Astrox: Hostile Space Excavation Review

Space exploration, space mining and space pirates… Now that sounds like a good combination for some awesome fun.

Some key points that this game offers:

1. You have seven different asteroid types that can be mined to sell or refine, each type with their own attributes.
2. Over 30 unique ships to choose from each with their own special bonuses, properties and attributes.
3. Complete sandbox mode, choose how many zones you want, how tough they are and how rich they can make you.
4. A simple but decent levelling system that allows you study and improve your skills and capabilities of your ship making you incredibly more powerful as you level up.
5. Either travel from one system to another via warp gate or go through dead space, dare you risk your vessel?
6. More than 100 different weapon and equipment modules to customize how your mining vessel of death operates.
7. No Level cap.
8. Completely customize your galaxies.

Gameplay & Controls:

The controls are fairly simple for this game, but allow me to inform you regarding the totality of the game, to the best of my knowledge I understand that this game was ported from a browser version of the game and that the code was quite obsolete, however the developer did everything he could to make the port as successful as he could and to improve the game with patches here and there.

As it is the game might not seem that great and that it may lack content but given what we have and where it comes from this game is not only decent but truly a little gem that will give you hours and hours of joy, it really deserves some attention, at the time of writing this review I can say that the developer has been working on a sequel that will dwarf this one ten times over. He has been working tirelessly to ensure that his new game will be everything we want it to be and more.

Now for the actual controls of the game, your installed modules can be activated by clicking on them and they will work automatically from there, mining lasers will mine when they are in range of asteroids, weapons will fire when in range of space pirates. Your trusty mouse’s right click can be held down to move the camera around so that you can get better angles, mouse wheel can be used to zoom in and out. You can click on an object such as space pirates, asteroid or the space station and if auto pilot is turned on you will start moving towards the selected object.

However, you can fly there by yourself using the WASD or directional keys, but it is advised to use auto pilot until you have a decent understanding of the game. On the right side of the screen there is a small panel with a tab for each of the object types in a particular system, making it easier to navigate to them.

Graphics:

Considering the day and age we live in with graphics as advanced as they are today, I can honestly say that this game looks great for what it is, the detail to the objects are wonderfully done, whether you are close to them or far away. The backgrounds or in this case space itself are carefully put together with great colour making them look relatively realistic and appealing.

You can zoom up close to your ship where the details of your vessel are carefully constructed, it isn’t just one big block you look at, you can see the different sections, the same can be said for the space stations. In the menu side of things, we can choose Full Screen or window mode, we have numerous resolution options to choose from, this game is properly optimized and almost any PC should be able to run it.

There are a few other options in the graphic section to look at. As your ship flies you can see how the rockets and afterburners do their job pushing you forward at their capable speed. The combat is just as visual you can see your missiles and other projectiles travel to the targeted enemy and explode on impact. The mining lasers beam is also clearly visible.

Sounds:

There is soothing background music that plays which really adds to the exploration and mining feature to the game, it does the game justice and makes it much more appealing and enjoyable. The music does change from atmosphere to atmosphere, inside the docking station you will hear unique sounds to the station, and the game doesn’t have that many sounds considering it is space, but it has enough to make the game fun.

Replayability:

The game can be replayed over and over again for a number of reasons, the game doesn’t have a grind to it, but if you want to see how high the levels go, or what it will take to max your skills it will require several space ship loads of cash to acquire. Once you complete the game you can choose to generate a new one, bigger or smaller, with more or less enemies in, there are numerous other options to add to your generated worlds. You also replay so that you can find rare dropped parts for your ships; these parts are incredibly powerful and cannot be bought.

MGR Gaming’s Conclusions:
Spoilers ahead:

Once you start the game, you choose your character’s name and then avatar with a little backstory on the right-hand side, stating for crimes you committed you were sentenced to Astrox mining prison, where you will have to mine your way to freedom. From there you start with your tiny ship and mine until its full then you head to the station to sell your mining goods and go out again, this process will repeated until you have the funds to buy better parts to help make the mining faster, or to carry larger loads.

The games levelling system helps here too, every time you level you receive one skill point which can be used in the university to upgrade one level of trait for some credits, the higher the skill goes the more expensive it gets. As I mentioned above this game may not seem like much but I assure you it will give you countless hours of joy and fun, you get to mine and mine then sell all of that for cold hard earned cash, this you do until you have enough resources out there to buy the biggest baddest ship out there and then fit it with the best parts money can’t buy… All of that then can be tested out on Space Pirates…

Additional info:

Platforms: PC
Genre: Mining: Simulation: Space: Sandbox
Censor Rating: n/a
Age Rating: n/a
Developer: Jace Masula
Publisher: Jace Masula
Release Date: 1 December 2015

MGR Gaming Steam Curator:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32364038/