As a ship it left a lot to be desired, though. Now I don't quite understand the concept behind it, but it's a surprisingly good render of Han, even down to the pursed lips that the movie model has. Excited at the thought of having an inert Harrison Ford as a personal plaything, I grabbed it and led Pip into the game. This time I was intrigued by what claimed to by a huge representation of Han Solo being frozen in carbonite. The horror! With the shark decapitated, it was time to try another Workshop entry. In fact, you can hear the awe building in my voice, a sense of wonder slowly swimming up from the deep, just before Pip exerted the carcharodon carcharias just a little too much. It's been so long since I've messed with Space Engineers that I'd forgotten how a lot of the mechanics work, so this impossible creature seemed even more fantastical as it slowly sculled the grey void, looking like a lost Discworld character. That waggle passed along the length of it the shark, tapering out into the void of space. I first thought this huge space shark was a bit of a cheat, as it appeared to me that the sections weren't joined, but Pip proved that notion was incorrect by hopping behind the controls and waggling the head side-to-side. To that end, I grabbed "Giant Articulated Shark" from the Workshop and invited her in. The best thing about setting up a server is it didn't warn Pip of what was coming, so I'd be able to surprise her with the Workshop's whims. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Here is a recording of our adventure, with apologies for Pip's mic, my breathing and Scottishness, and the overall aimlessness of the thing. Life is full of surprises, and the complexity of the inner workings of the Homer-ship was a pleasant reminder that people make extraordinarily ridiculous things in games for us to break. Nor did I think I'd be adding nipples to the body before smashing a can of Duff so stiffly into Homer's mouth that his face bent. It's so cavernous, in fact, that we got lost and had to punch our way out of his body, which is not how I imagined this little adventure going. The complex innards of Homer put Pip in mind of a duodenum, and for a while we wandered intestiny-feeling tracts of corridors before arriving at a cavernous section that held the rib-cage, spine, and heart. We disappeared into the oesophagus and ended up looping through corridors. Homer's mouth was agape, and it was the entry-point to a ship that was way more detailed than we'd imagined. There are limits to what you can do with ship shapes, but this little Simpsons scene is still recognisably Simpsonsy: Homer and Marge hung in the grey sky and a little gathering of Simpsons themed ships-some glazed doughnuts and a few Duff beers-drift nearby. But however impressive those were, I ended up grabbing the sillier uploads, and I started with Homer & Marge Simpson by Comagable. As with every game that enables the player to create and form and fashion things, fandoms shine through: Warhammer fans, Mass Effect fans, and even Crysis fans have been building and distributing. The Steam Workshop files are actually save games that players upload, so you can take any build and turn it into a server. Then you can invite friends only or open it to the public. It's an easy set-up: you can start a server by editing the settings of one of your saves, and selecting it as 'online'. I was joined on this trip into the Workshop by Philippa "The Undoing" Warr, who was helping me test out the game's new-ish multiplayer. Since then they've added multiplayer and Steam Workshop support, which was how I ended I ended up flying a spaceship the form of a shark into the crotch of a monolithic Homer Simpson. Well, on my first playthrough I was slinging ships across the void, watching as they met and crumpled and cooing at the damage model and simple building tools. How much could a game about building space ships and flying them change in a few months? I wanted to know what state Space Engineers was in, because it's been a few months since I last tried it out and it was already pretty impressive back then.
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