Game: SPAZ Space pirates and Zombies £9.99 on Steam.
DRM: Steam + Steam Play for saves.
Dev’s: Minmax
Engine: Torque engine
PC, tested on PC.
From a small 2 man team from Canada comes one of the best true ‘indi’ games in some time. SPAZ, which as well as a unflattering term for the disabled in UK slang, also stands for Space Pirates and Zombies.
SPAZ feels familiar to anyone who has played ‘Gratuitous Space Battles’ ‘cept this time round you can control you ships in real time not just issue orders and watch the computer controlled fleets have a large battle.
With a retro flair and with mass physics as part of the game play and some rather fun indi based 2d GFX. You control a small fleet of ships while you wander a sandbox random galaxy completing quests, upgrading your tech and ships and collecting specialist staff for bonuses. The campaign mode has 3 flavours where you start as a Space Pirate trying to carry favor with 2 factions, then declare war on the Military only to join forces with them to defeat the Space Zombie menace.
You collect ‘Data’, to level your tech, ‘Plans’ to get new ships and upgrades by either buying them or blowing people up and stealing them and ‘Res’ as your building resource. The Controls are simple WASD and you mouse to aim with physics from the 1970′s arcade blockbuster Asteroid.
You also generate cloned crew to use as slaves to trade with other factions. When you blow up a enemy ship you get you capture the crew from life pods. Many scream as they are tossed out the airlock if they refuse to serve your pirate lifestyle which never gets dull. And later on even crew become a resource when you fight the zombie menace.
The Ships and weapons will feel familiar to any scifi fan and one of the most fun aspects of the game is how each ship is quite unique and balancing your fleet needs, to how much ‘res’ they cost to rebuild, means you will be changing your ships every 5-20 min’s as you get new tech and ships throughout the game. Even during the heat off battle you can upgrade tech and change ships to combat a new menace which is a killer aspect to the game play.
With a depth of scope like the game elite, and in some ways SPAZ is like a 2d version of the X series without the 3 year learning curve, it’s a fun, silly, yet addictive retro blaster with low PC requirements.
No video cut scenes and rather daft, yet silly plot, that even has spelling errors in the 2d cut scenes don’t detract from the fun your going to have.
And like all good sandbox’s, you can be as morale or evil as you want, want some sexy ‘cloaked fighters’ plans? You can either complete missions to ‘up your standing’ with a faction to legally buy the plans or just warp in and blow up their space station and nick the plans from the debris! Which makes them hate you but only in that solar system and there are 100′s of solar systems.
The replay potential is huge and Minmax games are adding free new features fast to grow the game and even thank you personally for buying it and not pirating it. Which is rather amusing considering the game has the title pirates in.
With a ever growing fleet and ship styles, tons of tech and upgrade options and the ability to control basic tactics of your fleet while paused and a half decent mix of mission types and also just play in real-time this game beats many more ‘polished’ space games for fun and challenge.
If you like the idea of a sandbox ‘elite-X3′ style 2d game. SPAZ is a must buy.
GFX 7.5 (Simple 3d GFX don’t detract from the fun in this game)
Sound 8 (pretty good all round)
SP 9 (fun, I notched up 30+ hours by accident just writing the review)
MP (no MP yet a death match-areana mode is being added)
Value 8.5 (full price) 10 if on sale later this year.
Overall 85/100
Decent effort for a retro 2d budget shooter, and a must for laptop and older PC owners. And Minmax are adding new features for free fast. So this is a great game that will only get better!
Free Demo: On steam if you want to try before you buy.
