8 Reasons to Start Playing Fractured Space

This week, I’ve been playing Fractured Space, an Early Access capital ship-’em-up from Edge Case Games. And by “this week”, I mean on and off for a year. I’ve seen a lot of changes happen over that year, and there has never been a more exciting time to start playing. Here are eight reasons you should jump into Fractured Space today:

Good for those new to command

The new player experience is great! There’s a lot to learn, but Edge Case teaches you like a stereotypical bad father and drops you in at the deep end with some arm bands on; the tutorial simulates a real game but against AI, letting you get to grips with your flagship before moving on to real opponents. There’s also a practice arena for trying out the huge variety of ships, so the first time you find out what your secondary fire does, it isn’t against people.

One of the three tech trees of ships currently available

Wide ship diversity

Speaking of which: there are a load of amazingly detailed spaceships for you to choose from, from three manufacturers that bestow different stats to their similar ships, allowing you to sacrifice hit points for additional speed, or vice versa. You start off with three - one from each manufacturer- and from those, you can expand outwards to hit your niche with different classes, weapons and abilities. And that’s not even starting on the skins…

Amazing visuals

Fractured Space looks amazing. while you’re in the heat of battle, you probably won’t notice the detail of the surroundings, but if you ever get the chance to just look around you’ll see incredible planetscapes set against innumerable stars, and a sun that feels alive and dangerous to be near. The scenery of space in this game adds imperceptibly to the battles, creating more tension and wonder than I’d have thought possible.

A huge sense of scale

You pilot massive space ships that are armed to the teeth. I shouldn’t need to say more, but I will: this is the closest I’ve ever come in a space game to feeling like a huge presence. Even the small ships turn slowly and can knock other ships away just by colliding with them. You know the epic sounding battles that happen occasionally in EVE Online? That kind of huge-scale battle happens every 20 minutes in Fractured Space.

Even in the Target Range, the game looks amazing

Fracturoids

Time for a history lesson: in 1995 Namco patented loading screen mini-games, after the huge success of hiding Galaga in loading screens of Ridge Racer. That patent expired last year, and Edge Case have jumped at the opportunity to help alleviate the queue times for their game with Fracturoids: an Asteroids-clone that’s playable in the game lobby. I know the devs are working on leaderboards for Fractured Space in-game stats, but I’d like to compare my skills at Fracturoids to that of my friends too.

Short-ish games

A match in Fractured Space doesn’t take much more than about half an hour at most, and my average probably sits closer to the 25 minutes mark. That’s about half a match of DotA or LoL, so you can play twice as many games in the same amount of time, and Fractured Space has a whole entire dimension that those games don’t have. Literally, you can move around on the Z axis.

There’s so much more to come

All throughout their Early Access stint, Edge Case listened to the players for what Fractured Space needed. With the fans’ help, they’ve made the game feel great to play, and they’ve been hinting at a lot more to come, from new ships to a potential single-player campaign. Edge Case have consistently updated and added to Fractured Space, and from what I can gather they have no intention of stopping.

Ok, I'm not that good at Fracturoids...

It’s free!

Well, from this week at least, it is! Edge Case have decided to open up their battleground to everyone, so there really has never been a better time to become the commander of a giant space murder machine. With the influx of new people joining now too, you’ll get into a game pretty quickly too.

So, whether you’re a space veteran or just itching to get your wings, I’ll see you out there, Captains.