Astrometica Preview - Empty Space in More Ways Than One

Space survival crafting title Astrometica has launched into Early Access, letting us explore what it has to offer the genre. A well-polished game, it centers around a survivor of a large spaceship explosion. Crashing into an asteroid belt, you're looking for other survivors, a way to remain alive, and a way home. There are signs of humanity left behind, but no one else is seen throughout your time floating through space. 

My favorite part of Astrometica is the music. Going through space and listening to ethereal vibes that brought me back to my childhood days in the 90s really hit a high note. It feels like space, the largeness, being full and empty all at once. I could sit there and just listen to the music for hours as it fully enhances the gameplay experience.  

That feeling of empty space is prevalent in Astrometica. While this lends itself to the feeling of being alone and without aid, it also works against the game. There's simply not enough to explore or do. You can fully explore the available area, visit the story locations, build a base and vehicles, and still be done in about 10-15 hours. This includes the many, many deaths  There are multiple areas labeled WIP, including the two warp locations you discover. 

Even the story feels empty. You've crash-landed in an asteroid belt. There's another group of survivors from the same ship. While you find one of them, you don't find the other two or learn what happened to them. Along with the notes they've left behind, there are logs from the original miners of the asteroid belt. This story points towards a mysterious force and alien invasion. You encounter some of these aliens in one location, but beyond that, there's only one other enemy to watch out for. There's no conclusion to either storyline, no solution to the mystery, nothing. This will hopefully be wrapped up as more content is added during early access.

These logs and messages are left behind in the locations you explore. If you don't pay attention to them, however, you can easily forget there's even a storyline pushing you forward. This isn't that unusual for survival titles that focus on crafting, but crafting in Astrometica is basic, with few variations in modules you can build, vehicles, and crafting devices. There's a single plant you can grow, basic combinations for cooking, and a limited number of upgrades for equipment. 

It seems like the focus of BeryMery was on fine-tuning and polishing the experience, instead of shoving in a bunch of content that may be buggy. There was a single bug that I experienced during the course of the preview, where a gold bar turned into a tool. This happened one other time when collecting ore, but it didn't affect the overall gameplay. Music didn't cut in and out, items worked as intended, and crafting was simple and didn't result in a janky base with pieces clipping into one another. There was no clipping, so much so that I died multiple times from running into asteroid pieces, part of my base, and even my vehicle. That polish is great for an Early Access game that's expected to be buggy. 

I'm hoping that further development of the title with access to WIP areas will expand upon the story and available activities. As it stands, Astrometica feels like an addition to another title versus a main game. There's nothing that drew me to keep playing, nothing that stands out as a wow factor differentiating it from the competition. It is an extremely well-crafted game, but that's simply not enough for me to consistently follow and play an Early Access title among a sea of games. 

Astrometica was previewed on PC over the course of 10 hours using a key provided by RockGame S.A. and BeryMery. Screenshots were taken during the course of the preview.