After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2023 and various public Steam demos since then, the ambitious multiplayer RTS ZeroSpace has now entered into early access, and the developers at Starlance Studios were kind enough to provide us with a review key so I could dive right in.
I’ve already covered ZeroSpace a fair bit in previous columns, so if you’re just joining us, I’d recommend reading those for a detailed breakdown of the game, but if that’s all a bit too much to read, I’ll provide a brief recap.
ZeroSpace is a Starcraft II inspired sci-fi RTS built around three main pillars. It features a story campaign with Mass Effect style decisions and companion relationships (the first 12 mission act is included in the current build), competitive PvP with four main factions and six (eventually seven) mercenary sub factions to augment your army, and an MMO inspired competitive PvE mode called Galactic War. In Galactic War, you join one of three player alliances and participate in StarCraft II style co-op missions to earn points towards capturing planets for your alliance.
Unfortunately the early access build doesn’t feel that different from the previous demos. It’s still a very unfinished game, and many of my core criticisms remain unaddressed. The UI is still hard to read, the Grell still look and feel too much like Zerg, and jank abounds, from awkward unit animations to various bugs.
The biggest issue I’ve run into is a persistent bug wherein abilities keep cancelling themselves. I’ll try to place down an AoE ability only for it to cancel itself before I can place the reticle. Putting attachments on my super units as the Legion is especially problematic. The flyout menu for them keeps closing itself, and even when it doesn’t, the button presses often don’t go through, even when I have enough resources for the attachment. A patch over the weekend partially addressed this, but I’m still encountering issues at times.
The biggest new addition is the fourth main faction, the robotic Xol, whom I’ve been hotly anticipating. However, the Xol are still heavily incomplete, featuring unfinished animations and placeholder art and audio in a lot of places.
Because of their unfinished state, the Xol are not available in ranked PvP or Galactic War, but I was able to test them out in some versus AI skirmishes. As promised, their core mechanic is combining their units to make new ones. I was worried this would be very confusing, but it isn’t too bad in practice, though it does take a little getting used to.
You have three basic units you can build: The Roller is a cheap and swarmy harassment unit akin to a ranged Zergling, the Spectron is a ranged hit and run attacker that feels like a Stalker, and the Xyther is a tanky melee frontliner. You can then combine these units into higher tier units, but you never combine different types with each other, so each is sort of its own tech path. Rollers only combine with Rollers, Spectrons with Spectrons, and so forth.
There’s also a dedicated construction menu for combining units, so you don’t need to worry about fiddling around microing individual units together. However, it does seem the units need to be on screen to be combined, which is a bit annoying.
Xol also have unique production mechanics. Their base units are built through a charge system, and they can produce near-instantly at any Power Core (supply structure). It’s like some unholy crossbreeding of Zerg larvae and Protoss Warp Gate, which seems like it will be a nightmare to balance for competitive play.
Overall, I like the Xol. They’re probably on track to be my favourite faction. They’re certainly fresh and unique, and I love their art design. Their units feel truly alien in a way I just love.
However, I am disappointed they’re another faction reliant on swarms of weak low tier units. It seems even with four factions, ZeroSpace won’t have one dedicated to tanky high value units in the vein of Protoss, Horde, or Q’rath. That’s my favourite type of RTS faction, and not having one in ZeroSpace stings. I also strongly dislike the current look of the circuit board “creep” spread by Xol buildings; it’s very ugly and makes the map quite hard to read, worsened by the distracting energy currents that run across it.
My preference is to avoid playing the campaign until the story is complete. I had planned to play a couple missions to see how it had improved since the demo where I tried it, but by all reports even the part of the campaign that is available is still severely unfinished, so I think I’ll just wait.
I think ZeroSpace is going to live or die by the strength of its Galactic War feature, and the good news is that is currently its most complete and enjoyable game mode. There’s already ten different co-op missions to play as part of it, all pretty varied and with at least some randomized elements.
I want to give special praise to the mission design. While clearly inspired by SC2‘s co-op missions, ZeroSpace feels like an evolution of the concept, with more diverse and creative designs. I really like how most maps combine both offensive and defensive elements to the objectives. It keeps you on your toes.
Meanwhile, combining the co-op gameplay with an RvR style territory control map is a stroke of genius. It’s all the fun of cheering for your team in PvP without the stress of actually playing PvP. I love that the game lets you know when your match is the one that flips control of a planet. It’s such a rush.
I’m not generally a big fan of influencer culture, but the current event where several streamers are leading each alliance in the hopes of winning (cosmetic) prizes for the victorious alliance adds even more spice. I was tempted to join Winter’s faction as I do enjoy his SC2 casts, but in the end I had to stay loyal to the Eden Accord and maintain my unbroken lifelong streak of choosing green in every game with three factions. Lead us to victory, uThermal!
In the demos the Galactic War tended to snowball hard with one faction dominating. I’m not sure if something changed, but as of this writing I’ve been impressed by what a pitched battle it’s been in the live version. The alliances seem pretty evenly matched, and the lead position changes hands daily. It’s been exciting to watch.
The strong design of the missions themselves coupled with the persistent struggle for control of the galaxy makes for a very addictive experience. It’s got that “just one more match” hook to it.
The unfinished nature of ZeroSpace is still an issue, though. Aside from the bugs plaguing the game generally, there are obviously unfinished elements of the Galactic War. There’s a whole bunch of currencies, as well as buttons to build stuff on planets, but none of it seems to work yet.
To be honest, I hope it never does. One of the biggest issues with ZeroSpace is that everything tends to be two or three steps more complicated than it needs to be. The basic loop of fighting over planets is fine. We don’t need to overcomplicate it.
My biggest issue, though, is the current lack of playable commanders. There’s currently only three — one for each faction minus Xol — and they pretty much play like the base faction. Having some vanilla options is fine, but there needs to be more flavours than just vanilla.
Not to say the existing commanders aren’t fun. My favourite thing in this game right now is to build Dreadnaughts with Galavax, equip them with the turret that fires lighting bolts when friendly units die, and then flood the field with Thralls using his summoning towers. It’s powerful on its own, but then combo it with the ability where you sacrifice Thralls to summon the Emperor Projection, and it’s like unleashing the apocalypse. This is the kind of power trip we come to RTS games for.
But still, with only three options (only two of which I like, as I’m not a Grell man), I can already feel fatigue setting in. The Galactic War is great, but it needs more commanders ASAP to ensure longevity.
It’s hard to know how to feel about ZeroSpace. The current state of the game is very rough, and the anemic player population doesn’t inspire one to optimism. But even with all the problems, there is still fun to be had. I’ve spent the first few days absolutely glued to Galactic War.
ZeroSpace is going to get a lot of comparisons to the late and largely unlamented Stormgate. While there are some similarities, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. Stormgate wasn’t just unfinished; it was creatively bankrupt and just plain boring. While some parts of ZeroSpace feel a little overly derivative, it still feels like a game built with love and passion in a way Stormgate never did, and most importantly, it’s actually fun to play. The mistake I think it shares with Stormgate, though, is spreading itself too thin trying to do too many things at once.
Controversial take, but in hindsight, I’m not sure the mercenary mechanic was worth it. Yes, the mercenary units are really cool, with good visual designs and fun mechanics, but they must have consumed a lot of developer resources, and they add an unmanageable level of complexity to competitive play. Even if you do think they’re a positive for versus, versus is by far the least popular game mode; Steam Next Fest stats show ranked players as one percent of the population.
While the recent addition of items does allow mercenary use in Galactic War, it could take a long time to get the item for the mercs you want, and on the whole it’s a bit of a kludgy solution. This leaves me to wonder whether all that work on mercenaries was worthwhile when their main purpose is in a mode most people don’t play.
You can find other examples of unfocused design, too. The wave defense co-op mode is a cool idea, but it’s completely disconnected from the rest of the game, and I can’t even find anyone to play it with. Was this really worth the resources? The Galactic War screen mentions a whole bunch of planned additional features for it, and honestly, my stomach sank reading that. ZeroSpace doesn’t need yet more systems and features. It doesn’t need a seventh mercenary faction. It needs to finish the core game modes.
There’s a saying in writing that you need to kill your darlings, meaning you need to remove the parts of a story that aren’t working, even if you really like them. I think that’s a lesson the Starlance devs badly need to take to heart. They need to start killing darlings if ZeroSpace is to have a future.
What I want Starlance to focus on is fixing bugs, adding more Galactic War commanders (especially a Xol commander), and finishing the campaign (possibly including scaling back on plans for it so it can be completed in a reasonable time frame). Everything else should be considered a stretch goal, if not scrapped entirely.
It’s hard to recommend ZeroSpace in its current state, especially with its $40USD price point, but at the same time the Galactic War is one of the best ideas I’ve ever seen in an RTS game, and I feel like it could be worth supporting just for that. I’m certainly not done fighting the good fight for the Eden Accord.
I’m worried about this game, but I am pulling for it, and not just because we don’t have a lot of options as RTS fans these days.
