Hyperspace Delivery Service Review

Hyperspace Delivery Service is a ship management game about delivering a package to a far away planet. The game focuses on keeping your crew alive and staying stocked up on oxygen, food, and fuel to make the jump from planet to planet in one piece.

The gameplay of Hyperspace Delivery Service really disappointed me. I was expecting a PC version of From Other Suns, the VR space exploration game with similar mechanics. Unfortunately, Hyperspace Delivery Service was too barren when it came to content, with little else to do besides buy and sell items, and get in to ship battles and shootouts aboard ships (the only enjoyable parts of this game). The Doom style 2.5D shootouts and vector graphic ship battles should have been utilized plenty more, and the player should be able to navigate their ship in the same 2.5D style as the shootouts, pictured in the screenshots.

If you could navigate the ship to do repairs and contact other NPCs in the vicinity the game would feel much more immersive. Speaking of contacts and communications, the game feels too watered down when it comes to this aspect. Essentially the game goes as follows: Travel to a planet, either scavenge oxygen or scan the planet for useful parts, then try your luck finding events and tasks through the comms (which often come up barren of any outside contact). I would much rather be able to visit a planet and walk around it instead of always being stuck in the ship, the only time you exit your ship in first person view is to save a kidnapped crew member from pirates or a select few collection of other situations. Increased use of 2.5D visuals and using the 2.5D environment for ship repairs and other mini-games would bring a lot more excitement to the game.

While the story has promise, the world is not utilised enough. The closest the player comes to doing a mission usually revolves around clicking a few buttons and having the game randomly generate an outcome. I would welcome the addition of more in-depth missions that take the player to other planets in search of bounty targets or special materials, ones you would need to search for in first person on the planet surface. Mini-stories with their own story-lines would spice up the game and take away from the monotony of simply warping from planet to planet and occasionally making trades.

The sound design does not add much to the experience, the “music” of the game is an array of beeps, buzzes, and synths that distract more than they add to the experience in my opinion. There are sounds where they should be, such as blaster shots and damage etc, but they are simple and need to be more refined if the developers want these components to draw the player in.

The graphics are enticing in the space battles and ship infiltrations, but besides that the graphics are bare bones and simplified, as if they are placeholders for the actual assets. Much more could be done in touching up sprites, adding shading and depth to the pixel art. Again, adding the ability to visit planets would be a good excuse to add more art. It would be great to explore stylized towns and cities as you travel to your destination, but instead you can only stare at a planet from afar before taking off to the next one.

Hyperspace Delivery Service has so much potential, but at the moment it is letting that potential go to waste. More first person should be added to the game, involving players in procedures that currently only consist of clicking on buttons. I would like to be able to complete side missions and explore planets as well, I think that would add realism and really give the player something to do besides warping to other planets and hoping for something interesting to pop up on the comms. The developers would do well to take notes from From Other Suns, and if they did so, I could see this game becoming something immersive and fun. For now I wouldn’t enjoy playing it for more than an hour, and even then it seems tedious.