Jump Space looks set to be the king of spacebound co-op games

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2025 is shaping up to be a great year for cooperative spaceship games, with titles like Void Crew, Wildgate, and Jump Space (formerly Jump Ship) all vying for attention. Having tried them all, Jump Space truly shines, even among a crowded field.

The game immediately feels impactful and fast-paced. Shooting feels like it belongs in a modern military game – it’s quick, precise, and enemies react convincingly when hit. I especially enjoyed using a powerful rail cannon to destroy an enemy spaceship from the side of our own ship – it was as satisfying as taking down a helicopter with a rocket launcher in a game like Battlefield.

Walking in space feels incredibly powerful, almost like being Iron Man. You can securely attach magnetic boots to a surface and walk around, but you also have the freedom to unhook and fly through space using a small rocket pack whenever you want.

Controlling the ships feels instantly responsive and is more akin to an arcade game than a realistic simulator, letting you feel like a skilled pilot right away. You can also use point defense cannons while flying, making you feel involved in the action even when you’re focused on maneuvering. The space stations and asteroid fields provide lots of opportunities to strategically position your ship, evade enemies, and attack from the sides.

I’m really excited about the first ship – it has two cannons you can actually use! Me or up to three friends can crew it together, and those cannons pack a serious punch. The catch is, you need to work as a team. The person steering the ship has to coordinate with the gunners to get a good shot because of the limited firing range.

While one player handles the main challenge, another focuses on ship maintenance – extinguishing fires and repairing damaged parts. This area of the game, specifically ship repair, could use some improvement.

Shields in Jump Space are practically useless. No matter how strong they are, the first attack from an enemy will always cause fires throughout your ship – it’s unavoidable. It feels like the game is designed this way to force players to constantly repair damage instead of letting skilled players quickly defeat enemies. Repairing components shouldn’t be the standard part of every fight, but a consequence of *losing* a fight. Because of this, investing resources into shield repairs feels largely pointless.

I really love how the ship has this central control panel with slots for different parts. It lets you customize things and move power around to where you need it most. But honestly, the way the game is designed, I never felt pressured to make tough choices about what to upgrade, because there always seemed to be enough space for everything I found. It was a really nice design choice!

While Wildgate is all about player-versus-player combat, Jump Space is more like Void Crew, emphasizing player-versus-environment challenges and featuring a roguelite gameplay loop. You plan a course to the finish line, encountering dangers and benefits along the way. What’s unique about Jump Space is that all improvements you make are permanent. Your ship and character steadily become more powerful with each playthrough as you acquire better parts, weapons, and equipment. The developers describe your ship as a shared character, similar to Diablo, because upgrades persist for all crew members and build up over time – as long as you don’t destroy the ship!

Jump Space uses an AI to adjust the game’s difficulty based on how well you’re playing. If you’re doing great, expect tougher challenges – like bigger enemy fleets or surprise asteroid fields. If you’re having an easy time, the AI will throw something new at you to keep things interesting. This creates a unique and dynamic experience where the game responds to your actions, leading to exciting and unexpected moments.

Void Crew really shines when it comes to the relics you discover. Like upgrades in other roguelike games, they give you boosts – for example, doing more damage when your shields are low, or even healing teammates when you shoot. What makes Void Crew’s relics special is that the strongest ones aren’t just simple power-ups; they come with risks, like potentially freezing or overheating your ship if you’re not careful. In contrast, Jump Space’s relics are fairly straightforward – you equip them and they mostly just sit there, offering basic benefits.

So, Jump Space is still pretty rough around the edges, being in early access and all. Honestly, it feels a bit repetitive – the missions are always the same, and you’re running around the same environments, whether you’re on a planet or flying in space. They’ve even got a currency system, but it doesn’t *do* anything yet because the in-game economy isn’t finished, which means I can’t even customize my ship. It’s fun now, but I’m thinking I’ll probably wait for the full 1.0 release before I really dive back in.

I’ve been having a great time with the recent surge of cooperative space games, and Jump Space really stands out. Everything about it, from the graphics to how it plays, feels incredibly well-made and refined – you can tell the developers put a lot of love into it. It’s currently very popular on Steam, so it’s likely to find a large audience when it’s released in Early Access later this year on both Steam and Xbox.

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2025-09-18 17:19