Thread by @BretDevereaux

You know, I enjoy playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker as a sort of chill, zen experience.

But it really probably is an issue, storywise, that a game about being an exploited laborer in a ultra-capitalist dystopia is fun to actually play.

There's also a real tension between a story about being debt-trapped in an unsafe, brutal job and the gameplay fact that you can 'get gud' to safely navigate all of these hazards and also consequently steadily work down that massive debt.

The 'interest on debt' floor is 500k credits per work shift, but I regularly do 1.5-2m credits of salvaging per shift - sure the debt is made comically huge to prevent it being zero'd, but if each shift is a day the implication is you could do it in about 4 years.

So you end up with a text narrative about people being trapped in their jobs and the evil exploitative corporation that goes out of its way to keep them trapped...layered over a gameplay loop that ends up being pure 'bootstraps'-ism.

Still a great game in early access, highly recommend. Very chill once you know what you are doing.