A side-project by the venerable Double Fine, Spacebase DF-9 had ambitions of being “Dwarf Fortress but in SPACE!”. It’s in space, that part they finished pretty early on. The entire everything else part, the parts that involve managing a large, complex and interrelated system of many smaller systems all working together and against each other, that part they didn’t quite finish. Much of what was promised for Spacebase DF-9 was dropped just before release (the game had been in Early Access for about a year now). The game was given a half-decent tutorial, opened up so users could modify and “finish” the game themselves, and a few meta-goals were added to give the experience a bit of structure.

So what you’re left with is something that so painfully looks like the start of something great but then never actually goes there. You can build your base, take on space immigrants, juggle their needs and desires, fend off raiders and explore derelicts that may appear. But it all feels pointless, unless you chase the arbitrary goals the team shoved in at the last minute, like “have a base with X amount of denizens”. It’s a pity the game didn’t get more support in Early Access, as a lack of interest from consumers is why Double Fine claims to have dropped the project.

A side-project by the venerable Double Fine, Spacebase DF-9 had ambitions of being “Dwarf Fortress but in SPACE!”. It’s in space, that part they finished pretty early on. The entire everything else part, the parts that involve managing a large, complex and interrelated system of many smaller systems all working together and against each other, that part they didn’t quite finish. Much of what was promised for Spacebase DF-9 was dropped just before release (the game had been in Early Access for about a year now). The game was given a half-decent tutorial, opened up so users could modify and “finish” the game themselves, and a few meta-goals were added to give the experience a bit of structure. So what you’re left with is something that so painfully looks like the start of something great but then never actually goes there. You can build your base, take on space immigrants, juggle their needs and desires, fend off raiders and explore derelicts that may appear. But it all feels pointless, unless you chase the arbitrary goals the team shoved in at the last minute, like “have a base with X amount of denizens”. It’s a pity the game didn’t get more support in Early Access, as a lack of interest from consumers is why Double Fine claims to have dropped the project.