Save a Spaceship with Spacehack!

York Hackspace needed a demonstration piece to grace their stand at Maker Faires and similar events. Their solution was Spacehack, a multi-player control console based starship emergency simulator game. Each Spacehack player has console with a selection of displays, switches, dials, and levers. Players must operate their controls in response to a series of sometimes confusing commands the game supplies them from their fellow crew members. Each wrong move brings the disaster-prone ship closer to destruction, and the aim is to keep it spaceworthy for as long as possible. The result is an engaging and addictive draw for the hackspace.

Behind the brilliantly designed consoles, silver ducting and pyramidal hub box the game relies on a Raspberry Pi acting as a server and a Beaglebone Black for each player. All resources can be found on York Hackspace’s GitHub repository. The hackspace has a selection of videos on the Spacehack website, the one below the break shows the game as well as a montage of its construction.

As you might expect, we’ve covered a lot of games over the years here on Hackaday. But browsing the archives something becomes obvious, while almost every conceivable take on a video game has been tried by our incredibly creative community there are very few that escape that box. A ball throwing game perhaps, or even a one-pixel game. It’s not often that someone produces a game like Spacehack, but when they do it’s definitely worth a second look.

Filed under: Hackerspaces