Space Haven – Captain’s Log #1: The Shakedown Cruise

This is my first space ship:

If you’re a fan of Star Trek or Firefly then you’ll love Space Haven.

It’s a game that gives you a crew of humans with various backgrounds, from cooks and sherrifs to fighter pilots and astronauts. Because in this future Humanity has fled Earth after it became inhospitable.

Not only that, but you also get to design your spaceship. And that’s what makes this game quite exciting, alongside the beautiful art style.

I recommend buying Space Haven and giving it a go:

• Buy on Gog.com
• Buy on Steam

Vancano’s captain log

Some games aren’t meant to be won on the first try. Space Haven is one of them. The veterans will tell you to treat it like a rogue-lite: expect to fail, learn from the chaos, and start the next run wiser. This is the log of my first attempt—a chronicle of poor decisions, costly victories, and hard-won lessons.

This is the story of the Shakedown Cruise. And, spoiler alert, it did not end well.

Every story starts with its characters. We were a crew of four, plucked from the ashes of the apocalypse and from left to right you can see Bowen, Cali, Missie and Raziel. This was Vancano’s first crew.

Bowen

The reluctant genius. A doctor by trade, brilliant and perceptive, but with a backbone made of jelly. His job was to fix people, not fight.

Cali

The hero. A former sheriff with a gaze as steady as her shotgun. If there was trouble, she was the one you sent to meet it head-on.

Missie

The worker bee. An energetic construction specialist who seemed to keep morale up just by being busy. The heart of the ship’s industry.

Raziel

The iron-willed professional. An airline pilot by trade, destined for the helm. Brave, intelligent, and dependable.

The plan was simple: survive. The reality, I soon discovered, was much messier.

First contact with chaos

The early days were a blur of desperation. We were starved of everything: ice, energy, and resources. Every derelict ship we found was crawling with hostile robots, forcing us to cut and run time and again.

Finally, fed up and with supplies dwindling, I decided we had to take a stand. “Sod it,” I thought, “we’re going in.” I sent Cali and Raziel over to the next derelict, and for the first time, they didn’t run. They fought.

They won. The ship was ours. But the victory was a costly one. Raziel was dragged back to the airlock, burnt and beaten half to death. This victory immediately created a more urgent crisis: how to save him? My first instinct was to research a proper medical bed. It seemed logical. It was also a catastrophic mistake. As the research bar crawled along at a snail’s pace, I learned my first lesson.

Lesson #1: Triage your tech tree. A state-of-the-art med-bed is useless if you don’t have the power to run it or the food to feed the patient. In Space Haven, the hierarchy of needs is brutal. Basic botany and power come first.

A Lesson in architectural self-sabotage

With Raziel patched up thanks to a passing trade ship, my next mistake was less strategic and more… well, just plain stupid. While doing some routine ship renovations, I failed to notice I’d left the Y-axis mirror tool active. My command to delete a small, useless section of hull on the left side of the ship was dutifully mirrored on the right—right through the middle of two occupied rooms.

The first I knew of it was the sudden WHOOSH of decompression alarms and the sight of my entire crew scrambling for their spacesuits. And then I saw him. Bowen, my cowardly doctor, was trapped outside, floating in the void next to a gaping hole where his wall used to be. I watched in horror as his oxygen percentage ticked down, a frantic race against time. He made it back to the airlock just as his tank hit zero.

Lesson #2: The mirror tool is a loaded weapon. Double-check your build settings before you deconstruct, or you might just accidentally jettison your doctor into deep space.

The Slow-Burn Crisis

The most dangerous threats aren’t always the ones that attack you head-on. Sometimes, they’re the ones that creep up on you. We were constantly low on power, and a new, more insidious problem emerged: malnutrition. I had rations, but I didn’t understand the complex nutritional system. My crew were, essentially, suffering from space-scurvy.

Trapped, with too few credits to buy the raw ingredients we needed, I took a high-risk gamble: a 15-day contract to build a leisure station. The payout was huge, but the resource drain was immense. The final days of the build were spent on backup power, the ship cold and dark. With the station finally complete, we were paid, but we were dead in the water—no power to jump, and Bowen’s crucial solar panel research was only half-finished.

For a few tense moments, I sat and watched, convinced I was about to see my crew freeze to death in a silent ship. We were saved only by the station’s inhabitants finally unpacking their own power cores and opening for trade. It was a lifeline, but it was only a temporary fix for a much deeper problem.

Lesson #3: Master your supply chain. A full cargo hold means nothing if you don’t have the right ingredients. Bought resources are a patch, not a solution.

The Final Stand

The patch didn’t last. Forced to make a desperate jump in search of resources, we ran straight into a pirate ship. This was it. The final exam. And I failed spectacularly.

I sent Bowen to the operations console, hoping he could activate the point-defence systems. He was too busy faffing about with his research to get there in time.

My entire defensive plan for the airlock hinged on a single, flawed assumption: that the narrow passage would act as a natural choke point. Confident in this, I positioned Cali, Missie, and Raziel to meet the boarders head-on, completely overlooking my critical failure to provide them with any cover. I hadn’t built a fortress; I’d created a shooting gallery.

The first boarder stepped through and cut all three of them down in a hail of gunfire. It was a massacre. The pirates then proceeded to execute Raziel and Cali where they lay. Missie, for reasons I still dread to think about, was captured and hauled back to their ship.

On the bridge, two pirates cornered a terrified Bowen. I knew he couldn’t fight them. In my final act as Captain of this doomed vessel, I ordered him to surrender. It was the only decision that made sense for his character. A pragmatic, if grim, end to our story.

Lesson #4: Your airlock is a fortress gate. Fortify it before the siege begins.

So ends the log of the Shakedown Cruise.

A complete failure, but a fantastic learning experience. Now, it’s time to take these lessons and begin planning Run #2.

• Lesson #1: Triage your tech tree. A state-of-the-art med-bed is useless if you don’t have the power to run it or the food to feed the patient. In Space Haven, the hierarchy of needs is brutal. Basic botany and power come first.
• Lesson #2: The mirror tool is a loaded weapon. Double-check your build settings before you deconstruct, or you might just accidentally jettison your doctor into deep space.
• Lesson #3: Master your supply chain. A full cargo hold means nothing if you don’t have the right ingredients. Bought resources are a patch, not a solution.
• Lesson #4: Your airlock is a fortress gate. Fortify it before the siege begins.