A few days ago while testing Steam’s Interactive Recommender experiment I’ve discovered this game called Evospace that claimed to be about digging, building, technologies in a fully procedurally generated world. Another Minecraft clone – I said to myself. But the price was enticing – just about 9 dollars (8 euros) – so I risked it and I must say it was a wise choice. Right now I believe this is the best under $10 game on Steam Early Access.
Imagine that Minecraft and Factorio had a baby and this baby has the potential to be better in every regard then it’s parents. Just like in Minecraft you have a randomly generated world with all kinds of resources – the big difference is that here it’s not about blocks. You have complete freedom in sculpting the land. You can even create realistic statues sculpted from rocks, if you’re really good at this stuff. Getting back to the goal of the game – you need to mine stuff with a complex set of tools and devices. You can set up conveyors, robot arms, steam engines, electric engines, furnaces and so on. You have several production chains (copper, steel, aluminium, stainless steel, titanium, hard metal, neutronium). I can tell you that these production chains are more complex then what you can actually find right now in vanilla Factorio.
I’m just at the beginning, didn’t even get the chance to go through all these production chains but I think I can easily sink a few hundred hours into this game just on my first world. Be prepared for this as setting up all these can take a significant time. Below you can see my basic copper/iron production facility. I’ve worked on it a few hours. Probably I could have done it sooner if only the game would have any hint of a tutorial, but sadly it hasn’t one.
So this is where the weak points come. You should know that this is Early Access and sometimes you can feel this. The world is a bit empty for my liking, there are no enemies yet, no animals, nothing. Also because there’s no tutorial you might have a difficult time figuring out how you need to build stuff. I suggest you check the guides on the game’s community hub.
Also if you are the kind of player who needs goals and objectives and you are not able to give one yourself then it might not be that good for you. For now you rely on your imagination on what you want to build. You have some basic quests that will give you some rewards if you complete them. But there is no campaign, scenario or stuff like that. But man if you’re into building games and production lines then you will love this game.
Also if you just want to do some creative building in a world that is not blocky as Minecraft then you have the chance to do that here because the game has creative mode. But you need to do it alone because at the moment there is no multiplayer.
All things considered I still think that this is one of Steam’s hidden gems, cheap, lots of replay value and also lots of potential. If the developer (Round Cube Studio) invests a bit more time in it and the Minecraft generation picks it up as the next thing to move to then it could really skyrocket to Steam top sales.