Spacelords is weirdly sexual to the point of being distracting, and I feel this aesthetic is largely responsible for its low player count and lack of wider community acceptance.
Players can play any mission solo; however, they are unable to level their character or learn new blueprints, making it an entirely fruitless endeavour for those who are looking for more than the ability to play the game and learn more about the world through pre-mission cutscenes and in-game dialogue.
Spacelords is a shooter video game developed and published by MercurySteam, it was released on 22 September 2017 and it is Free-2-Play.
Spacelords is available on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
As of October 2023, the developers have maintained near-complete radio silence since December 2021, and it’s possible that Spacelords will receive no further updates.
Spacelords’ one saving grace is full crossplay between Playstation, Xbox and PC, and while each of these platforms only has a small player base combined, it does allow matchmaking to perform “adequately” at peak times and “better than nothing” at off-peak times.
While Playstation and Xbox do not give players online statistics, it would be reasonable to assume Spacelords fairs a little better on console, with console communities generally fairing better than their PC counterpart.
Still, even if we are talking about a combined console community that is 10x the size of the PC player base, we are talking about very low numbers with off-peak lows of 50-75 and peak highs of 300-500 players online.
While we don’t know how many people are playing on console, the PC community is dead without crossplay being enabled, with an average active user count of just five players for much of the day.
Spacelords supports:
Spacelords offers the following matchmaking options:
The Spacelords in-game store sells:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Spacelords is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
Both male and female player characters have very revealing/skin-tight outfits that go beyond sexy into the territory of entirely tasteless, especially when you consider the nightmarish “Bleeding Edge” style aesthetic that makes all characters look like leftovers from a 1970s adult animation.
I understand the developers wanting to try something different, but with both male and female characters being well-endowed, it makes what should be an exciting sci-fi experience into a cringe-inducing one.
If the gameplay loop or combat mechanics were engaging, then I could overlook the visual and design faux pas that plague spacelords; unfortunately, this is not the case, and as a result, I cannot recommend Spacelords.