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rymdkapsel is an abstract Real-Time Strategy game by Martin Jonasson with music by Niklas Ström. It is heavy on the Minimalism, with everything represented by blocks and polygons. Available on Steam and for iOS and Android.

You are in charge of building a space station. Direct your workers to build corridors, extractors to mine mineral resources, food production and housing, and weapons platforms to fight off periodic alien invasions. In addition, there are alien monoliths that can be researched to upgrade your workers and station operation.

The kicker? Your station is in 2-D Space, the rooms are 4 block Tetris pieces, and you have no control over the next shape you get. As your station expands, finding free places to fit in a particular room without accidentally walling yourself off becomes increasingly challenging. But don't get too distracted: when the timer reaches zero and the next increasingly-powerful alien fleet arrives, your workers had better be at the defense stations (You did build enough, didn't you?) if you don't want them slaughtered.

It's a race to research all of the monoliths before the aliens wipe you out.


Tropes:

  • all lowercase letters: The title and all text in the game. Capital letters are for pansies that need fancy graphics and reloading when they die.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Minions will flock for the nearest relevant building when you assign them orders. This becomes a problem during enemy attacks—your minions may attempt to single-handedly man defense buildings, resulting in their quick, isolated deaths.
  • Asteroid Miners: "Debris fields," but it works out to the same thing.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The title is Swedish for "space capsule".
  • Command & Conquer Economy: The workers will perform tasks automatically, but you need to reshuffle the job allocations regularly. As your work force increases, this becomes yet another distraction from keeping track of the timer.
  • Endless Game: If you're not very efficient. The enemy fleets keep coming faster and harder. By wave 30 or so it's a matter of staving off annihilation. You can win by completing studies of all four monoliths, but if you haven't done this by level 30, you're basically done.
  • Guide Dang It!: There is a tutorial, but it feeds you a bare minimum of information.
  • Isometric Projection
  • Just One More Level!: "What? My battery's about to die? Where's the rechar— Oh, Crap!! Timer!"
  • Kill Screen: The game eventually comes to a point where the enemy spawn alarm begins as soon as the timer gauge starts to fill up, making it impossible to build at all due to the unending threat of enemy waves. Your only option at that point is to hold out until the game ends.
  • Minimalism: From the lack of a story to the blocky graphics. However, the graphics do operate as an Anti-Frustration Feature, as they make it very easy to tell at a glance exactly whats going on.
  • The Monolith: Or rather, several. Scanning them provides an upgrade of some sort.
  • Nintendo Hard: The game is fairly forgiving for the first five to ten waves, but quickly demonstrates Unstable Equilibrium once you start to lose units.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: Why are you building a space station, and why are aliens violently objecting to this? Who cares, the timer is ticking.
  • Race Against the Clock: The rhythm of the game boils down to getting as much work as possible done and getting your minions back to the defenses before the next invasion hits.
  • Save-Game Limits: Suspend Save and that's it. You were momentarily distracted and got slaughtered? You'll start over again and like it.
  • 2-D Space: Space is a Tetris playfield. Sounds legit.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: The alien fleets keep getting more powerful and the breathing period between each wave keeps getting shorter. Fall behind in your economy or research and you'll be too busy fighting losing battles to catch up again. Losing even one unit in later waves may as well be a Game Over as well.
  • You Require More Vespene Gas: Food, energy and minerals. Running short? You probably should have expanded your economy alr— Oh, Crap!! Another attack!

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