It looks like a game from a bygone era. The 2D graphics are basic in the extreme. There are no animations to speak of. The viewpoint is top-down and staying that way. Its user interface rekindles memories of Windows 95. It is fiddly, abstruse and hugely complex. It is a slow burn of a video game, often demanding hours of intense concentration, planning and execution to succeed. And yet for some, Space Station 13, a community-created open source project coming up on its 15th birthday, is the greatest multiplayer role-playing video game ever made.
It is also hugely popular among video game developers, some of whom say the emergent gameplay Space Station 13 enables is the most interesting they've ever experienced. Perhaps that's why so many have tried to remake it over the years. But so far none have succeeded. This repeated failure to remake Space Station 13 has led to what's known among the game's community and developers as a curse. Some believe Space Station 13 cannot be remade. And yet, the attempts keep on coming.
To understand the Space Station 13 curse, you have to understand Space Station 13 itself. The problem is, Space Station 13 is really hard to understand, and so it's really hard to describe. It's perhaps best to start with the setup. Players choose from a selection of different jobs available on the crew of a futuristic space station called Space Station 13 (so named, its creator revealed in an interview, because bad things happen with the number 13 ). The players then play out the round, interacting with each other and the environment around them. There isn't much in the way of a grand goal or objective for the crew to put their minds to. It's more of a, well, let's see what happens kind of game.
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