Little Rocket Lab Review

Lotta Talkin’ Lab

HIGH Engrossing building/optimization. Crispy isometric graphics.

LOW Writing is uninspired. Save system is cumbersome, UI cruft abounds.

WTF Carrying a dozen tennis balls and 50 heatsinks in my inventory like a freak.

Is there anything lower and lazier for game reviewer to write than “It’s like X plus Y?” Has any stock phrase done as much damage to the reputation of game analysis? Yet I find myself reaching for this shoddy, motheaten platitude, both in trying to situate readers on Little Rocket Lab‘s ludological wavelength, and in justifying my own inability to click with this well-made title which could be (and probably has been) described by at least one reviewer as “Stardew Valley plus Factorio.”

That’s an appetizing cross-pollination, for sure. Factorio is an endless optimization mandala, with hooks that bite deep into the compulsion-prone folds of the old noodle, but its suite of pleasures is cerebral, not emotional. It’s brilliant, but private and unapproachable — like a famous theoretical mathematician at a faculty mixer. Stardew, meanwhile, is eminently approachable, brightly upholstered with cute characters, bucolic atmosphere, and a lush evocative soundtrack — but mechanically speaking, Stardew is not the plumpest pumpkin in the patch.

If asked to imagine what a Factorio/Stardew fusion would look like, what it would play like, Little Rocket Lab would match it nearly exactly. This is the story of Morgan, a young engineer who returns to her hometown of St. Ambroise, finds it in poor shape (well, in as poor shape as an idyllic small town in a cozy-coded videogame can be), and sets about reviving it through the healing power of industry. She also wants to finish building the rocket her engineer mother began long ago.

Story is front and center in Little Rocket Lab. The plot is laid over, threaded under, and wrapped around the factory-building gameplay, like so many looping conveyor belts ferrying Meaning and Significance hither and yon. This is not the thing to play for those who want to be left to their own devices. Everything in Little Rocket Lab gets built because it’s needed, either by the exigencies of the main quest or the ancillary needs of the townsfolk of St. Ambroise, all of whom have a name and one lightly endearing character trait, as mandated by the Games Writing Accords of 1823.

Vibe-wise, everything here is indisputably wholesome – which is to say it’s all cute, good-natured, sweet, flat, and boring. I do not, generally, like the wholesome gaming thing. At its absolute worst (looking at you, Plucky Squire) wholesome games can feel simplistic to the point of patronizing — but to be fair, Little Rocket Lab gets nowhere near that particular nadir. The idea of a factory building experience with more of a plot is a great concept worth exploring. But the plot is just too simplistic and unadventurous here, and it actively inhibited my long-term enjoyment. The Factory can not be had without the Fiction.

That said, the factory can be satisfying. For anybody who has played a certain game or any that followed in its wake, it’s all building business as usual here – and that’s fine. For those new to the genre, Little Rocket Lab does a great job of introducing the basics and, without lampshading every little nuance, points the way to its Greater Complexities so that advanced players can roll up their sleeves a bit further than they absolutely need to to progress in the main quest.

In other words, for as much as I personally found it an inhibitor on my enthusiasm for Little Rocket Lab, the narrative emphasis is what gives the game its own particular flavor. This is not a factory meant to grow endlessly, unfolding out fractally forever until it has more lines of conveyance than a human circulatory system. No, Morgan’s factory is tied directly into the town’s revitalization. In contrast with the average factory title in which the player is left alone to manifest their brain onto the environment, in Little Rocket Lab, the factory must learn to live in symbiotic peace with the town of St. Ambroise.

Honestly, maybe I was setting myself up for disappointment here. Generally, I like my mechanics-forward games to be nigh-storyless, and I like my story-driven games to be complimented by a suite of bantamweight systems. The fusing of the extremes – heavy duty complexity with unavoidable, long-form story – can work, but I don’t think it works for me in Little Rocket Lab.

So, I don’t see myself finishing it, but I can see a lot of people loving it. Beyond the bland writing and the burden it places on progress, there are only a couple of other notable flaws.

The UI, while okay, is not as full-featured or intuitive as it should be. More annoyingly, players can only save by going to sleep at the end of each in-game day – not cool. Time ticks away at a Stardew-like clip, which is not 1:1 with real life time or anything, but it does mean that the minimum play session will be about 20 minutes long, and any unforeseen interruptions can mean losing progress – and progress in a factory builder is everything. Frankly this Save-Only-When-You-End-The-Day system is annoying in any life sim, and I think it is a genre legacy mechanic that the devs brought over without scrutiny. They have said they’ll be taking a look at this system in future patches, but as of the time of writing, it’s still an issue.

So, this is not an overwhelming amount of criticism. For players who want the deepiest, crunchiest, most byzantine and flexible factory builder out there without any distractions, Little Rocket Lab will disappoint. But for people who have tried the big names in this genre and found them daunting or chilly, and who are still looking for their entry point into the conveyor-belt and throughput analysis lifestyle, Little Rocket Lab may be the one.

It’s a really good game that I personally didn’t like very much, but I think — and kind of hope — I’m in the minority.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Teenage Astronauts and published by No More Robots. It is available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the game, and it was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not yet rated by the ESRB. It’s a “cozy” game, so there is little to nothing objectionable here. The town itself has issues, and there are allusions to death, unhappiness, and other “mature” problems, but it’s all done with a light touch and with an inevitable wholesome spin. The mechanical complexity will be the main barrier to younger players’ enjoyment here.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All of the dialogue is text-based, but it cannot be resized. All of many factory-building considerations are conveyed visually as well as audibly. The experience is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game supports both keyboard + mouse and controller, and both are fully remappable.