Hull BreacH Demo

As tough as it might be to get lost in the wilderness, there’s always the chance that you’ll be found sooner or later, at least if you keep yourself alive. On top of that, you can keep moving until you reach civilization, even if it takes days, weeks or months. However, the situation is horrible if you find yourself alone in space, with no one around for billions of miles.

Hull BreacH is a first-person survival game in which your purpose is to stay alive by any means necessary, while trying to survive a long journey through space. The whole thing takes place on a spaceship, on which you are alone at all times. Besides feeding yourself and staying hydrated, it’s also necessary that look after the ship and keep it in shape, so that it can sustain you over the course of the journey.

Everything you need to survive is being produced by the ship, which includes Oxygen, food and water. These systems need maintenance, on the other hand, so it’s a pretty symbiotic relationship. Hence, whether you have to keep fires from spreading, fix broken electronics or maintain the desired temperature for the plants on board, everything you do is so that both the ship and yourself can endure some more.

To make sure you don’t get bored in the meantime, the game provides you with a few other possibilities as well, such as performing upgrades on yourself to deal better with the unpleasantries of space. Whether it’s a component that makes you less susceptible to the dangers of volatile gravity, or something to make you work faster, all you need are a few electronics and some spare time.

The interface you have to get acquainted with is pretty straightforward, but it can also be a bother sometimes. As an example, the inventory has to be handled with mouse clicks alone, but there’s no drag-and-drop functionality. It’s not too much of a hassle, except for the fact that you have to individually select every item you want to pick up, and they are all displayed in a list that can sometimes be pretty long. There’s a reason the classic system is so popular, and it's because it works.

Although at this point in time Hull BreacH is still in it’s Early Access days, there’s clearly something delicious boiling in this pot. The survival concept is used in a very creative way, and there seems to be a lot more coming in the gameplay department. Naturally, it needs a few touch-ups here and there, but everything should be fine as long as the developers keep improving the game.