RetroSpace Review: Between System Shock and Retrofuturistic Madness

RetroSpace has a curious relationship with the past. It's not just interested in looking like video games from thirty years ago; it primarily wants to remind us how it felt to play them. For those who weren't around in those days, eating bread and Nutella while watching cartoons, it means entering an unknown place without knowing exactly where to go, listening to a recording hoping to catch a useful detail, remembering that door that remained closed a long time ago, and accepting that, sometimes, finding the way is as much a part of the problem as what awaits you once you reach your destination. It's a philosophy that today might seem almost "hostile", especially in a market that has progressively transformed maps, indicators, and waypoints into taken-for-granted tools.

The premise, however, seems straight out of a decidedly more grotesque – but charming – version of Event Horizon. The protagonist is a simple janitor who awakens on Aurora 5, a spaceship now adrift and caught in the clutches of a black hole that has altered much more than its position in space. Mutated creatures occupy the corridors, the ship makes temporal jumps between different moments of its existence, and something seems to observe what happens while the player slowly tries to reconstruct events through improbable survivors, audio-logs, terminals, and everything the environments can tell without constantly interrupting the experience with cinematic sequences.

Don't be too misled by my reference to Paul W. S. Anderson's film, though. RetroSpace doesn't seek the same cosmic despair and prefers to contaminate horror with satire, grotesqueness, and a deliberately over-the-top retrofuturism, building a universe where even the idea of facing the unknown as someone who was previously in charge of ship maintenance becomes part of the joke. Beneath this bizarre surface, however, remains a surprisingly strict game. Almost no one truly tells you where to go, the map offers little information, and often you have to interpret the information received, remember a name, or simply learn to read the environments as you did in the past. When everything clicks, arriving at the solution on your own provides authentic (I'd even dare to say hardcore) satisfaction. When, however, a piece of information is missed or the ship's geography becomes unreadable, the same freedom can quickly turn into the feeling of going in circles. And it is probably within this tension that RetroSpace best shows both its character and the limit that might most divide its audience.

Where We're Going, We Won't Need Eyes to See

The first real contact with RetroSpace comes through the voice of Doctor Nebula, who reaches the protagonist via the ship's communications and progressively becomes one of the references pushing him to advance through its corridors. Around him also move Amira, the artificial intelligence integrated into the spaceship's systems, and Mia, a kind of distorted counterpart who claims to have freed herself from the constraints imposed on the original AI and seems to have a much more direct relationship with the janitors. Three different voices, then, capable of providing information, suggesting priorities, and hinting at what is happening on Aurora 5, without ever becoming a navigator ready to point the way.

RetroSpace entrusts the player with place names, objectives, and more or less explicit directions, then expects them to figure out how to reach them. The map is reduced to the essential, primarily showing cloning chambers, also used to patch up the protagonist, and the main connections between the different sections of the spaceship. There are no highlighted paths, a constellation of symbols, or an arrow ready to turn every task into a walk from point A to point B. If someone asks to reach the security center, retrieve a code, or return to a previously visited area, you need to remember where you saw a certain access, listen to the testimonies left by the ship's inhabitants, consult terminals, and slowly learn to distinguish corridors and rooms that, in the early stages, might all seem the same.

It is here that exploration probably becomes the most divisive element of RetroSpace. Over time, you build a kind of mental map of Aurora 5, made of closed doors, shortcuts, recognizable rooms, and small details that only acquire meaning after learning the game's language. A seemingly insignificant grate, for example, can be destroyed with the janitor's wrench and reveal a service tunnel useful for bypassing an enemy-occupied area or reaching a space that seemed inaccessible. No one marks these passages on the map, and the protagonist doesn't automatically know them just because he's part of the ship's crew. It's the player who learns that the grate can be opened and, from that moment, begins to look at every room with different eyes.

When all this works, reaching an objective without being led to the door provides a satisfaction that many modern games have progressively sacrificed in favor of convenience. The problem arises when a reference is unclear, information is forgotten, or the map doesn't offer enough elements to understand where to look. In those moments, the same freedom that previously brought satisfaction can quickly transform into the feeling of going in circles, traversing already visited environments multiple times without knowing if you're heading in the wrong direction or if you've simply missed something along the way.

RetroSpace thus revives a concept of exploration very close to video games of the nineties, fascinating for those who miss experiences capable of demanding memory, attention, and a bit of patience. This approach is modulated through different difficulty levels, including a more accessible mode and variants designed for those who want to significantly increase the pressure. Among these, the Russ Kurtell difficulty stands out, a far from casual reference to Kurt Russell and The Thing, further confirmed by the achievement “I'm MacReady!” linked to completing the game with that setting. A quote that also well describes the tone of RetroSpace, always ready to mix sci-fi, horror, and irony without taking itself completely seriously.

For those accustomed to more modern navigation tools, that same philosophy risks becoming the main source of frustration. In our case, this is precisely where RetroSpace showed its Achilles' heel.

A Gameplay Suitable for Everyone with Excellent Ideas

Once you've learned to move around the spaceship, RetroSpace grants much more freedom in deciding how to deal with its inhabitants. Ranged combat is deliberately simple and delivers sensations consistent with the retro setting of the entire production. Pistols and rifles do their job, visual effects accompany impacts well, but there isn't the pursuit of physicality we'd expect from a modern shooter. At standard difficulty, exploring carefully, ammunition doesn't even become such a rare resource as to constantly force caution, and it's therefore possible to advance primarily relying on firearms without betraying the game's mechanics.

The difference is that RetroSpace builds around the most immediate solution a quantity of alternatives that can significantly change the encounters themselves. Stealth is a concrete possibility, because many areas allow you to turn off the lighting, hide in the shadows, and approach creatures from behind to strike them with the wrench. The so-called moth-men are particularly interesting because they seek light to regain some of their energy, turning the ability to darken a room into something useful both before and during a fight. Other enemies are more resistant to stealth attacks or do not allow the encounter to be resolved with a simple back attack, forcing at least a change of plan.

The environment adds another layer. Puddles and surfaces can become dangerous if traversed by electricity, batteries and generators can be used against creatures, while other elements allow for the use of fire or indirect manipulation of the situation. Even the janitor's spray, on paper one of the least heroic tools imaginable, can be used to clean stains and reveal hidden clues. These are possibilities that RetroSpace introduces without turning them into a permanent tutorial. Once you understand that the world follows certain rules, it's up to the player to remember that they can exploit them.

This is probably the side of the immersive sim that works best. The game doesn't demand that everything it provides be used. In our playthrough, we often favored a direct approach, resorting to stealth when the environment made it convenient. Another player might systematically turn off lights, manipulate security turrets, seek every side path, or avoid as many fights as possible. Achievements further push in this direction for those who wish to engage in playthroughs built around particular rules, including the possibility of tackling the adventure without relying on the most immediate solutions.

Freedom works precisely because it isn't turned into an obligation. RetroSpace offers the tools and then allows you to decide how much to experiment, without making those who simply prefer to grab a weapon and blast their way through feel wrong.

Don't Call Them "Recombinants"

If System Shock probably represents the most obvious reference in terms of structure, it's when playing with Mutamods that thoughts inevitably turn to BioShock. More than the Recombinants themselves, the parallel concerns Plasmids and Gene Tonics, that is, the idea of intervening on the body to gain abilities that progressively modify the relationship with the environment and the dangers that inhabit it. RetroSpace, however, builds its own narrative identity around mutations. Through some audio logs, it is discovered that what has now contributed to transforming part of the ship's population was previously presented and promoted almost as a desirable product, before the consequences began to spiral out of control.

The available modifications can be active or passive and are progressively enhanced using genetic material recovered from creatures. Some have an immediately understandable impact. A mutation associated with the moth, for example, allows you to recover a small amount of health by staying exposed to light, while the rhinoceros mutation affects resistance. There are solutions that allow you to recover energy by feeding on corpses and others that grant an additional chance of survival. Among the active ones, we found the bat Mutamod particularly useful, as it allows you to obtain information on enemy positions and makes exploring unknown areas a little less risky.

More than building a traditional role-playing path, Mutamods thus modify the degree of security with which Aurora 5 is approached. At first, every unknown corridor can hide a threat difficult to assess. Over time, the protagonist has more weapons, abilities, and tools, and that initial vulnerability is progressively replaced by the awareness of having a possible answer to almost every situation. It doesn't mean becoming invincible, but rather starting to know the game's rules well enough to bend them to your style.

This growth also comes through the survivors encountered during exploration. The janitors have a hidden recreational space within the ship which, after the disaster, turns into a kind of improvised refuge. Some of the people helped during the journey reach this place and progressively add new functions. Marco, for example, provides a workbench through which it's possible to expand inventory and purchase other upgrades. Scraps, credits, and genetic material thus take on different functions within the progression, connecting what is collected during exploration to tools, enhancements, and mutations.

It's a simple structure, but it works because the refuge grows along with the protagonist's possibilities. Returning there means finding the people saved and having access to new opportunities, making progress feel tangible even when the game doesn't resort to a traditional level-up system.

Look Closely, Miller, Doesn't She Seem Like a Wonderful Ship?!

On an artistic level, RetroSpace probably finds its most immediately recognizable quality. The ship doesn't try to imagine what a space station might actually look like in 2177, but rather how someone might have imagined it decades ago. The retrofuturism of the seventies permeates architectures, machinery, interfaces, and technology, producing a deliberately anachronistic world where the future seems to have passed through old science fiction magazines before arriving on screen.

It's the whole that works better than the individual elements. Analog sci-fi coexists with biological mutations, moth-men, plant creatures, time jumps, and a satire that almost always prevents horror from becoming truly oppressive. Even the black hole and the presence that seems to observe the ship belong more to a cosmic and mutagenic dimension than to a traditional hell. Event Horizon remains an easy reference to evoke for the initial situation, but RetroSpace quickly takes another path, much less desperate and decidedly more inclined to the grotesque.

Technically, this aesthetic choice brings with it an obvious advantage. On PC, with a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and ultrawide monitor, the test proved extremely fluid, with no notable performance issues. The deliberately retro nature of the graphics compartment does not put a modern configuration under particular pressure and allows for good clarity even in the richest environments.

The pre-release build used for the test presented a bug capable of temporarily blocking progression, a problem we reported to the developers and which was quickly corrected. Precisely because it was resolved before release, it would make no sense to use it as a negative element in the final evaluation, while it is worth noting that, apart from that episode, the experience proceeded without significant incidents.

RetroSpace therefore doesn't try to hide its influences, nor would it make particular sense to demand that it do so. System Shock, BioShock, and certain cinematic sci-fi are constantly recognizable beneath the surface, but The Wild Gentlemen manages to combine these elements well enough to build something with its own personality. The result works especially when it allows you to observe a room, understand which systems can be manipulated, and autonomously choose how to traverse it. It works less when the same trust granted to the player turns into overly vague directions and long loops through already visited environments.

This is probably the most important discriminant for understanding the relationship one might have with RetroSpace. Those who miss games willing to let them get lost, take notes, and remember on their own where that closed door was a long time ago might rediscover sensations that have become quite rare. Those who consider maps, waypoints, and precise directions tools that improve the experience might instead quickly discover how vast deep space can be when no one intends to show the way.