Developer: Atari Interactive, Inc
Publisher: Atari interactive, Inc
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Asteroids Outpost – Preview
Recently we got the chance to test out this new game Atari released in early access called: Asteroids Outpost. In this open world multiplayer survival game you are send to an asteroid belt in order to establish a base, mine for resources and protect your rightful claim from other greedy space miners. The game itself actually reminds of the old asteroids arcade game but now remodeled in a first person interactive survival game that might bring back some memories from space engineers.
Starting out the game, you enter a server and will have to pick a claim. This is a square piece of land you pick and determines the mining adventure you are about to have so choosing wisely and thinking about every positive and negative factor of your plot is very important. You don’t want to pick the plot you can’t defend from intruders or get a place you can hardly reach. After picking your claim you are ready to start the real asteroid mining deal, plant down your main base, set your first turret and shoot away at incoming asteroids. The turret you got automatically defends your base from asteroids falling down that could possibly damage your base but doesn’t grant you resources from them, instead you will have to mount the turret yourself and go ahead and shoot some inbound space rocks.
Upon seeing a mighty explosion when shooting down an asteroid, you know there will be some ores in them which you will have to mine later on, but beware of your personal stats. Oxygen is important so you will not be able to wander of as you please at the start of the game. After some shooting, mining and hopefully not dying, you will have a descent amount of resources you can use to expand your base. You can build a factory or a solar energy station for example and upgrade those tools you so desperately need to survive the harsh environment. Starting of, you might run into some problems and mainly its the high requirements of resources to progress and the lack of air and jet-pack thrust capacity. The more you progress and develop your base and technology, the easier it gets though.
Since this is a multiplayer experience, falling asteroids who might damage your base are the least of your concerns. Your friendly neighbors might not be as nice as you expect when they suddenly attack you and your pretty supply of ores. You have a couple of options to defend yourself against them and one of the more favored options is picking up some alliances. The game is only in early access so there are not that much players available to interact with, but in some future stages the multiplayer survival aspect will be the ideal setting for some outer-space shenanigans. So don’t be afraid to invite friends to play with you and maybe dominate the server or more preferably: the asteroid!
The amount of effort put into the creation and upkeep of Asteroids is enormous, there are a ton of patches in which they fix the most annoying bugs, balance out the game mechanics and do a ton of other sweet stuff. Take into consideration that this game has still a long road ahead until it is finished, and you shouldn’t play it if you are not OK with the occasional bugs and problems. We can only hope that they continue to work with the same enthusiasm and dedication and the result will be without a doubt amazing.
The graphics of the game already appear to be quite nice with the occasional visual bugs that come with an early access game, just imagine a part of your base missing inside a piece of rock, floating ores you can’t reach or that one canon that just keeps shooting the same asteroid over and over again. Your PC needs to be quite descent to run Asteroids so keep that in mind. The different sound effects can also be bugged but generally are well incorporated into the game. This takes it just a step higher and certainly add a nice vibe to the outer-space survival game. One thing that might become annoying after playing for a longer period of time is the constant shooting of the cannon to take down the asteroids.
Conclusion
Asteroids has a high amount of potential to become a loved multiplayer survival game. It takes the struggle to survive, technological outer-space goodies like some sort of asteroid buggy (and lets face it, everybody loves buggy’s), the rush and competition of other human players, and then proceeds to shake it into a fresh and original survival concept. This game represents the gold-rush from the future, and when you finally start mining you enjoy the vibe you get when harvesting those resources or simply claiming those of your neighbor. Whatever you do, keep in mind the 4 E’s of Asteroid mining: Explore, Extract, Expand and Exploit.
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