Ophelia Payne

AstroScaper is a cozy, minimalistic city builder created by a team of just 2 people, Jacek and Jarek from FunFortress. It’s a relaxing sci-fi settlement builder with a puzzle-like gameplay loop.

It has a calm, ambient soundtrack accompanying it, and that contributed to my inability to stop playing for hours when I first launched it on my PC. 

Your whole mission (in Expedition Mode) is to transform lonely asteroids into thriving spaces by placing habitats, resource collectors, and transit lines on all sides of the space rocks. The limited space tests your ability to create efficient and productive layouts, not an easy task when first starting out. Each building has different costs and rewards, and you must balance their effectiveness while maintaining enough resources to continue building and expanding.  Each time you restart, you will have a new asteroid to begin on, as it is procedurally generated, meaning that although you may learn from your failures, you never know what awaits you on your next run. I liked the surprise nature of it. 

When you are building and connecting 2 existing stations, they collect points from every building within their range (represented by an easy-to-see zone on your screen). Follow along and complete objectives, unlocking new buildings and pushing your score higher on the competitive leaderboards.

If you want something that lets you challenge your creativity with no pressure, dive into the Freebuild Mode. Choose a favourite biome and shape a perfect colony.  Once you are happy with your creation, check out the photo mode to capture and share your creation. 

If you love minimalistic city-builders, like my beloved Islanders, AstroScaper might become your new obsession. At the time of writing this, there is still a demo on Steam as well.

Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.

**Special Thanks to FunFortress for the review code**