Why Stepping Away from Tropes Helps Hardspace Shipbreaker Succeed.
5 Games That Prove Original Worlds Still Exist
Introduction
Lately I’ve had a craving. I’ve had a craving for style over substance. It’s something that I think I’ve craved my whole life, but am really only truly beginning to understand. My favorite pieces of media are ones where it feels like you can hear the creator of the piece speaking to you in their attempt to make something that is like nothing else. Dune, Redline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The French Dispatch, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, all pieces of media oozing from head to toe in their unique style.
Unique Style in Media
The major plot elements of all these aren’t all that complex, excluding Dune of course. The stories are incredibly simple. A fox, writers, the worlds deadliest race, a boy on a desert planet. The goal of most of these films is to tell their respective stories in a way that others wont. This is the kind of stuff I like.
I guess its kind of similar to someone who enjoys wine tasting, or rare foods. Perhaps the flavors they search for are not “better” in the traditional sense, but its the infinite search for something “new” that drives them. So too am I driven to find new feelings, and emotions, and styles that I haven’t seen before.
Generic Genres and Their Place
That is partly why I am so put off by anime, marvel, and generic fantasy. I will admit to loving anime, marvel, and generic fantasy, when they were fresh for me. I loved the original iron man movies, Fullmetal Alchemist, and RuneScape, and absorbed a massive amount of media from those genres. But those genres are so often used as a blanket jumping off point that I rarely find anything new in those spaces. Often what makes me more upset about anime and fantasy specifically is their straight denial of trying new things. There are opportunities to create new interesting worlds that are squandered by creators falling back into the defaults of Wizard, sorcerer, and knight.
This may make me sound bitter and jaded. It makes me sound like a hater of popular culture. I definitely grew up as a counter-culture kind of person, I had a childhood that caused me to reject normative models of heroes and success due to the way that I was raised. This I accept. However I am also a firm believer in the fact that every property in these “generic” genres is someone’s first experience with them. Plus some people just like these genres enough all they want is “more”.
I think the worst thing that someone can say is that these things shouldn’t exist. Because they absolutely do. Just like I hate on Assassin’s Creed, and Far Cry for being boring and tropey they were fun to me at some point. Just not anymore.
The Appeal of Unconventional Media
So as someone in this predicament the things I find myself loving the most are the things that feel like they shouldn’t exist. Media that defies the norms, creates new genres, and wants to flesh out the world around the main characters more than the characters themselves.
Hardspace Shipbreaker: A Unique Gaming Experience
This is a great opportunity for me to gush about one of the best games I played in 2022. Hardspace Shipbreaker. Hardspace shipbreaker is a simple game. You play a “Shipbreaker”, someone who has been hired to break apart spaceships for reclamation piece by piece. The catch is you are floating in orbit around the earth in a microgravity environment.
Through the story the game gives you progressively harder ships to break down. Ships with pressurized hulls, live electrical wires, and nuclear reactor cores. You have to plan, and execute your cuts very carefully in order not to splatter yourself on the walls of the junk containers.
All in itself this is a compelling game, but the setting is what really sells the game. You play a single worker, in a crew of five all of whom you never actually get to meet in person. Your crew is one of hundreds for a space faring shipping company working to break down ships of people doing much more interesting stuff then you.
When you first join the shipbreakers you accrue a massive debt for the cost of just getting to the site, and all the equipment. You are a contractor. You must pay for the fuel, tethers, oxygen, and explosives that you use. The game makes it very clear that you are not the one in charge, or the main character of whatever this story is.
Despite all of that the simple act of breaking down the ship is so relaxing, and satisfying it had me coming back to the miserable life of this shipbreaker again and again.
Plus the amazing story roped into the games dialogue. As you progress through your shipbreaker training you are trained by your manager, and you get to hear about the lives of your other shipbreaker peers. The major crux of the story is that it just so happens that around the time you join the shipbreakers a major union is forming to fight back against the corporation that is keeping you imprisoned in indentured servitude.
Despite the player barely having any direct action, or agency in this larger plot. Simply existing in this world and getting to help out in the small ways that we can was so much fun to keep up with I played it all the way through. The voice acting was incredible through the whole experience, from the disgruntled boss, to the angry and vengeful corporate representative brought in supervise your crew. The tension is always there.
Your boss trying to be understanding to your personal feelings and learning, their attempt to understand the corporate decisions being made, and the frustration of the corporate reps lack of understanding or care for the safety of the workers. It was superb.
To me that is what turned a fun experience into a superb one. It oozes its own style, and story outside of the standard Sci-Fi model. That is the kind of stuff that I love.
Conclusion
In our saturated world full of the same thing repeated enough times to drive Albert Einstein insane, it’s the unique, stylized and innovated pieces that harden to amber with time. Whether its the sweat soaked blue collar world of hardspace shipbreaker, the unique storytelling of Wes Anderson, or the absolute head-assery of Redline (Please watch this if you haven’t), these pieces remind us of what it really means to create. To set out in your own direction and make something entirely your own. So, go ahead and play Hardspace Shipbreaker, and don't forget to share your own favorite gems of creativity and world-building. Together, let's celebrate the unconventional and embrace the magic of artistic innovation.
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