Review | Avorion - Ground Control to Me
I love space. I love micromanagement. That might be enough to land me a job at mission control someday but in the meantime the one game that scratches both of these itches is Avorion. Avorion is a block-based interstellar sandbox brought to us by Boxelware, an indie team of six. The game is a decade in the making, starting out as a one-man passion project by Konstantin ‘koonschi’ Kronfeldner, and has evolved into one of my favourite space games ever, even with only forty hours under my belt.
“Sir, I think this foreign ship is trying to communicate with us!”
You start off in the game in a small drone with two mining lasers and an engine that goes forwards. Pretty simple. The first thing you do is build a proper ship. Usually, I have zero luck with creators like this - I make something that looks like a borg cube and sorta just run with it, but I actually managed to build something that [kinda] resembled a ship with Avorion’s simple tools. I was told by a friend that my vessel looked like a weird gun flying around in space but at least it wasn't trying to eat Captain Picard. The creator is approachable - if a little fiddly - but at no point did I feel restricted. Adjustable block sizes and simple controls meant creating the ship was actually fun, and having required blocks (e.g. an engine, a big gun etc.) to make the ship fly and function made me innovate and plan out my build, instead of making me frustrated like it usually would.
Once I had my ship built I went exploring. The game offers you the chance to do some mining or trading, but I wanted to see the stars! And I was not disappointed. The game itself is pretty - the backgrounds of procedurally generated sectors and locations you can jump to are varied and interesting, and the content in each of them was enough to keep me exploring. However, these constellations did get a little repetitive when I started finding the same few variations over and over again, but there was still the odd curveball.
The aim of the game is to reach the centre of the galaxy. The plot and mechanics of the game point you there pretty early on - the plot is all about some weird cosmic stuff that’s happened there, and the resources you can find get better the closer you are to the core. That doesn't mean you can’t disappear off into space and do whatever you want. The game has mechanics to fit most goals, be that conquering the galaxy or building your own little trading post. What's great is that everything you do will benefit you when / if you go back to the main plot.
As a side note, I am a narrative design nut, first and foremost. I live for a good story, and I have put games down if they didn't feed that particular addiction. I can never really get into sandboxes where you make your own fun for long without friends to play it with, but Avorion surprised me. The sparse storytelling did just enough to keep me going but what drives me to play the game isn't this plot - it's how the gameplay that breeds its own stories so effectively. It is rare for me to enjoy a game purely due to its gameplay, but Avorion is just so damn engaging.
*worst Picard voice you can imagine*: ENGAGE!
I had my gripes with Avorion - you start the game as a hunk of junk and have to work your way up to the ranks of materials, systems and turrets to make your ship less of a hunk of junk. Early game ships have all the grace and functionality of a potato but the early to mid progression gave me enough enthusiasm to keep at it.
The game does try to warn you if you have bitten off more than you can chew. A little angry triangle in the top of the screen warned me if the ships in the sector would turn me into space-scrap with just a few shots. The thing is, this alone gave me more of a reason to play. I could see my dream ship in my mind and all the steps to get there, and that was more than enough to keep me going. After I made my dream ship, I would be in my dream sector with a good production line of stations, which would then feed my dream fleet, which I would use to save the galaxy! Simple!
*slaps roof of Avorion*: This baby can fit so damn many menus in it!
However, one of the clearest issues with Avorion is its border writing. This is the one thing that could make you want to stop going altogether. For as much as you can build up the nature of your own federation, the NPC factions and characters have little personality themselves. The stations are run by automated vendors and the one NPC who does speak to you frequently is best described by saying I wouldn't miss them much if they were removed tomorrow. The issue comes up when I think about invading an opposing faction and there's no drive to do so. They are just others, not characters or fractions I associate beliefs or traits with. It’s not a massive thing - again, this game thrives on its gameplay and systems, and adding in more worldbuilding would obviously be a delicate process. However, it is one I would welcome, mainly because the player-driven expression only brings attention to a somewhat lifeless universe.
But even though you’ll notice some of these flaws, I would highlight that the player is the key to all of this. The player can make allies of the NPC factions which are warring against each other. The galaxy, despite its lack of personality, is alive with opportunities, there's no empty space because even the empty sectors could be a good place to establish a colony for trade, or the site of a sudden battle you won’t see coming.
We’re called the Babe Squad… Because we have plenty of hanger bays in our fleet.
Multiplayer in Avorion has a lot of potential but lacks the polish needed to make it worthwhile. I hopped into a server for a few hours to see how the game works and it is exactly the same game, for better and worse. The game world is about a million individual sectors, and the server I was on had a cap of thirty-five players, meaning I had a very small chance of running into anyone randomly. I made a feeble attempt at forming an alliance with some folks but as I was doing this, I was struck by the curse of a singleplayer mechanic in a multiplayer mode. My crew suffocated while I built a new ship because “there’s no pausing in multiplayer!” Which is a phrase I said a lot to my parents when I played Halo as a teen.
Captains Log: YO, EVERYONE IS SHOOTING AT US WTF?!
I was able to talk with other players in a global chat and they gave me some hints and tips which was awesome but, as I said before, Avorions progression is slow. I have spent two days worth of time in singleplayer and only just reached the mid-game. I could have asked for a few free resources from other players and been boosted through the early grid of the game but where’s the fun in that?
I also felt this was a very solvable problem; just play with friends. Grab some poor souls who like space, set a time to join a discord together and bring them along with you, then you can utilise Avorions superb sandbox to make the game your own galactic Divinity: Original Sin 2. Or, if you’re not as impatient as I am, join one of the communities discord servers and work your way up to the level of the other players.
Avorion captures the possibilities of a wild, open-ended galaxy and gives the player every tool they need to make it their own. It has the feel of a game that would be amazing when played with a group of friends, which I very much will be doing more of, but works as a singleplayer game as well. It has not used its full narrative potential and that is something I hope to see improved in later updates but its ability to facilitate you and your friends' stories somewhat makes up for it.
“Ok but can I make my ship look lik—”
*sigh* “Yes…”
To really enjoy Avorion, you have to be willing to dive headfirst into its world. The writing and plot give you a vague direction to go in, but once you jet off into the stars with this sandbox you have to get invested in your own path. Aviorion does a great job to encourage and facilitate you to do what you want at every crossroad, with the added advantage that I can't point to any mechanic or system in Avorion that I would consider boring. I’ve dedicated about forty hours to Avorion already and only scratched the surface. Equally, the game has only scratched the surface of its potential for world-building and narrative depth. If you have the time to sink into the mechanics and intrinsic systems of Avorion, it is definitely the title for you, but don’t go into it looking for plot twists or a Mass Effect space romp.
Aviorion is available now on PC.
