Space Run Review

The future is always uncertain. That's why it's so exciting and why sci-fi films and games can sell so well. Creators of such can make up some loony theories as to what the next, 10, 200 or 500 years have in store and make top dollar for bringing their ideas to life in the best ways. I'm not sure there was an awful lot of logical thought to Space Run's idea of the future in 2525, but it's not too barmy a concept.

In this single player game, you play as Buck Mann; an egotistical 'lad' who prides himself on his past successes. Now, he's stuck in a day job - not one that many would like to hold. He's a Space Runner, the future's answer to truckers - he even has the cap - with his main goal to transport a variety of goods to all corners of the known universe; whilst being brutally attacked on a regular basis by space pirates and bombarded to near death by asteroids, of course.

Space Run in its purest form is a sci-fi tower defence game. You don't control the ship that's flying through space, but you do control what goes on it, where those things are placed and when - the usual. The ship, that's size and shape varies from mission to mission, is split into equal size hexagonal pieces. To these pieces you can attach a whole host of different treats including a choice of three weapons, shields and a handful simple enhancements.

There's not much for a storyline in Space Run as all the game's focus is on the cliché 'easy to pick-up, hard to master' gameplay, with a decent and quite quickly advancing difficulty curve. You have some dialogue between Buck and his android companion Addam-12 who makes snide remarks throughout missions when your ship is being blown to pieces, but it suits the game's tone well and the jokes don't ever get too cheesey.

Everything is controlled using the mouse and keyboard with no additional controller support, not that it's needed. Both can be used to scan the area for baddies as well as where to place your purchased upgrades on your ship. Upgrades can be obtained in-game through a variety of methods, normally from destroying rogue ships and asteroids that drop golden nuts, the game's currency. Weapons have to be rotated before placing to get the best range, ensuring that the entire ship is covered from all angles as you will be attacked from everywhere. Utilities such as power generators can give extra boosts to some weapons whilst others can't function without one. This is where the simplicity of the hexagonal shape of the pieces comes into its own.

Say you have a power generator in the middle of five surrounding pieces, well each piece touching the generator is boosted, with the same theory applying to shields. The fixed block placement system certainly isn't a new concept in tower defence games, but it's very well suited in this instance.

Your ship’s core must remain in-tact at the end of your delivery for the mission to be successful. A mix of shields and weapons will land you victory, as well as where they are placed on the ship; that's unidirectional in its movement. Yet, even more crucial are the number of thrusters you have on a ship. Too little and you will run out of time for your delivery, too many and you could be facing enemies quicker than you want with few places to build on your unexpandable ship's structure. These tactics are really what separate the ease of the first levels to the more challenging ones later in the game.

At the end of each mission you'll be given a score out of five based on how efficiently you completed said mission. This is based on time taken to complete, mixed in with how much cargo you have at the end. Credits are then issued to make further enhancements to the attachments on your ship in the engineering menu, allowing for more powerful weapons and more effective utilities such as bigger branching shields and beefier thrusters.

In later levels it does get quite overwhelming at times as some ship attachments aren't too dissimilar to others, making it more difficult to distinguish shields from generators and vice versa. There is a zoom function to inspect your ship closer but you can't modify anything whilst in the zoom mode so it doesn't help an awful lot.

Space Run is a brilliant value for money buy though and looks great too, with some nicely worked 3D graphics needing only a tiny set of hardware to run. Extra game modes would have been nice, like an endless mode, but nobody's ruling that out for future updates. Space Run really is a thoroughly enjoyable game with rewarding level completion, just the right amount of humour and enough variety in missions to keep you going until men land on Mars.