The Fan Remake to the cult classic Space Station 13, Space Station 14 is a multiplayer roleplayingnote game about working on a space station. This isn't as easy as it sounds, as chaos will inevitably ensue due to traitors, nuclear operatives, station events, plain incompetence and deliberate, spontaneous malice.
The game is divided into rounds around two hours long. At the start of a round, the players are placed in the station in their selected jobs' locations. A lucky few players are selected to be "antagonists": their job is to cause conflict to liven up the round by following their set objectives, such as stealing the Nuclear Authentication Disk for the Syndicate or assassinating select crew members. Those who are not selected for this role will work as their selected job, whether that be engineer, janitor, doctor, department head, or security officer. As the antagonists do their job, chaos inevitably ensues, at which point someone will think to call the emergency shuttle. After the shuttle arrives, docks, takes off, and gets to Central Command, the round will end.
Space Station 14 is, like its predecessor, open source. Unlike its predecessor, however, there is currently not a large number of alternate codebases, and the "original" codebase is well-defined. The number of contributions to Space Station 14's codebase is massive, with a major change about every week. The main reason for this is the game's streamlined codebase that makes contributing easy, and, of course, the fact that it's not running off of a 40-year-old game engine.
The game can be played for free on Steam or for free at the game's website here
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Space Station 14 contains examples of:
- Abandoned Area: Many of the wrecks the salvage crew can pull in with their magnet are this, as are the sprawling abandoned complexes found at expedition sites.
- Alien Blood: Various player species have various types of blood. Arachnids bleed blue, the Plant Person Diona bleed water, and the humanoid slimes bleed, well, slime.
- Alien Kudzu: Kudzu. Unlike its real life counterpart, the game's kudzu can survive the vacuum of space and grow faster than it can be destroyed without a lot of manpower. It can sometimes be made by putting Mutagenic Goo on a botany plant.
- Apes in Space: Monkeys are often created via hydrating Monkey Cubes for meat or for uplifting.
- Asteroid Miners: Salvage Technicians are this when they're not picking through the latest Abandoned Area the salvage magnet dragged in.
- Auto-Doc: The MediBot can be found around medical asking random people to stay still so they can be injected with medicine.
- Badass Bystander: It's not uncommon for a passenger or janitor to grab a fallen security officer's baton, charge at the local troop of armed nuclear terrorists, and win the fight.
- Badass Normal: As is stated above, a given crew member's rank and fighting skill are not correlated in any way.
- Boarding Party: Syndicate Nuclear Operatives play this, using their shuttle or jetpacks to board the station with the objective of stealing the Nuclear Authentication Disk and detonating a nuke.
- Boxing Kangaroo: Some maps have boxing rings, and some boxing rings are the home of Willow the Boxing Kangaroo, who, as the name implies, has boxing gloves.
- The Bridge: Most stations have a "bridge" area, containing dozens of computers (including the Comms Console), emergency equipment, and the Captain's room.
- Butt-Monkey: The Clown. As the Clown often interprets their job as "terrorize the crew in non-violent ways" the crew often snatch at any reason to do the same thing right back.
- Passengers are often this as well, as they are at the very bottom of the command structure and are probably up to no good either way so why not steal their bag?
- Clownification: Cluwnes are capable of doing this to others. So are admins.
- Combat Medic: The Nuclear Operatives have one of these. They get just as many guns as everyone else, plus a medicine kit containing a chemical injector and some omnizine.
- Dangerous Workplace: Every workplace in the game will invariably burst into metaphorical flames as the power grid, the air, the crew, and the rest of the station all find themselves in a larger number of shattered pieces than they started out as.
- Deadly Doctor: Chemist Traitors will likely be this if they choose to exercise their Chemistry privileges.
- The Nuclear Operatives' Combat Medic will often use their chemical injector to administer into their enemies dangerous amounts of medicine. Or, y'know, poison.
- Determined Doctor: Some Medical workers take their jobs extremely seriously.
- Doctor's Disgraceful Demotion: The Chief Medical Officer will often do this to chemists who get silly ideas about what's possible.
- Dr. Feelgood: Since Space Drugs can easily be made by mixing three common chemicals together, many chemists will try this.
- Drop Ship: The Salvage crew has a Salvage Shuttle which can land on planets at expedition sites. Regrettably, the Salvage Shuttle lacks any special armaments or other features.
- Enemy Mime: Mimes who turn out to be Traitors will often use their mime powers, their terrifying speechlessness, and their surprising combat ability to dominate the competition.
- Escape Pod: There are actual escape pods around the station that play this straight, as well as the Emergency Shuttle that will arrive at the station at request to ferry the crew to Central Command.
- Everyone Hates Mimes: Mimes, being the silent cousins of Clowns, are often the Butt-Monkey of the station.
- Fan Remake: Much like the countless failed remake attempts of Space Station 13, Space Station 14 was made by a subset of fans of the game. As was Space Station 13, in a way.
- FTL Travel Sickness: Less "sickness" and more "getting knocked off your feet by the acceleration". Buckle up!
- Funny Robot: Spectators who play as Personal AIs will often invoke this because it's funny.
- Instant Sedation: Chloral Hydrate (basically Chloroform) will instantly put a target to sleep with a high enough dose. The Syndicate also has a chemical that can do this, but it may be Justified as being advanced technology.
- Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: Traitor Janitors can be this, although most of them go with more orthodox ways to achieve their objectives.
- Killed Off for Real: Gibbing will prevent people from being revived via defibrillators or cloning, as will any other method of either destroying their body or dealing enough damage to them that none of the reviving mechanics work.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Incredibly widespread. Whenever a player character receives enough brute damage, they explode into a mess of gore and organs. This is one of the few ways to prevent people from getting revived.
- Magical Defibrillator: Defibrillators can bring people back from the dead, as long as their body is repaired enough.
- Make Sure He's Dead: There's no such thing as an instant kill in this game, so when an enemy is downed they will often be filled with bullets until they register as a corpse to examination.
- Meat Moss: Meat Anomalies can create a static form of this, and if the anomaly is left unchecked it can create a combination of this and Alien Kudzu.
- Monster Clown: Cluwnes are cursed versions of their funnier brethren, mainly created when someone pisses off an admin.
- N+1 Sequel Title: Space Station 14 is the sequel to the game Space Station 13, which was itself named after the 13 Is Unlucky trope.
- Older Than They Look: The sprite for the player characters will look the same whether they're 20 or 120.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Since there are currently only a couple disciplines, most scientists are this.
- Plant Person: Diona play this straight. They're made out of wood, they bleed water, and they are healed by fertilizer. They might be Plant Aliens, although the game doesn't have much in the way of plot.
- Police Are Useless: The Security department is sometimes less useful than many would like them to be, which can sometimes force the crew to take matters into their own hands.
- Rat King: The Rat King minor antagonist, who can appear midround to cause chaos by summoning rat servants and releasing clouds of harmful miasma.
- The Shrink: The map-specific Psychologist role is this trope, but in low-roleplay enviroments they're often just glorified medical doctors since nobody really wants to roleplay insanity.
- Space Is an Ocean: Space Station 14 has it all: a captain, a bridge, two dimensional gameplay, friction, and ion storms.
- Space Station: The game takes place on one, of course.
- Suddenly Speaking: If Mimes break their vow of silence, they will play this trope. They'll also get murdered by the waves of crew who hate mimes who do this.
- Universal Poison: All toxins deal Poison damage, and all Poison damage can be healed with Dylovene.
- Uplifted Animal: Cognizine is a rare chemical that can invoke this. Sometimes animals will become sentient as a random event. Sentient animals become Ghost Roles that can be taken by anyone spectating the game.
- Virtual Sidekick: Personal AIs (abbreviated as pAIs) are spectator-controlled pocket-sized artificial intelligences who can tell witty jokes, make extremely obvious observations, and play music.
- You Dirty Rat!: While mice are harmless pests that will do nothing worse than eat the chemist's pills, the rats summoned by the Rat King are hostile and have led to the deaths of many a hapless crew member.
- Your Mime Makes It Real: Mimes have the power create invisible walls by "brushing up" to them, unless they break their Vow of Silence.
