Jump Space | Review-in-Progress

A compelling, rock-solid foundation for what promises to be a genre-defining game.

Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke September 18, 2025Last Updated: September 18, 2025

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As a massive sci-fi nerd, the moment I saw Jump Space I knew it was something I absolutely wanted to play – it ticks all my video game boxes. Gorgeous sci-fi concept? Check. Rock solid visuals? Check. Play with pals and crew our own Space ship? Double check! I’ve spent around 20 hours with the game ahead of its public launch into Early Access on Steam and Game Preview on Xbox, and I’m here to share my thoughts on what this fascinating spaceship game is all about. This is the XboxEra ‘Review-in-Progress’ for Jump Space.

A Galaxy at War

Jump Space | Review-in-Progress | Image Credit: Keepsake Games

If this is the first you’ve seen or heard of this game, allow me to bring you up to speed. Jump Space is a mission-based co-operative game for up to four players, tasking you with crewing a spaceship. The world in which is takes places has fallen victim to the ‘corruption virus’, a calamity that’s made the majority of mankind’s machines turn against us. Humanity needs jump-capable ships to help turn the tide, travel to the source of this virus and bring freedom to the galaxy. No pressure!

While it’s available on both Steam and Xbox in the form of an Early Access release, it’s worth reiterating that this is not coming to Xbox Game Pass, so if you’re interested in jumping in, it’s going to be a purchase on either platform. Be that as it may, I’m now going to wax lyrical on why you should absolutely do that, because I’m kind of in love with what Jump Space is doing.

Safe Harbour

Jump Space begins with a decent tutorial to teach you about the games various systems before you start galivanting around the galaxy. You play as an Atiran survivor of a conflict with the rampant machines, and are stranded on the surface of a moon littered with the burnt out hulls and wrecks of various ships. Here, you’ll rescue Iris, an AI ‘Helmsman’ Core that escaped the corruption virus and wants to assist you in fighting back against the Steel Legion. You’ll find and repair your first ship – the Catamaran – and together with your AI companion, jump to the hanger, a safe harbour that acts as your player hub and multiplayer lobby.

The Hangar is where you’ll be able to meet up with your pals before heading out on missions, in addition to where all of the games vendors and quest givers hang out. It’s also where you’ll manage customisation of both your own character, and of course manage your ship. There are a ton of social aspect to this hub-like space, be it chairs to lounge around on, a shooting range, a jukebox or a spot of 2v2 football.

Beyond customising the ship to suit your style with the options to set the colour scheme on both the exterior and interior of your ship, you’ll also need to manage the components that are fitted. There’s a decent number of systems to manage, from your engines, power systems, weapons and more. Components can be upgraded with ‘materia’ ingots, which you’ll earn through completing missions, retrieving salvage and other redundant components. There are two ships currently in this Early Access build, the aforementioned C3-Catamaran and the nippier, but much smaller D4-Dart.

The Catamaran is the larger of two vessels, and easily houses a full 4-player crew. It sports a larger shield capacity, and comes fitted with a bar, pizza oven, medical and ammunition facilities, bunks and a working toilet. It’s arguably the more ‘complete’ of the two ships in terms of design and layout, but that’s not to say the Dart isn’t without it’s charm.

This smaller and more nimble ship is faster, with two pilot cannons instead of the one on the Catamaran. This firepower comes with a cost, as the ship has half the shield capacity of the Catamaran and its design isn’t as intuitive as its larger sibling. It’s a little awkward to board, but it’s far quicker to navigate and repair ship systems. It feels like an answer to players looking to enjoy Jump Space either solo, or with just one friend, though it supports four players too. If you are playing solo (yes, you can play this solo), the game has an AI controlled ‘Buddy-bot’ who will jump in and help out, reloading the pilot cannons or producing ammunition to help out if you’re on your own – though he’s no substitute for friends.

Heading Out

Aside from taking on quests to progress the narrative – and yes, there is one, but I won’t spoil any of it for you, you’ll also be doing favours for the various vendors in the Hangar. In return for completing these, you’ll earn credits and new spacesuits – and if you’re lucky, Materia Ingots for those precious ship upgrades.

To to do all these things, you’ll gather your crew and head out on missions that are usually comprised of several stages, as you jump your ship from location to location, gathering resources, completing cargo raids, salvage runs and more. To start, players will gather around the Galaxy Map in the hub and pick a mission type – they vary in length and challenge, be it a twenty minute trip or an hour long excursion. Missions are separated our across different sectors of the galaxy and vary in difficulty, from ‘easy’ up to ‘very hard’. Once you’ve got one selected, you and your crew will ‘ready up’ and move on to your home away from home – Your Jump Ship (it is a shame they had to change the name, I really liked the games original title)

More on Jump Space – 1v1 Developer Interview with Game Director Filip Coulianos

If you’re interested on hearing more on Jump Space, I sat down with Keepsake Games Game Director Filip Coulianos to chat about how Keepsake Games came together, the inspirations for Jump Space, future plans for early access and more! You can read or watch the interview, right here.

1v1 Developer Interview with Game Director Filip Coulianos on making Jump Space “the best space adventure game ever.”

The moment-to-moment gameplay in Jump Space is kind of like if Sea of Thieves, Left 4 Dead and your favourite rogue-lite had a weird space baby. You’ll initially launch into a safe location, and it’s here where the run-based, rogue-lite structure of the game becomes apparent. The mission is broken down into various stages, all randomised before a final main challenge. Do you take the safer path? Do you focus on gathering components or consumables? The choice is up to the crew, and once you’ve decided your route, each player will have to strap in before jumping to the next section.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Even in it’s early access form, there’s a surprising amount of variety in Jump Space so far. There are a total of nine mission types that take place across fifty or so playable sectors, and you and your crew will jump into a decent number of interesting environments. Be it icy moons, desolate debris fields, or atmospheric asteroid belts, it all looks gorgeous.

It’s fair to say that yes, some repetition will set in – it is Early Access after all, but the developers have already shared a Roadmap for the community to dig into as they begin the journey to 1.0 release, with plans for an Endless mode, modifiers, and of course more mission types and sectors.

There are all sorts of things to find, out in deep space. From new components to add to your ship, or differently tiered levels of weapons, it’s always worth scanning the system and investigating the area. One neat system is the Artifacts that you can find while on missions. They are run-specific modifiers, that do all sorts of different things. You might find one that increases your melee damage if you have a slice of pizza in your inventory. Another will let you heal teammates by shooting them. Some will have various levels to them, allowing players to use unwanted Artifacts to ‘upgrade’ the ones they have equipped.

Obviously, Jump Space has plenty of ship-to-ship space combat. As the main pilot of my crew, I was in charge of dispatching enemy combatants, which ranged from weak fighters to imposing enemy corvettes. Dog-fighting was always fun, but shooting enemy ships down isn’t the only part of what makes Jump Space so much fun.

You and your crew also need to manage the ship and its systems, be it putting out fires that break out during combat, repairing a broken thruster (that one makes manoeuvring the ship far trickier), dealing with radiation leaks, or even being boarded by the enemy.

What makes the game stand out comparatively to its peers is that the developers have given due care and attention to how both modes of play feel – both flight and on-foot gameplay is slick and responsive on both mouse and keyboard and a controller, though both inputs are missing some nice-to-have options. They are planning to add a combat slide in, so I’m glad that’s already on the roadmap, and I’m sure other improvements will come.

Who needs gravity anyway?

On foot, you are nimble, equipped with a double jump and a super fast grappling hook that can lock on to a variety of latch points. When in zero-g, you have an awesome thruster pack to traverse space and even some terrain quickly, and can even barrel roll. It feels supremely cool to quite literally launch yourself out of the ship to go on the offensive, or to quickly grab salvaged supplies.

Players on foot can arm themselves with a variety of weaponry, starting with the always-equipped ‘Multi-tool’ which acts as both a repair and charge tool, in addition to being a pistol in a pinch. They can also find other weapons, like shotguns, LMGs, submachine guns and marksman rifles to take on the army of evil robots and blast them to bits. There’s a ton of decent enemy variety here too, from flying drones to little scuttling spider-bots with flame throwers, all the way up to a radioactive, missile spewing hulk of walking-tank that will cause a mild panic when it turns up at the wrong time.

Outside of combat, your crew will all need to work together to make sure your ship remain ship-shape. Player roles are undefined, though there are different space suits with certain perks that may suit one role over another. There is a player trait system planned, so I am curious to see how this aspect of the game evolves. Right now, you can jump in and do everything, from flying, manning the special weapons pod to firing yourself into space to scavenge and board enemy ships. All players will need to remain aware and communicate in order to succeed.

Every ship is equipped with a number of components that need to be repaired if damaged, and during a run, all sorts of things can and will go wrong. All the components on the ship are powered by your reactor, and each component has this fun, tetromino shape that needs to be connected correctly for the whole thing to work. The ship has a number of gravity deck plates on the outer hull, meaning the crew can head out the airlock to perform repairs, or collect materia to craft new resources in the ships assembler. It can be quite disorienting to be upside down while the ship is hurtling through space, but very cool nonetheless. The developers smartly introduce that same gravity plating during some on-foot combat sequences too, and it made for a mind-bending experience.

Chaos Reigns

There have been a number of stand-out moments for me during my time with Jump Space. From last ditch efforts to secure precious supplies in a cargo ship raid before enemy reinforcements jump in to the zone, to the sudden onset of an asteroid storm or solar flare at just the wrong time, the game smartly throws randomised events at you to keep you on your toes.

One mission highlight tasked us with commandeering three enormous artillery cannons to aid our resistance fleet friends in battle. Here, Jump Space almost turned into a game of Strongholds in Halo, as we fought against the machines and wrestled for control of the cannons, all while engaging in ground and space combat, while two massive space fleets duked it out overhead. If this is the sort of inventive, emergent game design the team have planned for Jump Space as we progress through its early access journey, I can’t help but feel we’re all in for a treat.

Being an early access title, there are some bugs and in-progress development issues to contend with, but nothing that should really put you off. Performance on my PC is honestly difficult to really dig into, because my rig brute forces most games into playing great anyway – even Borderlands 4. When it comes to the console version, sadly – like most Xbox review code lately – it was not available before launch, forcing me to spend all of my play time with the PC version. I did try it out on my ROG Ally X, but alas, couldn’t get a solid performance at just Low settings/30FPS at this stage.

Into the Unknown

The true beauty of Jump Space is in the chaos. It’s in the wrong or right decisions that you’ll make as you deal with whatever the game throws at you. Do you choose when landing the ship to all leave and take on a threat on the ground, and leave the ship vulnerable to attack? Does your crew attempt to board an enemy corvette during the dogfight, leaving the pilot alone and undefended as fire breaks out in the engine room?

The design decisions that Keepsake Games have made so far for Jump Space have resulted in a compelling, rock-solid foundation for what promises to be a genre-defining game. Jump Space puts fun, intrigue and slick gameplay systems first, mashing together multiple genres into something that is oozing with charm, replayability and jaw dropping wow-moments. I am hooked.

Review Code provided by Keepsake Games.