We Should Play Space Station 13 Created 9 years ago2015-11-23 20:32:03 UTC by Dimbeak

Guys, guys, guys. There's a game that I've been playing for the past year and I need to tell you people about it. It is an absolute masterpiece. It's called Space Station 13.

Space-Station 13 is probably my favorite game at current time. I've been playing it more than any other game--including Fallout 4.

So what is SS13? It's a round-based 2d roleplaying game. And when I say roleplaying, I mean, full on in-character roleplaying running the space station. Every job has its own unique set of mechanics, and some complicated job to run the station. At any given time, 30-60 players are running a station.Let's get some things out of the way, first. Yes this game is butt ugly. But so is Deus Ex. And much like Deus Ex, once you get used to how it plays, the graphics won't matter.

Let's talk about some of the jobs you can get on the station--there are a lot of those. Firstly, there's Command.Then engineering.And some misc. jobsYou get the idea.

But, there's a twist. One of these listed traitors is given a specific task, which goes against the goals of the station. The antagonist(s) are decided at the beginning of each round.The round ends when either the antagonist has won, or the Emergency Shuttle has been called, waited for, boarded, and landed at Central Command. Rounds on average tend to last 1-3 hours on some servers, and 4-6 hours on more serious servers.

This game is too good. It's free, so you have no reason not to try it.

It's located on BYOND, which you can download here. I recommend playing Yogstation.

The Yog wiki is here. Try it out--this game deserves many more players.

And now, some random screenshots from the game.

looks interesting, we could create a TWHL Guild or something
i will give it a try over the weekend

I feel as though I've undersold the depth of this game, so let me make a list of the things you can do in the game (and I'll put them in bold if I've actually done it.)

-Set up a gravitational singularity
-Release a gravitational singularity
-Deactivate the gravity generator
-Put on a space suit and go exploring for abandoned stations, ships, and crashed clown ships full of bananium
-Use a cryptographic sequencer to hack an arcade machine to kill the user if they lose
-Spend an entire round as the clown slipping donuts into peoples' pockets
-Steal a welder's mask and a chainsaw and start chasing peoples whilst' screaming
-Escape from permanent detention by breaking open a window and convincing the A.I. that you would die if it didn't let you out
-Lock someone in a locker, weld it shut, and launch it out into space
-Put a hat and armor on a corgi puppy and flush it down the waste disposal system
-Succeed in a high-speed chase by utilizing slippery mopped floors and banana peels
-Download a sad trombone synthesizer
-Cut off a spider's legs and skin it, and make a burger of nothing but its legs
-Make a burger out of nothing but donk pockets
-Successfully colonize an asteroid
-Discover bananium on the mining asteroid and build a H.O.N.K. Mech for the clown.
-Hack a cyborg to secretly follow your directives
-Download a personal AI and have it appear as the hologram of a corgi puppy

And many more.

Yes this game is butt ugly. But so is Deus Ex.

You're not serious, are you?

Absolutely.At least by modern standards. Say what you like about the context of the time a game is released, ugly is still ugly and context won't change that. So if a new game looks as ugly (or uglier) than Deus Ex, it could still be good--it's just ugly.

Deus Ex isn't ugly though. I'm not sure what you're on about. It was just released too late.

I don't know about ugly. I don't cringe when I look at it.
Shouldn't confuse simple with ugly.

Deus Ex isn't super ugly, but this sure is. What a mess!

You've been trying to get me to play this for ages, but I just can't get into this sort of roleplay in games. I know you play RP on gmod as well, and I just find the whole thing a bit unfulfilling.

Deus Ex still oozes atmosphere, and it's absolutely consistent and on point with it's graphical fidelity, world building & detail. I don't put much stock into the arguments about games aging badly, or ever 'becoming' ugly after a certain point.

But this game... not so much. This sprite work wouldn't have made the cut back in the 16 bit era.

Shouldn't confuse simple with ugly.

I'm bound to the popular opinion of most Internet users. But hey, ugly is subjective, so nevermind the whole matter.

Christ, make one off-handed comparison to another game and the world goes mad. The comparison wasn't to point out that Deus Ex was ugly, but that despite how they look, they're still complex, deep, and atmopsheric.

Deus Ex isn't super ugly, but this sure is. What a mess!

Shouldn't confuse intricate with ugly.

I know you play RP on gmod as well, and I just find the whole thing a bit unfulfilling.

Gmod RP is a very different bag and is nowhere similar. In Gmod RP, people break character all the time, and you're not actually roleplaying as much as you're just trying to play a game. SS13 is made easier by the fact that all roleplaying is done via keyboard, not microphone. It takes some getting used to, but once you are, it's a hell of a ride.

Deus Ex still oozes atmosphere, and it's absolutely consistent and on point with it's graphical fidelity, world building & detail.

So is SS13's. SS13 is intricate and quite ugly for 16-bit graphics, but it's consistent, and the atmosphere for this game comes across brilliantly with the sound design. The hum of the station, the vacuum of space, the muttering digital voices in the AI chamber, the loud generators in engineering. Oh, and every time you depart into outer space all alone, you hear Space Oddity.

Either way, I'd honestly recommend playing this game. It doesn't look like much, but it is. I would gladly take this game over Fallout 4 any day. A bold claim to make, but one worth checking out for yourselves.

I might check it out myself after my exams, but I'm probably going to be busy in one form or another until April or May. It doesn't sound like the kind of game you can pick up and play for twenty minutes or so when you have a break.

Been trying to learn telescience in SS13, and good lord is it fucking hard. A game is actually requiring I use trigonometry.

If you're incapable of math, ask yourself what the hell are you doing in the Research Division of the most high-tech space station ever built, and apply to Head of Personnel for the Clown's job.

So after infinite badgering from Dimbark, me and Urby had a go of this last night.
It's exactly what you'd expect, if not worse. The graphics are a complete mess across the board, with the interface as messy and unreadable as the spritesheet. A large part of the game involves paying attention to a server-wide chat screen which is moving at the pace you'd expect of a Habbo Hotel room with 60 occupants.

It's a neat idea that everything can be tinkered with by players, but with everyone following their own personal objectives and the absolutely pitiful way the game conveys information, it's simply chaos at all times. Chaos can be great in a game - but it's only effective when it's a disruption of the norm, not the entire game.

You might be able to get some enjoyment out of it if you're the sort of person who has time to dedicate to reading hours of vague wiki documentation to understand just the basics.

I understand why people get into these games, but I'm just so not interested in putting in hours of work to maybe get some enjoyment out of it, and the horrific mess of a UI removes any chance of me touching this shit again.

TL;DR:
Look at the screenshots. It's exactly what you think it is from looking at those.

I would be thankful you took the hit for all of us if I thought anyone was likely to play it.

simply chaos at all times

That's exactly what it was. An absolute clusterfuck of information with Dim on TS and that text window. I like to RP, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't have played MMORPGs for so long if I didn't.

But when I hear 'roleplay,' I think 'immersion.' I don't feel immersed when I move a 2D sprite around on a (hideous) board and get a text prompt saying "You are doing a thing."

It's a nice idea, executed in the poorest possible way.

The graphics are a complete mess across the board, with the interface as messy and unreadable as the spritesheet. A large part of the game involves paying attention to a server-wide chat screen which is moving at the pace you'd expect of a Habbo Hotel room with 60 occupants.

It's a neat idea that everything can be tinkered with by players, but with everyone following their own personal objectives and the absolutely pitiful way the game conveys information, it's simply chaos at all times.

I agree with the UI and graphics being a mess, though not with the chaos thing. Most of everyone has a similar objective; perform their duty on the station, which all works in tandem like the real world. To play an assistant, however, which has no objective, I can understand why you got the impression of chaos.

Part of the appeal for the game, for me, is knowing that there's a whole station full of people doing their jobs, all of which are capable of working together to stop whatever obstacle is being thrown at them.

You might be able to get some enjoyment out of it if you're the sort of person who has time to dedicate to reading hours of vague wiki documentation to understand just the basics.

the horrific mess of a UI removes any chance of me touching this shit again.

I do agree that the UI is horrific, but once you get used to it (which I understand is a big but) it actually proves to be quite a robust system for roleplaying.

But when I hear 'roleplay,' I think 'immersion.' I don't feel immersed when I move a 2D sprite around on a (hideous) board and get a text prompt saying "You are doing a thing."

It may be hard to get into, but there's something about this style I quite like. There are times when the game can be really immersive--chatting over tea with a crew member, or when the lights go dark and the radios go out and you're all alone on the station with something that may or may not want to kill you, so you immediately break a window, snatch some cable coil and a rod and build yourself a spear for the sake of protection.

Part of what makes roleplaying in it, for me, is imagination, honestly--the same reason I'm really able to get into Final Fantasy VII. When you have such basic graphics to work with, your mind fills in the gaps and it makes roleplaying a lot of fun. But maybe that's just me.

It's a nice idea, executed in the poorest possible way.

I suppose that's why I like it. It's an idea which I haven't seen executed in any other way. The closest game I can think of comparing it to is Trouble in Terrorist Town, and obviously there's a huge distance.

All in all, I understand Urb & Arch's complaints with the game, but I would like to comment that they both missed out on the roleplaying aspect, since neither of them spoke to any other character, and they missed out watching the station function, since they never left the maintenance area and played as the basic job for learning the rules.

But hey, SS13 isn't for everyone. Very niche title for a very niche reason, but I'm just glad you tried it before completely dismissing it.