Habitat – Hours of Light Entertainment

Habitat is one of the craziest games on display at the ID@Xbox Games Showcase of Microsoft. It’s a physics-based sandbox space simulation game set in the distant future where Earth is being devoured by non-machines. In a desperate play, humanity even propels all types of junk into orbit so that engineers can create space stations from them. So, you are to take command of a team of engineers and build habitable environments for escaping humans. Thus in Habitat, you can create space stations from debris orbiting earth and fly them. You will get a lot to explore, manage resources and have elements of survival gameplay.

You can also make use of rocket physics, steerable thrusters and boosters to move around, as well as play with lasers, particle accelerators and grappling hooks to create as much turmoil as possible.

Habitat is developed by Seattle-based indie developer 4gency. Its publisher is Versus Evil.

Gameplay

Earth is now malformed and scarred by some unimaginable cataclysm, and is sporting a new orbit of space debris, which contains some very unusual items like laser cannons, booster rockets, space shuttle, and even hamburger restaurants, ferris wheels, huge buzzsaw blades and the head of an enormous mechanical fire-spitting Tyrannosaurus Rex. What you are expected to do is to bring this space jetsam together and create strange weapon-equipped space stations having the ability of supporting life and keeping death away.

It’s immaterial how these goods got up in the orbit or even why some of them even exist, like the cut off head of a cyborg Statue of Liberty. Main thing is they are important for your survival if you can smash enough of them together. You can click a piece of debris and drag it to a spot which will notify one of your faithful engineers to fly out, grab it and push it towards the location you have selected. It you choose two items close enough, the engineer will fuse them together. Boosters and rockets can be roped and linked to shuttles, and then let off either together or separately to let your ship move around in the debris field. Gas tanks, weapons, cargo containers or anything you could find can be added to your developing habitat.

Objectives and purposes are quite limited at this stage. You would be told to form resources like electricity, fuel and omni (a multipurpose resource which is undefined) all of which come as a by-product of adhering pieces and parts together. You would also be told to increase your team of engineers up to ten, which you can do by just clicking the plus symbol when you have collected resources in a number enough to support them.

One more goal is to connect thirty junk pieces together which is a bit challenging. You can build many separate habitats at once so as to make it easy using more parts.

A good sense of humor is seen throughout the play when you find some funny objects in the orbit, a huge speaker which gives out colorful dubstep rays, enormous metal Hadouken hand launching fireballs and the red, blue and white laser field of Lady Liberty. Amongst this, the fire-spitting T-Rex head is simply amazing.

Ultimately you have to create environments consisting of enough food, oxygen and electricity to make the Earth refugees sustain. So, you will need to be smart about what you gather and where you put them on your ship. You can start by taking inspiration from games like XCOM and Spaceward Ho!

In short, Habitat is a light entertainment which can keep you engaged for hours.