Meeple Station - Full Release Review
Meeple Station is a space station building management sim which I have been following the development of since I discovered it on Kickstarter in 2018. Since then the development has gone on a massive journey involving missing out on their Kickstarter target, to being picked up by Modularity, the publishing arm of IndieDB and Mod.io, an early access release and now a full release. Thanks to the team who kindly provided me with a key during the Kickstarter campaign.
As soon as I loaded the game big changes were evident. The game logo and menu screen have been totally redesigned and give the game that polished feel you would expect after an additional 18 months or so of development. Before getting further into the game I want to mention a couple of things about the menu screen. Whilst polished, the menu options are horizontal buttons across the bottom of the screen rather than a 'traditional' stacked layout, when starting a new game for the first time, this lead me to miss the option for tutorials.
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Creating the initial station design within build mode. Note the checklist of essential items in the lower right. |
I jumped into a new campaign, after selecting the 'mild' difficulty and was welcomed with a new opening animation sequence providing an explanation of some of the Meeple race back story. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there was no way to skip this which means watching it every time you start a new game. There are 5 difficulty levels to choose from, each making gameplay more difficult than the last, initially by reducing your starting budget and later in play by modifying the frequency and severity of meteor showers and pirate attacks. Once the cutscene ends you start the 'build' phase of play where you create your basic superstructure. There is a helpful checklist in the bottom right which will help you make sure you have everything you need to have a functioning station, such as solar panels, life support systems and a food source. If you want a quicker start there is an option to generate a random station which you can then customise, rather than building from scratch.
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Planning my piping and cabling solutions. The view can be filtered to a single utility type to allow planning and placement of these individual lines. |
The next task is to review your starting crew of 5 Meeple. Here you will be able to see their skills and how those relate to their suitability for then various jobs which will need to be carried out on your station. If you wish, you can reroll for a different mix of crewmates to try and get a mix which you are happy with. Once you are happy you have a good mix of skills you can proceed to the core gameplay. In addition to keeping an eye on their skills, you will also need to watch their character traits - an astrophobic miner (which I had on my playthrough) isn't exactly ideal!
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Checking the stats of my starting crew to ensure a mix of skills and allowing me to fill as many jobs as possible. |
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Top: A full asteroid selected for mining, note the corridors available for salvaging. Bottom: The asteroid information panel showing the materials available for mining with only one queued for mining. |
Managing your Meeple is about a lot more than assigning them an appropriate job. You will need to keep an eye on their key stats such as hygiene, stress and mood. These can be affected by a variety of factors, for example without a bathroom, bins and waste extraction the hygiene of your Meeple will suffer, having a disagreement with a crewmate, or not having their own bed will lower their mood. If you don't look after their needs then your Meeple will become disgruntled, or even depressed which can result in a short space walk without a spacesuit, or your officers going rogue and queuing construction and salvage actions at will round your station. This can have dire consequences - my officer got stressed and decided the best course of action was to instruct my engineers to destroy the oxygen supply lines from my life support!
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A passing trade ship docked with the station |
The game has definitely undergone many changes since the first pre-alpha build which I was fortunate to get the chance to play. There is more depth to the gameplay and the objectives in the campaign definitely make the game feel more structured and defined. I thoroughly enjoyed returning to this, and probably sank more time into a single session than I had in previous builds of the game. Whilst the game has reached a 1.0 release, the developer hasn't simply moved on and has continued to push patches and hotfixes for minor bugs following the release. If you are a fan of base builder games then I would definitely recommend this game, at a price point of 14.99GBP/16.99EUR/$19.99 I feel that the game definitely delivers value for money.
Meeple Station - Full Release Review
Reviewed by Parcival
on
April 27, 2020
Rating:

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