[Review] Space Crew - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Runner Deck
Published By: Curve Digital
Categories: Space Ship Sim
Release Date: 10.15.20

Ever want to command your own futuristic space ship and crew? Well Space Crew has you covered, the ups as well as the downs.

Gather your crew, get in your ship, and then ride along in the vastness of space. A lot. Though it is mixed up from time to time, this is essentially what majority of your missions will be. Deliver freight, travel, go back, and so on. You’ll run into aliens trying to shoot you down, but you can shoot them right back. Things can take quite a bit of time per mission, so a fast forward button was a nice thing to give the player when not in fights.

Undernearth that, you do have quite the indepth mechanics of the crew. Each member has their own roles, skills they excel at, and things only they can do. Of course, you can have anyone do most anything at any time, but you won’t get the best results unless you get a specific crew member to do the task. Like an Engineer work on repairing the ship for instance. At any time, you can zoom in and out of the ship to see the inner workings or even the ship’s surroundings. I found it more interesting to zoom out and watch everything happen, but you’re better off being zoomed in incase you need to do anything with the ship or crew.

Everything can be upgraded the more you play, with money and research you earn. I’d recommend doing so right away just so you won’t get any close calls with fights. I did miss how unique some crew members were in outfit after I put them in better gear as at that point, the only unique part of them is their faces.

You can tell the developers like Star Trek, from the key art on the eshop and home page, with how everyone is designed, even with some names. It’s cute, even if it’s blatant. I like how everything in the game looks outside of the characters themselves. The game has a pixelated texture look to everything, which for ships and the like, looks great. For the super deform styled characters…not so much.

While you really do feel like you’re in full control of the ship and it’s crew, the game can really get stale after a while as it just gets so repetitive and some missions just seem to drag, and I was left bored when I wasn’t playing with a friend. The game starts to shine when you’re not alone, but a game shouldn’t depend on that.