The Chasm

Hello again, MantaChasm! In keeping with the theme here of “getting out of my shell” I’ve now uploaded two videos on the YouTube; nothing special, just two, hour-long episodes of a survival series I’m doing in Space Engineers (an amazing game, by the way) but it’s definitely something I’ve never really done before.

Right now they’re private videos but I’ll probably make them public this week. I’m kind of excited; I mentioned before that streaming intrigues me, and this marks a step in that direction. Obviously I’m not streaming yet, but I can do recorded videos for a long while before I venture there. And there’s even talk of some guests! A long-time friend of mine started playing Space Engineers and I’ve discussed doing a series with him, although we may start by just having him guest-star in my current series (and by “series” I mean two episodes). I think it would be exciting having another person playing along with me. I used to play a series with another friend of mine, but he became exceptionally busy over the past year and we ended up playing a grand total of maybe 4 times together? I don’t have many friends, but the ones I have are flaky as biscuits.

Two more things for this post: 1. the MantaChasm is going to be moving to a permanent non-WordPress domain and 2. I wanted to do a quick explainer of Space Engineers. So, first of all when I set up this site on WordPress I simultaneously purchased the domains I wanted to use for it but have yet to scrape the money together to actually graduate to the paid tier that will let me use it. It won’t be too much longer though, I had to keep digging into the money I had set aside for an anime figure releasing this month but that should be stable now. When that magical number is finally reached the MantaChasm will be moving to mantachasm.online, a pretty nifty-sounding domain if I do say so myself. I will keep this blog updated with that status so my one reader (myself) will be ready to switch.

Now, on to the second: Space Engineers is a sandbox-style physics game from Keen Software House (Keen) with a space theme. It originally launched with just empty space and asteroids but as time went on the Devs added planets and so many other features. You “play” as a Space Engineer (basically a guy in a spacesuit with a welder, grinder and drill) and then… that’s it. No, the game doesn’t end there; “that’s it” because YOU decide where you go from there. It’s a physics sandbox, so anything goes: honestly. You can begin certain scenarios where you start with an outpost with ships, rovers, etc., or you can begin in an empty world and build whatever you want. The building system is block-based so your main structures consist of “light armor blocks”, but there are many “functional blocks” in the game such as the refinery, medical station, oxygen generator, nuclear reactor, various thrusters, etc. Keen has done a lot to make their game interesting and “stable” *wink* by adding air-tightness, new functional blocks, and recently an entire economy system complete with a currency and contract system. The base game is great but where it really shines is with all of the mod support is has, just visit it’s Steam Workshop page. From unique blocks to scripted NPC encounters to entire custom scenarios the modders who build for Space Engineers are truly some of the best (shoutout to Meridius_IX, Whiplash141, Spacebar, dummy08 and ALL of the other amazing modders in the community).

It’s hard to compact the 561 hours I have in-game into a truly deserving review, but here it goes: Space Engineers is the only game I’ve played where I’ve had jump scares while mining for resources as giant spiders suddenly screech and emerge from underground to kill me, had to honestly do math to make sure a craft I’d engineered had enough thrust and fuel to break the atmosphere and navigate in space, and been stunned with how beautiful the scenery looked as I hiked 12 kilometers back to base through snowy mountains with my Halo BR-85 Battle Rifle at the ready to pick off random “zombie engineers” because someone crashed our only ship into a far-off mountainside.

Well, that’s not too bad of a summary, actually. Anyway, that should wrap up this posting here on the MantaChasm. I look forward to the next one! Hopefully I’ll have some new news to share. Later!