It’s been a good long while since I was last impressed by a survival sandbox game. It was the Sons of the Forest, for what that’s worth, though I’m sorry to report that this glowing impression did fade by the time I discovered my second golf cart. Not my kind of thing, really. This matters because StarRupture, too, impresses from the get-go, and though it falls squarely into a different niche than SOTF does, I do have a similar appreciation for it – for now.
StarRupture is a fancy new survival/factory-building game that I had the good luck of playing over the past couple of days. Featuring just the single-player portion of the experience and an assortment of early-game progression opportunities, StarRupture’s playtest suited me just fine! Really, this is a game that tries very hard to hit some of the same highs that make Factorio as big of a deal as it is. Happily enough, it has so far succeeded on my end, and I’d like to explain what was it, exactly, that made me like the game as much as I did.
First off, it’s hard to put into words how ridiculously picturesque StarRupture is. Taking place on a Death Stranding-esque planet(oid?) that’s so far away from Earth as to not even be worth comparing, the entire premise of the game is that players take control over one of the four playable character archetypes working their way towards redemption from crime, debt, etc. They are the de facto prisoners of the ominous Claywood Corporation, and though only the annoying know-it-all Scientist was available during the playtest, I found him loveable enough as the tutorial went on.
The crux behind StarRupture‘s entire gameplay loop is very simple, with that in mind: the prisoners’ goal is to siphon materials off of Arcadia-7 by any means necessary, with Claywood Corp. slowly opening up more and more of their trademarked IPs (i.e. gear, gadget, and infrastructure blueprints) as they become trusted and valuable assets. Standard corpo stuff, really. Over the course of the playtest, I haven’t been able to discover a hidden twist or some narrative bump that would make the story more intriguing, but that’s alright. For a game like StarRupture, the story is just an excuse to get your factories going, so it makes sense to have it out of the way early on.
Here’s the thing that really impressed me, though: StarRupture was remarkably polished during the hands-on preview I was privy to. The game ran pretty darn great for an Unreal 5 project (gah), and it’s a real showstopper as soon as the first vista opens up. Sure, the screenshots translate some of that pizazz, but seeing StarRupture in motion is something else entirely. I basically maxed the thing out on my RTX 4070TS/7600X rig at 3440×1440 for testing purposes, and though there was some hitching here and there, it was minuscule enough for me to just keep trucking on. Kudos to the developer Creepy Jar on that front! Running the game on my weird-ass 21:9 office display makes me acutely aware of games with no FOV sliders, and I couldn’t find one in StarRupture‘s testing build. Given that this is an Unreal title, it’s bound to be coming, but that was the sole technical “issue” I have with the game at this point.
Now, as for the content, I could be reductive here and say that StarRupture is a first-person 3D Factorio, not dissimilar to Satisfactory in practice. That’s factually what you’re signing up for when you play these games, and the differences between them boil down to gameplay loop specifics and the handling of progression. I’m thrilled to report that StarRupture feels much more immersive and cohesive in its early hours than you might expect. Satisfactory is obviously a high-point in the niche, and while I’ve got no idea whether this game might reach its heights, I can vouch for the fact that the developer is absolutely on to something with it.
The tutorial is a rapid-fire ordeal that gives you a sense of what to expect out of StarRupture before cutting your prisoner loose: you collect some basic resources, fend off some basic bug-hounds, and set up your very first production pipeline with some mines and stuff. It’s very satisfying stuff, truly. I’ll happily admit that I didn’t figure out the power/electricity system right off the bat, but that’s on me: just read the actual text that’s on your screen in this section, and all the pieces should fall neatly into place. Crafting stuff manually is an option, but obviously not the focus: StarRupture wants you to automate and optimize, fine-tuning your productive assets until they cannot be improved any more.
As someone who’s never been able to reach Factorio‘s endgame complexities, I do find immense joy in these games’ earlier stages. In that sense, StarRupture is extremely satisfying and fun, at least in my book. Base-building is fast, snappy, and effective, and collecting resources is just grindy enough to make it a minor hurdle early on. Really, it won’t take long before you’ve got a steady supply of crafting materials, and from that point on, you get to choose which interstellar corporation you submit resources to. Each has its own boons ranging from simple firearm blueprints to high-grade refineries, so it’s up to you to define your progression path.
If the name ‘Creepy Jar’ rings a bell or two, odds are you’ve played Green Hell before. Or heard of it, at least. This is one of those classic survival titles that ever fan of the genre has to have played by now. I believe StarRupture is going to eke out a name for itself in a similar fashion, from what I’ve seen of it. Green Hell was neither the first sandbox survival game nor the last, but it offered a uniquely polished and satisfying experience that people kept coming back to, over and over again. Creepy Jar has a knack for these things, and that’s precisely why I’m not concerned with the notion that StarRupture isn’t particularly innovative.
Here’s a factory-building game set in a drop-dead gorgeous setting, with de-emphasized inventory management and streamlined crafting mechanics. An air of ominous mystery surrounds virtually everything you do in StarRupture, which suggests to me that a stark narrative twist is coming to the game sooner or alter, but even if that doesn’t end up happening, the hands-on preview left me wanting to play more of it based purely on the given gameplay loop.
I will note, however, that StarRupture was rather simple and straightforward in my time with it. Obviously, I only really had access to a small sliver of the full game’s early progression content, but not once did I feel like I was being challenged to really figure something out. I’m not overly concerned simply because that wasn’t truly the goal of this playtest, I feel. Instead, the goal was to show off the vibe and the core gameplay loop, and that it’s done with gusto.
Creepy Jar is cooking up a genuinely good game here, I believe. It’s going to take some time before we can underline this claim with any amount of certainty, but the bits and bobs that were there during the playtest I found enjoyable and entertaining, and that’s more than good enough for the time being. And hey, StarRupture truly is astonishingly beautiful. Even if it only ends up delivering a decent factory-building survival sandbox with a striking backdrop, I see myself coming back to it for that reason alone.
StarRupture is bound to hit Steam Early Access sometime soon, this year for sure. If you’re even remotely interested in the genre, you’re going to want to give it a whirl. In fact, if you’re reading this at the time of publication, there’s an open playtest running that you can join for free. Consider doing so!
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