SpaceCraft is a game that promises to have it all. It will grace you with “seamless space exploration,” a “player-driven economy,” and “automated factories.” It graced us with a headache too, since trying to learn and juggle so many mechanics at the same time truly feels like a second job. We already have three jobs, and spending so much time on this Early Access title drove us to the edge of sanity. But, we like to think it was worth it.
The devs behind SpaceCraft have accomplished quite a lot with this title. In those first moments, it made us think of No Man’s Sky flirting awkwardly with EVE Online, while Satisfactory stalks on the side. It holds massive promise. To make matters even better, the current Early Access version sits on a remarkably stable foundation. Even if you decide to check it out in its current unfinished state, you will find plenty of opportunity to simply dig away and see where that takes you. Later down the line, you can use the resources to build custom ships and set up mining outposts. With a little bit of luck, you won’t accidentally crash the local market—unless that’s your thing, because you can. More after the trailer jump.
Less Flying, More Wiring
Flying in SpaceCraft is incredibly smooth. Regardless of what you do, whether that’s dropping out of FTL or landing on a dusty planet’s surface, the joy of movement is well executed and satisfying. It’s very easy to spend the first few hours just checking out asteroid fields and scanning abandoned stations. Once you’re done with that, though, you can move on to the real meat: heavy industry.
Shooting lasers at rocks and gathering raw materials helped us bolt new thrusters onto our starter ship. As you might expect, every single part changes how the ship handles. So, once you get used to the whole philosophy, it becomes necessary to tweak cargo weight.
To fight or to haul, that is the question!
The first important choice for us was to figure out if we wanted to zip around in a nimble fighter or drag a brick of a transport cruiser through space just to haul more ore. This was a troublesome choice to make, since it really changes how the game plays later on. Building was not our thing, so we were happy to discover that we could also buy a blueprint from someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
Player-driven economy
In SpaceCraft, prices shift constantly. They’re based on what the community is buying and selling. If you really need to, you can find contract offers to hire out cargo runners or crafters for specific high-tier ship parts. Just like in real life, you will get the service from another player, but it will cost you!
As is the case with these games, manual mining gets old after a while, no matter how good it initially feels. So, the next step is to start building bases or, as we’d like to call them, a massive logistics puzzle. You will have to hook up extractors, set up drone delivery lines, or manage power grids across different planets. It’s also possible to join giant player Corporations to divide the labor. From what we saw, that seems necessary if you want to build a serious commercial empire.
This was the most cumbersome and complex part of the game: making a complete mess and trying to make it work. We’re talking about ourselves here. Try as we might, building a functional, ever-expanding base was our kryptonite. We see the appeal, we just don’t have the know-how, especially at a much larger scope. But we saw what other people made, and we did our best to not take offense at our own inadequacies.
Cutthroat Empire Building
SpaceCraft plays like an MMO. There is no offline solo mode or private co-op server, which means there’s constant competition with other players for the best real estate and the richest resource veins. In other words, there will always be someone who wants what you have and will try to block your mining operations. It’s a stressful game that requires a lot of your free time. It gets complicated fast. It can get frustrating faster.
The Blueprint for Something Huge
SpaceCraft really is trying to do everything. A lot of the mechanics hold up pretty well, and we can’t wait to see how the devs will shape the game in the future. But, for the time being, it’s definitely still an Early Access game, which means you will experience not only server lag and CPU bottlenecking but a lot of unfinished or poorly balanced mechanics. Even so, we loved trying to find our place in this massive sandbox. We didn’t love the failing part, but hey, as they say, the beauty is in the journey, not the destination.
We give it a something/10. It’s an EA title, so we’ll hold off on the score for a while.
ID Card
- Developer: Shiro Games
- Publisher: Shiro Games
- Platforms: PC (Early Access)
- Release Date: June 11, 2026 (Early Access)
- Genre: Space Sim / Automation / MMO
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