Assuming you don’t blow it straight out of Luna then Space Crew is a satisfying challenge that mixes the tactical stylings of many strategy games with even more chaos and space age meanies than Bomber Crew was ever able to provide.

A compact, confident, bite-sized roguelite with a bit too much emphasis on the ‘lite’.

If you’re not averse to a bit of grinding, there’s plenty of fun to be eked out of Space Crew’s enjoyable core gameplay loop. Its main flaw remains the somewhat lacklustre beginning.

All in all the game is straightforward and for the most part is enjoyable as you do feel like you're basically a captain of a Star Trek-style ship. It does unfortunately start to feel a little repetitive as the missions go on, as they tend to just be things like heading to a certain location to pick something up, or heading somewhere to clear the area. But there's a good amount of content in here to keep you entertained, such as unlocking new parts for your ship, recruiting new members, and being able to customise the look of both your crew and ship.

Space Crew is a patchy trip into the cosmos. If you can tolerate the lack of mission and enemy variety you’ll get joy out of it but, with a little more attention it could have been stellar.

Space Crew is a reasonable introduction to the Crew series, but it tones down the entertaining chaos and difficulty a bit too much.

A distinctive problem with Space Crew is that so little changes from mission to mission, chapter to chapter, and death to death. Layers of grind do not serve as satisfying gameplay loops on their own, requiring some context or chaos at least, something more inspired than that grind for its own sake. It’s a fine distraction while a podcast murmurs in the background, but Space Crew ultimately lacks the spacefaring goods regardless of how it's consumed.