Somewhere out in space is Everything, which is both a thing of beauty and wonder but also terrifying. The Outer Reach was a section of space filled with planetary systems rich with resources for a hungry Earth, but there were strange artifacts there too. Eventually the… builders? Guardians? Nobody knew for sure but they became known as the Entity, a race of powerful aliens that claimed the Outer Reach as their own. Humanity got chased away and declared the Outer Reach off limits, and then one thousand years passed without incident there. That’s the kind of time that can make the lessons of the past seem like quaint warnings for a long-gone age, and the Scav-X Corporation sees nothing but the potential for immense profit out there. It’s time to re-explore the Outer Reach and scavenge every credit it holds.
Space Trash Scavenger released its demo as part of the latest Steam Next Fest and it’s a great little taste of 3D mini-planet survival base building. Starting off on a 1x1 cube with the TRACI console giving a brief tutorial, you quickly build a small base with a few starter machines to kick off the adventure. Basic blocks give you room to walk about, while socket blocks energize the machinery set on top of them and the solar blocks provide power. Space has no gravity but the blocks can fake it, so even on the 1x1 starter you can walk around on all six surfaces with no worry of falling off. While the demo is fairly limited, the number of pieces shown promises to allow all sorts of fun and interesting base design in every direction.
Once you’ve got a basic platform to build from it’s time to get a sense of the world around you, which is a debris ring around a gas giant. “Giant” in this case is maybe a bit misleading, because mini-planetoids hidden by the curve of the planet are only a bit over a kilometer away, but that’s still a lot of space to explore seeing as the trip into the Outer Reach will take you from one randomly-generated planetary system to the next. This one, though, is a starter system, with a nice array of small planetoids and debris drifting through its orbit. The first tool you get is a telescanner (with handy zoom function) that lets you know what you’re looking at, whether that be a type or wreckage or what kind of resources a planetoid has, and after a bit of base upgrading you earn the blueprint for jetpack fuel to go exploring.
At this point Space Trash Scavengers shows itself to be a very nicely done take on the base-building survival genre. Scavenge resources, run mini-quests for anyone you may meet, blast hostile aliens, and fly anywhere that catches your attention to see what it may hold. The mini-planetoids have their own gravity, Mario Galaxy-style, but other than that and home base Up is what you make of it. Space is filled with wreckage and dismantling it and bringing the bits back to home lets you break everything down to their component elements, then fabricate the bits into useful items that can either be used or sold at the stock market outpost floating somewhere nearby. Money buys blueprints, blueprints let you build more stuff, and more stuff makes more money. It’s the circle of space capitalism, although it doesn’t seem likely the Entity are going to be any too happy with the activity. Space is big enough that it would have been a good idea to let the Entity have this, but now that you’re here it’s time to build a home strong enough to explore the mysteries of the Outer Reach.
