Summary of The Game.
The developer states that they were inspired to create this game by the successful video game Hardspace: Shipbreaker, made by Blackbird Interactive.1
In the game Hardspace: Shipbreaker, you take the role of a Lynx employee who works in a space salvage yard that orbits above the planet Earth in the far future. You would take apart and salvage ships to earn money and advance the story. This game has been completed and has very positive reviews on Steam.2 I have personally played this game, and while, as of today, there is not a review on this site, I do suggest trying out the game, and I will have a link below.
In the game Derelict Division, LLC, which takes inspiration from that game, you take the role of what seems to be a private contractor who travels across the Milky Way to salvage derelict spaceships in the far reaches of space. The game has a galaxy map that you can access on the bridge of your ship. You would select one of the named regions where a wreck exists, and you would be teleported there to then scavenge the ship. The NASA website has an image of the Milky Way with actual regions such as the Perseus Arm, Orion Spur, Norma Arm, etc., but the game did not include those.3 I do think that it would have been a nice detail if the developer had included the real-life names for regions of the Milky Way in the game instead of the fictional ones in the game.
But before you start taking apart your first ship, you would want to turn around and look at the contracts that can earn you some extra resources. There are four factions in the game named the FreeHolder Council, Halycon Salvage Combine, LodeStar Mutual, and the Orbital Authority. They offer very specific jobs that, if you complete them, can earn you some extra credits as payment upon completion, such as recovering specific ship parts like a coolant manifold FEE for the FreeHolder Council or completing Evidence Recovery for LodeStar Mutual by finding the flight recorder.
When you select your contract and are taken to the site, you will spawn in your personal spaceship, which you will fly to the derelict freighter and land inside the hangar. You can also mine the outside of the freighter as well, but I do advise against it, as the ship might be pressurized, and opening up the ship will cause valuable contents to fly out.
When you are inside of the ship, the ship is, in my opinion, fairly detailed for an early-access game. You can find goods inside of the ship, such as computers, crates, electronics, and other miscellaneous items that you can collect by using the torch to mine them. When they are mined, you are awarded credits, which you can keep as long as you return to your ship. There are some larger ship parts inside of the ship that you would not mine because of their large size, and instead, you would utilize the magnet tool to bring them to your ship, where you can store them inside by pressing T. The ship only has 3 storage slots as of now, so you would not be able to store everything that you want to salvage.
To keep the game balanced, they do have three bars to watch: your health, air, and fuel. I personally have not had my health go down in the game. There may not be any elements that can damage you, at least at the time of writing this review, but I did see that the air does go down if the cabins in the ships do not have life support, and the fuel is related to your thrusters on your suit in a zero-G environment.
When you are done salvaging the ship, either because you run out of air, storage, or because you want to move on, you would get back into your ship and fly out of the freighter to the extraction point, which takes you back to your home base. That is the core gameplay loop of the game. You can use your credits to buy supplies or upgrades; however, as of November 10th, there are not very many things to purchase.
I do believe that the developer has done a fantastic job in differentiating themselves from Hardspace: Shipbreaker by adding elements to the game not present in the previous game.
My opinion of the game so far.
The game is not finished, as it is day one of early access. So when I write this, I do take this into account and try not to be too critical, but I believe that the developer has a significant amount of work to do on this game. The developer estimates that the game will be in early access for 6–8 months,4 which, in my opinion, is rather short of a time to catch up.
The game’s concept is great, and I can see myself sinking hundreds of hours into it if the developer can get this into a finished state, as the game has several things that I enjoyed when playing. I loved the idea of being a freelancer able to travel the galaxy and take on different jobs, and I think it gives them the framework to expand almost however they want. I like that you can take contracts with different organizations who are looking for different objectives to be completed, and it gives you more goals than just salvaging everything. I can see a story (which does not currently exist in the game) surrounding the organizations that you take contracts from and perhaps a reputation system being explored. I do like the size and complexity of the ships that you salvage and the detailed interiors, and it appears you can salvage every piece of the ship.
However, there are some flaws and experiences I did not enjoy. I was not very impressed with the movement of the spaceship in the game. The personal spaceship that you fly feels too smooth, and when you exit the ship by pressing E, it instantly ejects you out of the ship, which I feel is lazy. In zero-G movement, I feel the handling is too forgiving. I am not a fan of how valuables are collected in the game. You use the torch to mine small goods in the ship, such as electronics, crates, and so on, and after the act is completed, the item is destroyed and credits are added to your account (given that you make it to the extraction point). I think that cheapens the experience. I think you should have to collect the valuables and bring them to your ship to add work to the game and make it feel like you are really salvaging for profit. Which brings me to the next part that I am not a fan of, which is the storage limit of your ship. The ship is limited to only 3 items, which is insignificant compared to the number of items on the freighter. It is not satisfying to only scrap 3 items and then go home. There does not seem to be that much of a present danger in the game, which I think made the successful game Hardspace: Shipbreaker so popular, in which any action that you take could be a mistake that costs you your life. While I have not personally tried to find a way to die in the game, my health bar has not gone down, and I was pretty reckless in exploring the game. I think the biggest peeve in the game, however, was the fact that you could not return to the ship (I could not find a way to do so) after returning to your base, whether that may be because you ran out of oxygen or fuel or for any other reason. I would like to finish the job of salvaging the entire ship, and I do not believe the current situation in the game makes that possible. I think your home ship needs to either be smaller or more efficient. I got stuck in the first 5 minutes because there are areas of the ship that seem to serve no purpose as of right now. I did not like how empty the game felt story-wise. When I mean empty, there is zero story.
The game does have the ability to support up to 4 players;5 however, I have not explored multiplayer in the game.
What I hope to see added to the game.
- The personal ship that you pilot should be slightly larger so you can load more goods.
- Smaller freighters to scrap when you have a starter ship.
- The ability to return to your freighter to continue salvaging.
- The ability to upgrade your personal ship to hold more cargo.
- A story and some lore.
- Larger personal ships. I think it would be awesome if, at some point, you had a ship so large you could not fit it in the hangar, and you just had to go back and forth transporting materials into the cargo hold as you park the ship side by side.
- I would like for the developer to explore how selling the salvage works. Perhaps instead of just being paid for the salvage, you have to interact with a market to sell it, and the prices can change daily, or you can decide to hold on to it in case a contract asks for it and you can get more from the contract.
- Small item scavenging. This might just be my obsession with games like Fallout, Skyrim, and Starfield, where you can collect anything not nailed to the ground and possibly use those items for crafting. I think if they added crates that you can load items into, and when the crate is full, you can load it into the ship and it takes up an inventory slot.
My Verdict.
The game in its current state is not fun. I think the game has a lot of potential, as the developer has found a good avenue to create an original game and has a clear sense of what they want the game to be. But in its current state, I just did not have fun playing the game, and I do not suggest buying the game in its current state. I think the thirteen-dollar price ($12.99) is pretty steep for a day-one early-access game that is missing so much.6 I think if you are a fan of this sort of game, you should wait for a sale before you try it and follow the game on Steam for the developer to complete the game so it is in a better state, or follow for updates on their Discord.
Footnotes
- Everbreak_Studios, “Hardspace: Shipbreaker inspired me to make a co-op ship-salvaging game,” Reddit, r/HardspaceShipbreaker, accessed November 10, 2026, https://www.reddit.com/r/HardspaceShipbreaker/comments/1xbtre8/hardspace_shipbreaker_inspired_me_to_make_a_coop/. ↩︎
- Blackbird Interactive, “Hardspace: Shipbreaker,” Steam, accessed November 10, 2026, https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/ ↩︎
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Milky Way and Our Location,” NASA Science, August 7, 2017, https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/milky-way-and-our-location/ ↩︎
- Everbreak Studios, LLC, “Derelict Division, LLC,” Steam, accessed November 10, 2026, https://store.steampowered.com/app/5387220/Derelict_Division_LLC/ ↩︎
- Everbreak Studios, LLC, “Derelict Division, LLC.” ↩︎
- Everbreak Studios, LLC, “Derelict Division, LLC.” ↩︎
Bibliography
Blackbird Interactive. “Hardspace: Shipbreaker.” Steam. Accessed November 10, 2026. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbreaker/.
Everbreak Studios, LLC. “Derelict Division, LLC.” Steam. Accessed November 10, 2026. https://store.steampowered.com/app/5387220/Derelict_Division_LLC/.
Everbreak_Studios. “Hardspace: Shipbreaker Inspired Me to Make a Co-op Ship-Salvaging Game.” Reddit, r/HardspaceShipbreaker. Accessed November 10, 2026. https://www.reddit.com/r/HardspaceShipbreaker/comments/1xbtre8/hardspace_shipbreaker_inspired_me_to_make_a_coop/.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “Milky Way and Our Location.” NASA Science. August 7, 2017. https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/milky-way-and-our-location/.