HANDS ON - Void Crew is conceptually brilliant with a long road ahead

Set phasers to Homunculus.
By Jonathan Garrett
12/09/23
Previewed on PC.
Early access provided by Focus Entertainment.

You could potentially think of Void Crew as “Space of Thieves”; a ship management sim that is balanced for co-op very much in the same way as Rare’s jaunty pirate adventure. You’ll spend time diverting power to key systems, turning valves to release pressure on the engines, and manning Millennium Falcon esque weapon placements. It’s a mighty juggling act in solo play, and at times a tad convoluted for its own good, but as a four player experience, it has the makings of a role players fantasy experience.

Despite the placeholder feel to the menus and UI, there’s a clear structure to activating relevant systems and boxing off your next objective that is presented in an accessible way. System specific boosts that allow you to essentially overclock thrusters or remove unwelcome status effects are layered in alongside your moment to moment operations. Mercifully, getting around your ship is fairly straightforward, with zippy tubes providing shortcuts to the bridge and engineering compartments, with most of the other critical areas being fairly reachable once you’ve orientated yourself.

Graphically it still feels rough; the art style lacks detail with screen tearing prevalent during faster motion. There’s also a frustrating overreliance on convoluted lore that eschews meaningful depth in favour of dense terminology. When you’re hit with language like Homunculus, Metem, and Quantum Shards, it’s tough to connect your actions with the lore and context of the world without feeling like you need to have a printed guide book next to your mouse.

That being said, there’s flashes of brilliance here that suggests Void Crew is only just beginning its journey. The voice acting is wonderfully directed, the sheer amount of mechanics within your ship ensures everyone involved has something to consider, and the expandable nature of its mission structure certainly lends itself to seasonal content and future updates.

Developer Hutlihut have filled a gap in the genre that definitely needed filling; a co-operative sci fi crew sim that ticks all the necessary Star Trek boxes. With a regular cadence of changes and transparent communication, Void Crew’s journey through Early Access has every chance of coming out the other side at warp speed.

TARPS?

At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.