The Digital Leisure Space Station: a Homeling Perspective
by SealWyf, HSM Editor
The Homelings have welcomed Digital Leisure’s new Space Station apartment with sincere enthusiasm. It’s not Home’s first sci-fi themed apartment. But it is the first sci-fi themed apartment that has also been promised as a clubhouse skin.
This matters to us, because our basic unit of organization is the MotherShip, which corresponds to a Home clubhouse. The ship’s Commander owns the club, and the Subcommanders are the club’s sub-owners. Because of club constraints, each MotherShip can contain no more than 32 members. If the club structure of Home changed, it is likely that Homeling organizational structure would change as well.
Up to now, we have been forced to host our sci-fi themed Collective in thoroughly terrestrial (not to mention dull and pedestrian) meeting places. We have made good use of Home’s sci-fi themed private spaces for small gatherings and ceremonies — the Anime Style apartment, Ratchet and Clank’s Home Sweet Home, the Novus Prime Officer’s Quarters, Silicon Lounge and, especially, the LOOT Space Station. But, with a twelve-person limit, they are not well adapted to large organizational meetings.
And so we were delighted when Digital Leisure announced that a space-themed private space and clubhouse skin were in the works. Although I have to admit I wondered what their take on a space station would be. The one thing I was sure of, was that it would be unique.
As Digital Leisure spaces accumulate in Home, we have seen a clear stylistic pattern: each of their diverse offerings displays a wry, quirky sense of humor, as if this developer is commenting on our expectations. The Dragon’s Lair was the first Digital Leisure personal space; it was also one of the first Home spaces to move beyond the “House Beautiful” school of realistic personal space design, creating a fantasy environment that looked like the inside of a cartoon. The Old West Saloon seems fairly prosaic at first glance, but the details, and the associated rewards, lean toward the satirical.
Digital Leisure’s main presence in Home is the ever-growing Paradise Springs Casino. In many ways, Paradise Springs is a sendup of a real gaming property. The games themselves are straightforward gaming recreations — gambling in every sense except the legal one of risking money to win more money. But the rewards, announcements and other accouterments of the casino experience are skewed towards humor. This is especially obvious in the associated Complimentary Hotel Room, a free personal space that has undergone a series of escalating disasters, from floods to criminal activity.
Given this track record, I found myself wondering how Digital Leisure would implement a staple of “hard” sci-fi, a space station. And now we have our answer: with their usual, slightly wicked, sense of humor.
But this may not be obvious at first glance. In fact, the first thing you’ll notice is that the space is decidedly cramped. Not International Space Station cramped, thank goodness — you’re not floating weightless in a tin can, bumping elbows with several other people wearing long underwear. But the floor plan is tiny compared to some of the spaces we have received recently, and the individual rooms are small. The contrast with the expansive LOOT Space Station is striking, and almost certainly deliberate.
The largest open space is the two-level bridge and observation deck, which has an information screen showing the station’s floor plan, a control panel, and three large windows showing Earth and the surrounding cosmos. Much of the upper level behind the bridge is occupied by the large Engineering bay, with glowing engines and an animated air lock. The two-room science lab is downstairs to the left. To the right, the upper level features a cosy crew quarters, while the lower level is occupied by the Garbage bay and a Defense Center, which holds Station Defense, the built-in shooting mini-game.
There are several micro-games as well — tiny, amusing interactions with the station and its machinery. You can raise or lower the shutters in the bridge, get decontaminated in the air lock, and send accumulated garbage out into space in the Garbage Bay. There is also a fair amount of baked-in seating, and some explanatory text screens, which are well worth studying through the Home camera’s zoom function.
The basic style is retro — the future, as seen from the 1950’s or early 1960’s. But this is not a Buck Rogers space-opera parody. It’s much more subtle than that. You can be in the apartment for some time before you realize what the developers are actually doing.
The first place you’re likely to pick up on the humor is the science lab, which is apparently devoted to hydroponic culture. The equipment is tasteful, not over-the-top, and the growing plants are well-rendered. Then you notice the specimen under the glass dome in the corner: “Audrey”, the sentient, carnivorous plant from the “Little Shop of Horrors” films. The information display explains that this is Audrey III, a sentient plant discovered on another planet, which has been brought to the space station for experimentation
“Feed me!”, you say to yourself. And then you notice the chain saw in the nearby glass wall case, labeled “In Case of Containment Loss”. And you start to imagine the scenario where you might need it. That was the first place I laughed out loud, but it was not the last.
Another nice touch is the Garbage Bay, where you can send compressed and bagged trash out into space. It’s a fun animation, and it rewards owner and guests with Trash Bag ornaments. Another unlockable ornament, a microscope, appears when you use the decontamination sequence in the airlock. The Space Station also presents you with a number of gifts when you arrive, including a retro-future styled chair and couch, a work table, and a delightful little Flying Saucer companion. Still other prizes can be won with the Station Defense game. It’s a very generous apartment.
For me, the Station Defense game included the high point of the space’s humor. It’s a fun game, with simple controls: aim with the left analog stick, shoot with R1 or L1. And the early waves are leisurely enough that you can have fun without straining. But the explanatory text reveals you are not defending Earth from evil alien invaders. A “design flaw” has placed your station in an orbit that periodically intersects with a lot of random floating rocks and hardware, and you are expected to spend your spare time shooting it down.
The details and textures of the space augment the humorous-retro design. This is a lived-in space, not all that well maintained, and it was probably built on a government contract by the lowest bidder. The floor tiles are slightly misalligned, and they look chipped and dirty. The waist-high orange line on the wall is carelessly painted, with visible brush-marks and ragged edges. These are conscious design decisions. It’s just as easy to make a surface perfect. Maybe even easier — adding texture takes work. This space has character, and it repays careful examination. I love it.
However, from a Homeling perspective, I have to wonder how satisfactory it’s going to be as a clubhouse. If the club skin has the same floorplan as the apartment, I’m not convinced it will work. There is no place to set up seating that will hold even a large fraction of the full club membership. You’re going to be lucky if you can fit in ten or twelve. Not that it’s going to stop us from buying the club when it comes out. It’s our first real MotherShip in Home. Sort of.
Though I have to admit the style is not quite what we expected. The sleek, cool, spacious alien perfection of LOOT’s Space Station is simply not there — and deliberately so. This space is making a different statement. The contrasts are instructive, and they say a lot about the choices a developer makes, when creating a space’s personality.
LOOT gave us a three-story tank of ethereal jellyfish. Digital Leisure gives us Audrey, a carnivorous plant from B-grade movies. LOOT gave us a dramatic retractable roof, revealing a sky-wide twilit Earth. Digital Leisure countered with clanking metal Venetian blinds, and a spinning globe straight out of a 1950’s science documentary. LOOT gave us EOD, Flickr screens and Twitter feeds. Digital Leisure lets us get decontaminated, take out the garbage, and shoot down random space junk — which probably includes some of the garbage we just ejected.
Bottom line: it’s fun, even it it’s not really Homeling.
But then again, perhaps it is. The Collective encompasses both fun and glory, and one plays off the other. Homelings can be deeply funny when they wish to, and for those moods this new Space Station is perfect. I’ll be buying the club skin for MotherShip 16, when it becomes available. Who cares if it’s tiny? We’re adaptable beings. We can always sit on the floor.
I’m giving this one 4.5 Bubble Machines. It might have been five if the shooting game had been multi-player, or the space had included a room suitable for a large meeting. But these are simply observations, not complaints about what we have been given. This is a fun little space for those who appreciate its retro-future aesthetic and its wickedly understated humor.
- Fun retro-future aesthetic
- Lots of unlockable rewards
- Includes an enjoyable mini-game
- An actual Homeling MotherShip, once the club skin comes out!
- A bit small for parties or serious decoration
- Style may disappoint some who were expecting something different
September 10th, 2012 by SealWyf | 7 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer by day, and an officer in the Homeling Collective by night. She has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is utterly addicted to PlayStation Home.
Nice review Seal. The minute I saw this space I knew it would be a Homeling hit. I didn’t know that were going to make it available in clubhouse too, that is cool. I can see a lot of these being Motherships if they do.
So, I don’t see the Homeling seal of approval. Yes or no?
I think we’ll need to see the clubhouse before we know for sure.
It’s sad that you have to be invited to someone else’s Space Station to get the Captain’s chair reward though, that should’ve been a given to Owner’s of the space itself, instead of a Guest reward. That doesn’t make very much sense to me.
Indeed, am still looking for an invite so I can get that!
I was “Busy” the other morning & was messing around on Home prior to going to work, then I had to leave. Sorry.
No problem. It will happen.