Hardspace: Shipbreaker puts Minecraft in reverse

In older video games, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, the word survival was often only attached to horror, as in survival-horror. What survival often meant in that case was "I'm low on bullets." But the survival sim (minus horror, plus simulation) has expanded well beyond that loose definition. Take Minecraft, for instance. It used to be the sole purview of role-playing games that made you combine A and B to get C in your inventory; think alchemy, like when mages are brewing a potion, or rogues are concocting a poison. But mining individually procured elements from a voxel-like environment, then crafting end-products from those elements is something that came to the popular forefront with, yes, Minecraft. 

Now, in Hardspace: Shipbreaker, it's time to break things back down. Not break it down into its chemical compounds, but laser cutting things apart in order to sell for salvage. Real blue collar stuff. But in space. Zero G, stars all around, the only air being the air in your O2 tank, your only weapon being a laser cutter. Now that I think about it, this is looking like the deceptively chill prologue to Dead Space. Nothing from the ESRB yet, but nah, Europe has Hardspace rated at PEGI 12, so I think we're safe from any necromorphs jumping out of the vents. Still, space is inherently scary, since you can go twisting off at the end of your tether, or oxygen levels are always draining, or it's just, like, cold out there, kids. Bring a coat.

In this gameplay video we see your character, not named Isaac Clarke, cutting and slinging metal around like an open-air fish market vendor. Huh, fancy that: The ship in this trailer is a "Mackerel." Fish! You're also not even making money in the beginning with your salvage operation—you're paying off a massive debt that looks to be just short of $1 billion in the red. But if you've ever met Tom Nook in Animal Crossing, you already know what video game debt feels like. It feels like it's time to get to work. 

You're looking for the juicy bits in these derelict, essentially dry-docked places. Only the highest-priced salvage. Not the cheap stuff. But watch where you're cutting because slicing and dicing up the wrong thing can potentially take you, your inventory, or the whole ship out. "One ship, one hundred ways to die." Fuel pipes, decompression events, electrical lines, reactor meltdowns...safety first, folks. This ain't Isaac Clarke's Dead Space, but it could be yours. 

Hardspace: Shipbreaker hits Steam Early Access on June 16. There are PS4 and Xbox One logos at the end of the trailer, too, but no word on if/when those will go into their own early access period or go straight to launch.