Space Miner: Space Ore Bust

I was going to begin with a space quote of some kind, but changed my mind at the last minute.  I decided that Venan Entertainment Inc’s  game, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust deserves more.

It’s been a while since I’ve made an impulse buy on the AppStore but for some reason, before I knew what was happening, I’d clicked buy, input my password and was syncing this title over to my iPhone. Thankfully, any concerns I had that I had made a terrible rash decision were gone within moments of loading this app up for the first time.

The story starts off with you heading for your uncle’s Mining facility to help out with the operation and mine some Ore. However, things start to go awry from the offset as your Uncle Jeb ends up borrowing money from the bank who suddenly want to call in his lone, or else mine his ore fields. You end up embarking on a variety of missions to get the bank (and their mining drones) off your uncle’s back, discovering the reason behind the banks decision and attempting to thwart their evil plans.

From my first trip into the asteroid field I knew that this was to be a gem of a game. The controls are spot on, with a analog stick on the left for steering and your thrusters control and fire button on the right (or if you prefer, you can switch these around in the option menu). The game runs smooth as anything on my iPhone 3G and the physics used for manoeuvring your ship are well balanced and after hitting a few rogue asteroids you soon pick it up and will be whizzing around space in no time.

The core gameplay element appears to be mining the various sectors for ore by blasting the asteroids and collecting any ore left behind whilst attempting to clear the sector of any robo-miners sent in by the bank who’ll steal your precious ore quicker than you can say “oi, that’s mine”. You can unlock new sectors by locating navigation buoys and the more you mine, the higher level a license you get, enabling you to travel further from the mining facility.

At what feels like random intervals you will be given specific tasks to do, some of which you need to repeat if you fail and others that you could almost class as a side quest where you can gain some serious cash pretty quickly. Don’t think, however, that the cash is just a way of keeping some kind of score, you’ll need that to upgrade various components of your ship, from shields to weapons to new hulls every part of your ship is upgradable and every item bought alters the appearance of your vessel.

This does lend an RPG element to the game, do you want the speedster (quick but with a smaller cargo capacity) or do you go  for something bigger, but slower? You need to think about what you want to upgrade as each item requires a different amount of usage from your reactor, so you need to pick carefully. I highly doubt though that anyone will find the small RPG element a turn off when it comes to this game.

With a non-linear style story set over 48 sectors and over 50 Plus+ awards to unlock this game will certainly keep you busy.  The storyline I’ve experienced so far has been both engaging , entertaining and, at times, downright hysterical.

From the beautiful graphics to the banjo heavy soundtrack (which may sound weird but is in keeping with Uncle Jeb) this game is a simple delight, and a joy to play. Still not convinced? Let me just say this then, it’s been a while since I’ve played an App that I only put down because I’d completely drained my iPhone battery.