maybe you just need to talk your way out of sticky situations. I was able to pinpoint numerous paths past each scenario, and I’m sure I missed plenty.

• Huge amount of choices in general. It’s not just the ability to avoid combat. I found myself surprised over and over again by just how many options I had at my disposal in Space Wreck, especially as I leveled and built a slightly more well-rounded character. In one of my favorite early moments, my way forward was blocked by a robot who wanted me dead, but I was able to convince an NPC nearby to attack the machine on my behalf. When the robot zapped her dead in one hit, I grabbed the laser gun she left behind and used it to finish off the bad guy. I felt a little bad about having sent this stranger to her death, but it really drove home what I was capable of as a diplomacy-focused character.

• Old-school aesthetics. Rather than just falling back on pixel art, Space Wreck employs a lovely rotoscope style. It’s technically much more detailed than many of the games it pulls inspiration from, but the look still evokes those classics in a subtle, nostalgic way.

WHAT SUCKS

• Camera. The isometric perspective that Space Wreck uses reminded me of the old Fallout games, which seems to be the point. I don’t mind that, but I realized one major reason why we’ve moved past this approach in most modern video games: It annoyed me all the time! In particular, items, characters, or enemies who were standing up against a wall were often hidden just by nature of the camera, even if my character should have been able to see them clearly. I’m not expecting a full change to the game’s camera, but I’d love the ability to make walls more transparent or something.

• Bugs. Take a drink if you’ve heard this one before. As an early access title, Space Wreck comes packed with all the expected negatives of an unfinished game. Most noteworthy, a lot of Steam user reviews have reported hitting moments where they got soft-locked from progress due to the game’s very limited save files. If this stuff drives you crazy—or if you’d just prefer to play the game with all of its content, including many missing sidequests—you might want to wait on Space Wreck until its comes out of early access. According to the developer, that should be around half a year from now.

💬 If you were able to choose between tech, diplomacy, or combat prowess in real life, which are you going with? I'm thinking I could use a tech boost... Leave your pick in the comments!