RetroSpace is a wonderfully strange station to get lost in, even when its systems and PS5 performance get in the way
I had a great time with RetroSpace. It has the ingredients I want from a first-person immersive sim: a strange place worth exploring, tools that invite experimentation, and a story that keeps handing me new questions. It also has rough edges. The PS5 version rarely holds 60fps, I ran into some irritating bugs, and the station does not always respond to ideas that seem like they should work. Even so, Aurora 5 is a memorable place to spend time.
You play a janitor aboard a space station where, as tends to happen in these stories, everything has gone horribly wrong. Aurora 5 hosted several unusual scientific experiments, and the corridors are now home to their consequences. Insect-like people, pig hybrids, androids, and flower-headed mutants that look a bit like Demogorgons roam the station. It is gross, funny, and unsettling in equal measure, with a retro-futuristic style that gives the horror its own personality.
The story is one of the reasons I kept pushing into new areas. You meet scientists who have survived the disaster and help them get their respective stations back in working order. Their conversations and the clues scattered around the facility gradually explain what happened. I am a sucker for plots involving time travel and alternate dimensions, and RetroSpace knows how to keep those ideas intriguing without immediately explaining every strange detail. The station's shifts in time give the mystery another layer and make familiar corridors feel less predictable.
Exploration is strongest early on, when each door and vent might lead to an entirely new wing. Aurora 5 is interconnected, and opening a new route can make the station feel larger than its individual rooms. I enjoyed crawling through vents, reading notes for passwords, spotting hidden switches, and stacking boxes to reach ledges. There are turrets to hack, locked doors to open, and bits of light platforming that reward looking around. That steady stream of small discoveries makes wandering feel productive.
Combat begins with scarcity. Pistol ammunition is limited, so I often had to get close and swing my wrench until an enemy finally dropped. That is scrappy fun for a while, and the arsenal expands as you unlock more of the station. A revolver and shotgun lead into an SMG, a gatling gun, and a ray gun, giving fights more pace and choice. The gunplay is fine rather than exceptional, but the changing weapons keep encounters from feeling completely samey.
The enemies have different strengths and weaknesses, which you can learn by scanning them. That information gives your weapon choices some purpose. The flower-headed mutants, for instance, go down in two or three ray-gun shots, so it feels good to recognize a threat and switch to the tool that handles it best. The best fights come when I am juggling weapons, watching enemy behavior, and using the station around me.
RetroSpace also gives you plenty of toys to improvise with. You can throw explosive barrels, spray water near a transformer and shoot it to electrocute an enemy, or coat a patch of floor in oil and set it alight. Those little plans feel great when they work. The game has the shape of a systemic immersive sim, where everyday objects and environmental hazards can become part of your toolkit.
The trouble is that the station does not always follow through on that promise. In one objective, I had to destroy several servers in a room with a connected computer and transformers nearby. I tried shocking the servers with water and a transformer, spraying the equipment directly, and setting things on fire with oil. None of it worked. Shooting the computer completed the objective immediately. That solution was clear enough, but the room had encouraged me to experiment, then ignored every experiment I tried. I wanted more of the emergent moments the mechanics suggest, where a plan made from the room's pieces is accepted instead of a single intended interaction.
That gap between ambition and execution comes up elsewhere. Backtracking is manageable while the station is new, but later trips through familiar areas can turn into a hunt for the correct corridor or vent. A little more guidance would help when several paths fold back into each other. The menus could use better controller shortcuts for sorting items and moving them in or out of storage, too. Their current interactions slow down the rhythm whenever I need to manage my gear.
The biggest problem on PS5 is performance. It rarely reaches 60fps, and the uneven frame rate is hard to ignore during combat and when moving through busy parts of the station. I also hit some annoying bugs. Neither issue erased my enjoyment, but they kept taking the shine off an otherwise absorbing adventure. RetroSpace needs a round of technical polish before the PS5 version feels as dependable as its ideas deserve.
The presentation does a lot to keep me invested. The pixelated art style and retro-futuristic environments fit together naturally, from strange laboratories to bright, carefully staged station interiors. The creature designs make an immediate impression, and the shift from clean science-fiction spaces to overgrown, corrupted rooms helps Aurora 5 feel like a place that has been lived in before it fell apart. The soundtrack is excellent, and the voice acting gives the surviving scientists enough character to make their stories stick.
I also found the game's mix of humor and horror refreshing. One corridor can feel like a proper sci-fi nightmare, then a ridiculous creature or odd detail brings out the game's playful streak. KVARK scratched a similar retro sci-fi shooter itch for me, but RetroSpace is more interested in letting me poke at a connected space and figure out its secrets than simply pushing me through firefights.
RetroSpace is uneven, but its strengths are easy to remember: a compelling station to explore, a weird story I wanted to understand, satisfying weapon progression, and enough interactive tools to make me think creatively. I wish more of my improvised solutions worked, and the later navigation, menus, bugs, and performance all need improvement. Still, the good outweighed the frustration for me. With better performance and a little more flexibility in its systems, this could become a classic. As it stands, I had a very good time on Aurora 5, rough patches and all. Thanks for reading!
