Normally, I need to finish a game and see its end credits before writing a review. But since we’re talking about an early access game, I think it makes the most sense to evaluate it based on what it currently offers and what it promises for the future.
At its core, StarRupture is a factory automation game. You land on a mysterious planet, build factories, and set up automation systems to harvest its resources, all while trying to survive the planet’s harsh conditions. What sets StarRupture apart from similar games, in my opinion, is those very planetary conditions. When you head out to explore, you can’t just wander carelessly. At the end of every in-game day, massive storms sweep across the entire planet, incinerating everything alive. This makes every exploration run feel tense. You’re constantly calculating: “If I go this far and head back, will I make it?” Because if the storm catches you, there’s no surviving it. And the planet itself is deeply mysterious, which significantly shapes how you play.
Don’t think of this mechanic as just a reason to go home at night. For example, some areas are densely populated with alien enemies. If you wait for the storm to pass and then move in, all those enemies will be dead, letting you loot the area with ease. This adds a nice layer of dynamic strategy to the game, encouraging you to plan your day carefully. Exploration is a big part of StarRupture, but honestly, it started to wear on me after a while. Exploration itself isn’t the problem, it’s that the game starts forcing it on you, and what begins as a sense of wonder gradually turns into the stress of hunting for a specific thing across a massive map. As you progress, you need to find blueprints to unlock new factories, raw materials, and other upgrades. And finding those blueprints means exploring the map.
Say you need a specific blueprint. If you can’t find its exact location on the map, you’re stuck. I spent hours wandering around, finding plenty of blueprints I wouldn’t need for a long time, but never the one I actually needed. Eventually I gave up and looked it up online. That killed the exploration vibe for me. From that point on, going out to explore felt less like adventure and more like dragging yourself to a 8 AM lecture you hate.
That said, exploration can still be genuinely engaging in later parts of the game. StarRupture has a story, and it doesn’t tell it through cutscenes. Instead, the narrative unfolds through your character’s dialogue, their reactions to events, and audio logs left behind by research teams that landed on the planet before you. And yes, you actually have a character here. In most games of this type, you’re essentially piloting a silent robot. But in StarRupture, your character reacts to the environment, speaks up, and holds actual conversations.
There’s also an AI assistant that you interact with as you complete missions and explore. The dialogue between your character and the AI is genuinely well-written. The game features 4 playable characters, generic archetypes like soldier and scientist, and you can switch between them at any time. StarRupture supports co-op for up to 4 players; if you play with friends, the other characters are taken on by them. I personally couldn’t find anyone to play with, so I can’t comment on how the co-op experience holds up.
In factory-building games, mistakes can sometimes cost you enormous amounts of effort, a factory placed in the wrong spot, production that can’t keep up with consumption, a supply chain that falls apart. StarRupture is notably more forgiving than most games in this genre. I’d say it’s on the easier end overall. To progress, you need to produce materials for various corporations. There are 6 corporations, each with their own mission tree. A corporation tells you to produce a certain amount of a specific material, you send it up to space, and in return they teach you how to build a new factory.
The problem is that after a certain point, you never need to produce those same materials again. I’ll build an entire factory network to fulfill a mission requirement, and once the mission is done, the whole setup becomes completely useless. It serves no further purpose.
Beyond factory management, StarRupture has an action component as well. The weapon variety is solid, and you can customize your loadout to your liking. That said, the gunplay has some noticeable issues. I didn’t see many others complain about this, so it might just be a me problem, but aiming felt very strange throughout. I struggled with it quite a bit, which I suspect is largely due to my unusually high mouse sensitivity settings.
Just like your weapons, your character can also be upgraded, but not through a traditional skill point system, which I’ve never been a fan of. Instead, StarRupture uses a dynamic progression model: run around and your stamina improves; get into combat and your combat skills develop. Every 5–10 levels, you earn an upgrade slot. These upgrades are called LEMs, which also have a role in the game’s story, and they let you shape your character build. LEMs are divided into categories like mobility and combat. You can find them by exploring the world or completing certain missions.
Which LEMs you equip is entirely up to you. For example, I used one that regenerates stamina faster, while someone else might prefer one that reduces the stamina cost of jumping.
For an early access game, there’s honestly not much more to ask for. You can easily sink dozens of hours into it right now.
The visuals and graphics hook you from the very first moment you launch the game. Rather than the stylized art direction you typically see in this genre, StarRupture goes for a more photorealistic approach, and it works really well. The map genuinely feels like a living world, especially as it dynamically changes around you, reinforcing the sense that you’re on an actual living planet.
In short: if you enjoy games like Satisfactory or Factorio, this is absolutely worth checking out. But if factory-building and automation systems aren’t your thing, stay away, because this game will bore you just as much as the rest of the genre. As someone who loves this type of game, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to fellow fans. And remember, this is still early access, I’m hopeful it’ll grow into something even better down the line. Personally, I loved it so much that I even put together a Turkish localization patch for it. You can find it here.