Space Bob Vs. The Replicons looks like a 2D No Man's Sky

Space Bob vs. The Replicons is an ambitious 2D game about flying your spaceship onto a procedurally generated planet surface, gathering resources and tethering them to your ship, then blasting back into orbit to explore more of outerspace. There’s a new trailer for it below, but it’s not a new game. Space Bob launched in 2018, sold poorly, and then its developer left the games industry. That developer is returning now to take a second swing at the game and released a major update earlier this week.

Here’s the new trailer:

I like that you have the physically drag the resources you’re gathering around and then pin them to your ship before takeoff. The novelty of physics simulations never wore off for me.

The new update, as described on Steam, overhauls Space Bob’s combat, doubling the fire rate of every gun, increasing the number of enemies, and revising their behaviour to make them more interesting to avoid or fight. There are also quality of life improvements to the game’s camera, difficulty settings and more. Honestly, it reads like a list of (now resolved) reasons why Space Bob didn’t get much notice back in 2018. (I’m betting that the name didn’t help, either.)

It did apparently get some notice, mind you, with a couple of pre-release GIFs of the game raking in about half a million views after being heavily upvoted on Reddit. The update and new trailer have had a pretty good reception on Reddit, too, with the additional detail that the developer had a heart attack one week after the game’s initial release.

If exploring, physically plundering, and fighting spiderbots sounds like a lark, Space Bob vs. The Replicons is currently 75% off on Steam, making it $3.74.