Adagio for heartstrings

Developer Blackbird Interactive

Publisher Gearbox Publishing

Format PC

Origin Canada

Release February

Our resource controller, a slice of Homeworld’s utilitarian but sleek geometry, floats near a debris field. Smaller resource collectors swarm around it, their orange beams siphoning material that will feed our research and build queues. They are guarded by interceptors, mainstay of this series’ dogfights for nearly 25 years. We hit the spacebar, listen for the thrum as the view pulls back into the sensor overlay, and survey the tactical map. Enemy icons have appeared. We scramble our interceptors. Engine trails dance against the glow of a nebula, as the unit chatter grows urgent and Paul Ruskay’s score transitions from synths to percussion.

Perhaps more than its genre-defining space combat, full 3D, intuitive UI or persistent fleets, Homeworld is remembered for its atmosphere. There is something conjured up by the hard sci-fi aesthetic, the Middle Eastern influences, the minimalist cutscenes, and the detached professionalism of your advisers, contrasted with the frantic pace of battles, that hasn’t quite been replicated anywhere else. While we know little about the campaign (see ‘Home and away’), it’s a relief to find that atmosphere recaptured so completely here.