Hull Rupture is a lot of things, and all of them are inhumane. For starters, you play as Despot, a narky AI on board a ship full of little humans. These pink, squishy minions are your workforce, but they also double as the main resource you use to propel yourself across the galaxy on your mission of revenge and wanton destruction. Your crew is very much expendable.
Hull Rupture is the next entry in the Despot series by Konfa Games, and once again tinyBuild is publishing. This tried-and-tested team is returning to a series that previously had me playing as a giant slime ball, and always brings satirical B-movie-inspired action to its games. In this instance, we’ve got a side-on FTL-like with a heavy emphasis on tower defence and managing morally ambiguous production lines.
The whole looks great, too. The series’ distinctive colour palette returns, and there’s pleasing detail across the room designs. You’re constantly expanding your ship by adding new modules and production units, and the pixel art graphics are excellent, as are the animations. I’d even say that the visuals are quite funny, too.
Outside the ship, you need to add turrets to hardpoints, because when your enemies arrive, they’ll do so by hitting your ship in drop pods. They then head for the cargo bay at the front, walking past anything you have waiting for them. Having a robust set of turrets guarding the ship is a must because otherwise you’ll be overrun and Despot will get smashed into extinction. Naturally, we don’t want that.
Your journey to destroy the leaders of the galaxy requires a number of key systems to be working in harmony. Fans of engine building will enjoy the literal engine building on offer here, as you work out how to make sure you’ve got the resources you need to keep your speed up. There’s a lot to keep track of, too, with a dozen different elements to follow, and a map to navigate with several systems to explore.
The only thing I’m not really sold on is the upgrade system. I like the way you build your ship out and add new modules, but these modules are distributed in blind packs via a shop between rounds. I wouldn’t mind so much if you knew what you were getting from each pick, but at the moment it feels too much like a lucky dip, which I don’t think is optimal in such a load-bearing mechanic.
Hull Rupture is definitely a good roguelite tower defence hybrid, and I think the audio-visual design is super cool. The thing that’s holding it back, for me, is the in-game economy, which works, certainly, but feels limited by its own design. I’ve otherwise enjoyed myself so far, and I’ll take another look soon, especially if there’s a bit of a rebalance of the shop, because I think Hull Rupture still has potential.
Hull Rupture is out now on PC (Lin, Mac, Win). I played via access kindly provided by the publisher and their PR friends.
