Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is released on PlayStation 4 this week. Here's our review dating from the Xbox One and PC release on 9th September 2015.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a game about relationships. In the first instance, it's that old video game story about the relationship between objects and space: you must pilot your cumbersome blancmange of a ship through a tight warren of tunnels and asteroids, taking care not to deplete its shields in collisions. This much is familiar. Where the Canadian-made game develops the theme is in asking you to manage not only your ship's movement through space, but also (and simultaneously) your character's movement through the ship's interior.
A side-slice view of your craft allows you to peer into its decks and halls like a child nosing over a doll's house. The ship is burdened by a higgledy design. The steering wheel is, for example, housed in a different room to the shield controls, which are in a different place to the map room. Before you can utilise any of these various functions, you must first relocate your character to the appropriate room, climbing ladders and leaping platforms as quickly as possible on the inside, in order to manage the situation on the outside. Where most game designers try to streamline their designs, smooth off the friction and map the game's controls to a different button, developer Asteroid Base Inc. chooses to obfuscate.
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