What Is SS13?

SS13 is an atmospheric simulator turned space station turned video game dating back to the early 2000s, duct-taped togethercoded in Build Your Own Net Dream, or BYOND, a DIY game engine dating to the late nineties and filled with shitty anime games. It's 2d, with entirely sprite-based graphics, but has an incredible depth not matched by anything else; Once you get a handle on the game's aging interface and start to figure out how everything fits together, the sky's the limit. Glass shard disposal cannons, station-melting plasma floods, instant death serums and pills that make people explode. Arms trading and black marketeering, kidnapping people into your forced sex-change dungeon. Mecha-fighting tournaments, holding the station hostage with a black hole generator. Or perhaps the simpler pleasures of growing space-weed and stealing the clown's shoes. I've been playing Space Station 13 for about two and a half years now, and I'm still learning something new every time I login.

It's a lot like a mashup of FTL and Dwarf Fortress, except you're the crewman. Or maybe it's like someone made a game out of Sealab 2021, complete with the inept drunken Captain. Or maybe it's just pure, concentrated autism.