Focusing on a much harder sci-fi view of life in the universe, city builder Base One thrusts players into overseeing the survival of an entire space station in the hostile reality of space. Taking the role of a survivor after a massive deadly accident following a colonisation effort, players must collectively rally other survivors to build a habitable new home after nearly everything is lost.
With a very hardline stance and atmosphere, a cold reality is faced in trying to keep a stranded convoy in space going. The goal is to not only keep the people alive, but make sure they are safe and taken care of. This includes watching both their physical and psychological needs. While the game blends base building, management and strategy together, so many things get in the way that it is at best a very flawed experience.
The core gameplay revolves around building and expanding the central hub of the space station. Each module is a specialised bonus, such as food, life support, defence and so on. Base One attempts to help players connect these buildings together, but this is where one of the main problems rears its head with how often it doesn’t work right. Getting everything connected correctly often comes down to a matter of luck or one’s limit of frustration between battling the often abysmal camera and user interface controls.
Story- and atmosphere-wise, it is a mixed bag. The general setup should have been a slam dunk; an isolated convoy ripped away from Earth is a story rife for loneliness and isolation. Even though there are narrative elements, despite the high level the premise starts the game at, the story and presentation goes nowhere fast, and in the end somehow feels worse than if there wasn’t a story at all. It would have been better to stick solely with the pure setup from an intro video.
Much like the story, Base One gets in its own way much more than if it simply let players build a ship how they want. The AI often glitches and freezes, which ranges from annoying at best to game-reloading at worst. Workers will stop working, objectives won’t appear or trigger correctly, and things outright freeze. It tests the patience with how often these things occur, and is magnified by the extent of the problem, as indicated by how often they can be save ending.
Unfortunately, Base One is destined to just be another forgettable game in a vast ocean of them. The ideas it has are cool, but it doesn’t execute them. Whether it was limited budget, bad direction, or just flawed programming, the mess that the game is in makes it tough to recommend. Even if this was all fixed, Base One still would not be anything special.
