Everything was fine when you started heading towards the galactic core. Spirits were high, the coffee was strong, and everyone had dollar signs in their eyes. Then your ship, The Clockwork, suffered damage and everything went downhill from there. Well, its important to keep a positive frame of mind (or that is what your shrink used to say), but something just seems... off. The UTA and Cizs are still at each others throats, with Bounty Hunters lurking behind the scenes, but there has been a lot of chatter in the space-waves as of late, talk of infected ships and who knows what else.  Man, I hope you are ready for what is out there.



Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ) is an space tactical action/RPG game created by MinMax Games, a collective of two guys who spent years getting it ready for the market. It is played in 2D overhead, roughly in the same vein as the Star Control games, but with a heavier focus on combat and less on story. SPAZ puts you in control of up to four other ships (you switch between them with a click of a button), while a competent AI controls the other ships (whose general behavior you can customize with a few clicks of your mouse). The story is told through portraits and dialog boxes and details the exploits of a bunch of fortune seekers (read: space pirates) trying to break out of their solar system and make their way to the galactic core, where they will find riches ripe for the taking.  Of course, this isn't as easy as it sounds. 

See, in this future pan-galactic travel is possible via warp gates which connect each solar system in a giant web. However, each gate is owned, operated, and locked down by UTC, a corporation out to take financial control of pretty much everything.  So while there are literally hundreds of inhabited systems throughout the galaxy, each is a isolated and separate island unto itself and only you (apparently) have the ability to break/bribe your way through those gates. Locked in perpetual conflict with the UTC are the Civilians, the second faction in SPAZ who compose pretty much everyone else who is not part of the UTC, the Bounty Hunters, or the Zombies.  While the Civs provide a foil to the UTC, in practice they are not very different at all. 

Since reputation does not travel between systems, any real identity that each faction could have is lost in the perpetual flip-flop of who hates you and who doesn't at the moment, but even that doesn't mean anything when rushing a base and quickly paying off that faction to ensure you no conflict.  Don't get me wrong, there are specific missions for each faction that often randomly show up, but they tend to recycle a lot. And SPAZ is a big game (my original attempt took me around 24 hours and I was about two-thirds through the game).


Let's stop here for a moment and switch gears.  While the story and setting are interesting, the real meat and potatoes of SPAZ is in third-person controlled, tactical combat. Here we need to make a distinction as to what kind of combat.  For some reason, most of the Internet seems to think this is an RTS action game, which is about as far from the truth as one can get.  When I say action, I am speaking of controlling strafe and direction with the keyboard and aiming your weapons with the mouse.  Simple and direct.

Within thirty minutes of playtime, your little squadron of ships will go from one to three, and won't go up again until near the end of the game, when you gain an additional ship.  Instead of amassing and micromanaging a fleet, instead there are a variety of different ships.  There are a total of thirty-seven ships spread out across five classes (Tiny to Huge), each with its own armament capability, crew capacity, cargo capacity, and general maneuverability. Some are little more than converted escape pods or asteroid crackers, while others are hardened battle cruisers able to deliver a coup de grace on any number of opponents.  As you progress throughout the game, you "upgrade" your mother ship, the Clockwork, so that you can manage increasingly larger classes of ships in your squadron, starting with three Tiny-class ships and eventually moving up to four ships of different mixed classes.  I can tell you that it is a wonderful moment the first time you roll into battle with a Huge ship and two Mediums.....unless you poorly equip your ships.  But with a bit of tweaking and practice, one can make almost any configuration work.  Until the...  Well, we'll talk of that later.

The RPG bits in the game are fun, though not revolutionary.  There is money (or Rez), experience (or Data), and crew (or Goons), all of which is collected from missions, blowing up enemies, or blowing up things (asteroids, cargo containers, and life support pods).  All are equally important.  Rez allows you to build more vessels with more complex systems, purchase blueprints for offensive/defensive ship armaments, or bribe your way past UTC warp gate guards.  Data is purely used as an analog for experience points, taking you to new Tech (experience) levels and allowing you to put earned points into fifteen different tech categories (aka, skill categories).  These upgrades allow you to update and equip new offensive, defensive, and utility attachments to available slots on your ships, as well as do things from increasing the turning speed of your turrets and increasing the damage output to weapons, to improving how quickly your ship is repaired or how much bonus damage you dish out on enemies while cloaked.  Actually, getting this equipment is another task. 

Equipment can be bought from either Civ or UTA space stations using Rez and are generally broken up into one to three pieces (called Blueprints).  Once you purchase all the pieces, you get the item automatically, and assuming that your skill level is high enough, you can equip it on any or all of your fleet (no limits).  Acquiring news ships is similar to items, but instead you harvest Blueprints from destroyed ships (and you don't have to be the one who destroys them). 

Finally, we have Goons, which allow you to crew your ships (affecting repair speed) and can also be used as bribery fodder for faction reputation.  Reputation affects the ease of which one collects ship and item Blueprints as well as grinding for Data, Rez, or Goons. When you arrive at a system, the faction can be friendly or hostile toward you. You can change your reputation by doing faction based missions, which more often than not, lower your relationship with the opposing faction.  However, this system is completely broken, as one can simply fly to the faction base, absorb weapon fire, and bribe them with Goons, thereby negating the entire faction relationship mechanic.  Of course, there are times when you are unable to to bribe your way past a gate (such as when your UTA rep is on "Hate"), and this simply forces you onto the offensive.  The challenge then becomes how high the level is on the gate (or how strong of a foe you can expect when gate crashing to the next system) and whether or not you have the resources and skills to defeat them.


Those that have slogged through this article have no doubt been wondering about the Bounty Hunters and Zombies mentioned in the title.  The former of the two is, simply put, boring and a little bit annoying.  They appear in a relatively small amount of systems and much like the Civs and UTA, have their own reputation meter.  Occasionally in the SPAZ, you will get a bounty on your head for attacking faction ships or bases a few times in a mission. If you do not pay off at a Bounty Hunter base, they will eventually send assassins when the Clockwork jumps into a system.  This is extremely frustrating, as the assassins usually fly very powerful ships with optimal load-outs that will tear you to pieces in minutes (generally).  However, their bases have arena battles and the ability to hire gate crashes.  Plus, if you get enough respect from them, you can receive help from them occasionally.   

The Zombies aren't a faction per se, but rather a sentient or at least a space-faring disease (sort of).  Throughout the game, you will hear random radio chatter in the background of the game, some of which mentions the Zombie threat.  Information regarding the Zombies is all cryptic.  The Zombies are a true surprise when they show up and force you into a complete change of tactics, which up to this point you have been honing to a razors edge.  And trust me, you will want this surprise, especially if you like the game.

I feel we need to wrap this one up.  So let me get out the soapbox.  My biggest gripe about SPAZ, despite the massive amount of fun I've gleaned from it, is that sometimes the RPG tropes can be a bit too much.  I find this funny, mainly because this game is so combat-heavy.  For example, this game tends to be quite "grindy." When you do not have enough Rez for blueprints, Goons for bribery, or a high enough tech skill level to equip that shiny new disruptor turret you will have to grind it out, the game forces you to jump back and forth between systems. You have to remember where the Civ mining bases are for Rez, look for a "Traffic Jam" mission for Goons, or a "Comet" or "Vs" mission for Tech levels. This mechanic is completely normal and acceptable in traditional RPG games, but here it feels unnecessary.

Also, the whole Goon thing is a little weird and creepy.  The game will clone some for you when you level up, but most of the time, you "harvests" them from recently exploded ships, cargo dumps, and "Cheap Hotel" and "Traffic Jam" missions.  Are these sentient people?  Animal servants?  What's even worse is depending on the reputation of the faction, sometimes Goons will be tossed out the airlock after pickup, sans spacesuit.  There are even tiny little shouts that accompany the act.  I've literally seen it thousands of times and it stills creeps me out and makes me feel a bit icky.  I guess this feature drives the fact that the protagonists are pirates and maybe not the greatest role models for behavior.  I think that gamers who don't "put themselves" in the game will probably not have a problem with this.

When I started this article, I wanted to share my thoughts on how fun this game is, but due to my wrongfully perceived view of the game's simplicity, I thought it best to bang out a mini-review and call it a day.  Instead, as I played the game further, I found it would be impossible to describe it without diving into the mechanics.  On the surface, SPAZ appears to be a shallow game, but once you sit down and play it for an hour, you will see that it is tactically very deep and has a plethora of customization, allowing for a great deal of accommodation for different gamer play-styles.  Stealth?  Full frontal assault?  Using a ship to tank while the others DPS on the target?  All of these tactics are possible, and that is perhaps the greatest strength that Space Pirates and Zombies has to offer.

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