Space Haven is one of those "niche" games that some people will love and others will find bland. Their niche is in old-school-RPG players who want to role-play life aboard a spacecraft - if you've enjoyed pen and paper scifi RPGs like Traveller or Alternity you will probably like this game.

It very much isn't a flashy, combat focused game. While both onboard and ship-to-ship combat are there, the graphics are very basic and there are only a few offensive/defensive choices. If you are only after cool visuals and shooting aliens, this isn't the game for you. On the other hand if you like fine-tuning your ships hydroponics bays to produce the right output for your crew's nutritional needs...

Pros:
- Deep RPG-like simulation of characters - as well as attributes and skills all sorts of temporary conditions affect crew such as working in a spacesuit (increases fatigue and rate of accidents), environmental effects such as low oxygen, toxic gases or high temperature etc.
- Interactions between crew also have these effects - e.g. they can be happy if they chat with a friend, sad if they get rejected by their crush, embarrassed if they ♥♥♥♥ their pants in a spacesuit, or angry if they got a black eye from getting in a fistfight with a crew member they dislike.
- Many conditions don't have a "quick fix" - e.g. there are different types of wounds which require more skilled medical attention to heal, starvation isn't fixed instantly by eating a meal and the effects take time to fix etc. Some rare conditions cause permanent effects.
- Many ships systems also have a deep simulation with many choices, with layouts affecting everything from crew comfort to power distribution and airflow,
- Nutrition and plants in particular are a highlight - you can choose the ratio of vegies/fruit/nuts/meat your crew eat, which affects the amount of those things you need to grow in your hydroponics bays (or salvage from derelicts, or trade for, or take by force)
- Compost the corpses of pirates who try to board you to get more fertilizer! Or just chop them up and use them as meat...
- Extensive system of industry and materials - you can just dismantle derelict ships and recycle their parts, or with more space and energy mine raw ore and refine it into metals and components for ship parts.
- Extensive system for managing crew of other factions you rescue (as refugees), hostiles you take prisoner, or even enslave them with a shock collar...
- Enemies including the human pirate and slave factions (or the miliary if you become a pirate or slaver yourself), self-assembling robots and infesting aliens who may kidnap your crew.
- Backstories for other ships and groups revealed by logs you can find on derelicts.
- Space stations and ships of various factions, which you can trade with, get missions from, board and loot, etc.

Cons:
- Once on the sector map, there is no movement of ships.
- The four types of sub-craft (shuttle, fighter, mining pod, building pod) are overspecialised - it should be possible to do more tasks with a shuttle or use a pod to transport a single crew member or item.
- Only a few offensive/defensive systems for ship-to-ship combat
- Some limited content in the buildings (e.g. there are 6 or so couches but only one chair)
- Decorations generally only affect leisure comfort, so having nice plants won't make a more effective bedroom or workplace.
- There are many hand-held weapons but only two defensive armours. Would be nice to have more choices (e.g. a heavy armour with movement penalty, a shield that takes up primary slot etc)
- Isometric view often makes it difficult to click on a tile behind an object on the tile in front.
- Main menu music is so cringeworthy there are mods to change or disable it.

Excruciatingly slow and painfully hard even on the easiest setting. Not fun.

No tutorial or how to play the game, just a blue objective screen on what to do next. I can't play a game when I don't know what to do.