Galactic Junk League is a free-to-play Minecraft meets Elite Dangerous

There aren't a lot of space games that let you fly a giant cat outfitted with thrusters and lasers into a dogfight, but that's exactly what Galactic Junk League has sold itself on. Launching on Steam Early Access today, Galactic Junk League is a free-to-play space game where you assemble blocky ships in Minecraft/Space Engineers fashion, then take them into a PvP arena.

While flying a space cat is sure to be aesthetically appealing, it may also have tactical disadvantages. Ships take structural damage depending on where you shoot them, and whole chunks can be broken off by carving through its supporting structure with your lasers. That means you'll have to be careful while designing your cosmic pirate ship, making sure you spread out weapons, engines, and special blocks that grant abilities like speed boosts so they aren't all blown up at once.

Galactic Junk League has fairly simple flight controls, leaning heavily toward the arcade side of space games instead of the sim side. It feels like it might be targeted towards a younger audience (if the Minecraft influence wasn't enough of a giveaway in that regard) but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You move and turn with WASD, go up and down with Space and CTRL, and aim with the mouse. The physics of space flight aren't really simulated, but it does make the game easy to pick up fast.

The free-to-play aspects of Galactic Junk League seem to be the standard fare. You can spend real money to buy boosts that double the XP and Scrap (in-game currency) you get, similar to League of Legends or pretty much any other F2P game. New weapons and attachments are locked behind account leveling, so I imagine you'll have to play a bit to get the good stuff. Paying for boosts will certainly help with that, but there doesn't seem to be any way to outright buy power. Certain skins and decorative blocks are also locked behind real money, but not all of them.

You can download Galactic Junk League from its Steam page here, which doesn't specify how long it will stay in Early Access for as more content is added. Now it's only a matter of time until every match is filled with giant metal space dicks.

Tom is PC Gamer’s Associate Editor. He enjoys platformers, puzzles and puzzle-platformers. He also enjoys talking about PC games, which he now no longer does alone. Tune in every Wednesday at 1pm Pacific on Twitch.tv/pcgamer to see Tom host The PC Gamer Show.