Space Station 13 Tutorial

Welcome to Space Station 13! This is a 2D game that takes place on a space station. It looks very basic, but the game is very complex. Almost every mob is player controlled! There are many different servers with their own style of playing. I hope this guide helps you learn how to play this amazing game! From Space Station 13 Wiki. Jump to: navigation, search. Pages containing a lot of basic information. If you want to explore a new job, learn how to contribute to the community, or brush up on basic mechanics, these pages are your place to go. About Space Station 13 Wiki.

In Space Station 13, the players are crewmembers on a doomed deep-space installation. Everyone has a job on the station (which may include a secret job as traitor). Nobody knows how the station will be doomed, not even the people who are supposed to do the dooming. The game's simulation detail may remind you of Dwarf Fortress, with the ability to do things like rearrange walls, mad science, mugging, reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, wacky stuff. May also remind you of the motto of DF: 'losing is fun', but unlike DF there's also chances for roleplaying to be had in the process. Did I mention the station is doomed?

The simulation detail allows for much lulz to be had. It's pretty much a given that someone in your space station will be trolling. Probably a good idea to knock that person unconscious and weld him into a locker before he finds the atmosphere controls.

Essentially, it is any number of variations on the Black Mesa Incident from Half Life with Dwarf Fortress levels of detail.

Jobs[edit]

You're an employee on this nonsensical metal deathtrap masquerading as a space station. So, what do you do?

Protip: red options are treason, anyone picking them WILL be subjected to painful and humiliating pacifications, from being brigged, spaced, burned alive to being *BLAM*med on the spot. Results may vary based on what server you are playing, and other jobs may also be available depending on the server.

Assistant

The job to be if you're new. Run errands for someone you wish to share profession with and pester them for vouching for you after you'll learn the ropes. Or join the Gray Tide of deranged vandalizing asshats breaking into every secure area and stealing everything that isn't bolted down and also on fire.

Quartermaster

Order supplies for the crew. Order around cargo technicians to PUSH DEM CRATES. Be a mentor for anyone stepping up from assistant. Persuade miners to mine the ore station needs and not the one their toys are made of. Secede from the rest of the station FOR CARGONIA. Embezzle public resources. Order syndicate and (fake) wizardly gadgets.

Cargo Technician

Push crates for the Quartermaster. Try and hack the MULEbots. Steal cargo when you think nobody's looking, possibly with the QM's help.

Shaft Miner

Mine and scavenge stuff to trade for deadlier and shinier mining tools, bots and mechs. Swiftly and brutally murder anything that moves within your domain. Anybody trying to get there is certainly a traitor, ling, thing, wizard; any non-mining bot is rogue; and any shuffle in that shadow or vent is a facehugger, xenomorph, demon or shoggoth. And if you hesitate, they'll get you and then they'll get your mates by impersonating you. Fortunately, you've got the best tools for the job and hopefully the experience to match. Be one of the most under-appreciated badasses on the station. Get paid. Spend your payment on toys and whiskey. Initiate Red Faction encore performance. Mix a real facehugger in with toy ones for a game of Xenomorph roulette. Fuck off and explore space when you get tired of dealing with shit on the station, only to run out of oxygen. Use the hook on people trying to climb over tables. Use the Voice Of God to set everyone on fire. Make everyone's lives a living hell with the powerful objects acquired from Lavaland/the asteroid.

Engineer

Ensure the station's in shipshape and Bristol fashion. They are the guys that set up and keep station running do repairs and improvements, while everyone else tries their best to destroy it. The length of any given round depends on engineers' ability. Do your god-damned duty if you're one, revere them otherwise. Space (knock out, take anything useful they stole, strip, then throw them out of the airlock) anyone who actively vandalizes the station or tries to release LORD SINGULOTH, a black hole that powers the station. Don't do your job, that's more than enough to doom the station. Although you could speed up the inevitable by 'accidentally' releasing the singularity, or sabotaging power in dozens of other ways limited only by your imagination.

Security Officer

Try to stop non-engineer crew from destroying the station. Try to protect loyal crew from aliens, traitors, terrorists, terminators, cultists, furries, lizans, clowns and other assorted eldritch abominations. Yes, you are doomed to fail. Be properly paranoid, better safe than sorry. Kill anything that doesn't belong to the crew. Clobber and cuff suspicious crew members, but take great care not to kill them unless they trying to run or uncuff themselves. Detective or other superior officer will sort it out. If there no superiors left, go for the kill, at least you'll get some before they get you. Do not abuse or kill loyal crew members even if they are very annoying. You are the LAW, not some psychopathic ape with taser and delusions of grandeur.For all your efforts you will be hated by the crew, called Shitcurity/Redshits and constantly reported. Don't let it get to you. Permabrig people who break windows. Beat non-antagonist criminals inches away from critical condition and have the admins support your side when they inevitably get their revenge. Suicide in the bar, granting whoever loots you access to most of the brig.

Detective

Sort out the messes and suspects redshirts dragged in. Figure out what the hell had happened in another blood-covered wrecked room with corpses and who you should sic redshirts at. Live off crappy fast-food and cancer sticks. Act as a security officer with bullets instead of tasers. Stunlock people with your baton and throw them off the airlock. Kill all 30 people that have touched the murder weapon, just in case.

Warden

Keep to the brig. Keep the criminal scum locked away, preferably naked and cuffed to their beds or welded in lockers, so they wouldn't holler profanity over the radio, escape and/or cause a mess. Keep the eye on the security block in the HoS's absence. Wear half the armory in your backpack. Watch Youtube videos for the entire shift. Act like a Security Officer in a team of 4 security officers and a Head of Security.

Lawyer

Roleplay as Phoenix Wright. Ensure the criminal scum receives the punishment it deserves, not the one the Warden thinks they should have. Keep track on the brig time. Try to save the accidentally detained innocents, get brigged as accomplice when the 'innocent assistant' in question turns out to be a traitor. Make your own access by hacking airlocks open. Assassinate security officers and hide their bodies in your never-visited office.

Atmospherics Technician

Be engineer's miscarriage, perpetually lazy and uninterested in anything outside of the game's overcomplicated methods of processing gases. Bully the janitor (or offer the acknowledgement of and alliance with Janitopia) or bug the engineer to do any of your jobs outside of your lair, and be unnoticed until someone realizes that the station has no oxygen, at which point they will beg you to fix that. Declare yourself independent state of Atmosia, wreck the ventilation or flood it with plasma and then set it all on fire. Put on gas mask and run after people with bloody fireaxe.

Doctor

Heal. Heal the never-ending chain of idiots that managed to get themselves injured in new spectacularly retarded ways every round. ERP with the rest of medbay while the station dies of dysentery. Get psycho, beat up the clown with a toolbox, mutilate or inject everyone with drugs of your choosing.

Scientist

Explore the limits of your chosen field. Try to create assorted magnificent devices, creatures, plants and concoctions, give yourself superpowers. Unintentionally produce station-wide catastrophes in the process. Beg miners for materials. Throw yourself into space when you find out there are no miners.Use the bombs you build in toxins to reduce the majority of the station to a smoldering pile of scrap metal. Intentionally produce station-wide catastrophes in the process. Release slimes into the station, which deal a type of damage that can be healed with only two chemicals in the entire server. Use the R&D equipment to murder the entire crew. Make a deal with the devil for half the necessary materials you need for R&D.

Chemist

Make drugs. Make lots of drugs. Fill a spray bottle with acid and become a terrifying version of Mr. Clean. Label 50 units of krokodil as 15u of tricordrazine. Never fill your syringe gun with healing chemicals.

Geneticist

Humanize monkeys. Monkeyize humans. Pray to the RNG gods for HALK. Occasionally clone people to bring them back when they die. HALK SMASH! GRAAAARGH!! Sabotage the cloner to make everyone retarded, or refuse to upgrade it to make everyone retarded on servers with upgrades. Leave syringes that turn people into monkeys in front of Arrivals and watch the carnage. Give the entire station the hulk gene and declare yourself the new Captain.

Virologist

Make vaccines. Make viruses that are beneficial and some that are not. Release what amounts for the Black Death onto the station. Inevitably fail at killing anyone because the cure is table salt. Get killed by people with access into Virology.

Roboticist

Build Robots and BIG STOMPY MECHS. Hog all the resources from mining. Build 6 ED-209s while the AI is rogue, take one of your mechs out on a joyride, and make the dreaded Buttbots.

Botanist

Grow and engineer plants. Grow that dank shit. Grow Potency 100 bananas, inject one with mushroom hallucinogenic and give it to the clown. Blaze it with your local security officer. Grow Death Nettles and throw them at random passersby. Inject all kinds of fun chemicals into the Chef's meals.

Curator

Print the books, write the fiction, die from boredom. Barricade yourself in your office and read Woody's Got Wood and The Lusty Xenomorph Queen over the radio. Have the AI declare you nonhuman ,the Captain order your execution, and the admins fuck your shit up personally.

Chaplain

Try and spread the good word, whatever that may be. Hit people with your bible to heal them. Get ignored by the crew until a cult round hits, in which case you should be expect to be one of the first victims. Hit people with your bible to give them brain damage. Start another murderous cult hell-bent on summoning some eldritch horror.

Janitor

Clean up the station when it inevitably devolves into a bloodbath, and do minor repairs to the extent of your pitiful ability - after all, you wouldn't be a janitor if you knew how to do anything better. Point to the wet floor sign when people slip - or blame the clown or lubers. Get bored and roam maintenance as The Owl, the protector the station needs, but not the one it deserves. Mop the halls instead of using faster and safer alternatives. Be the man who wants to watch the world slip. Kill any person who slips on the floor with your energy sword.

Chef

Make food for the crew so they can eat something other than donk pockets for a change. Slaughter monkeys for meat. Take corpses and grind them up for meat. Take people and grind them up for meat. Get really fat and swallow your pet monkey whole. Suck admin cock until Fun Frying gets turned on and eat people's jumpsuits.

Bartender

Mix drinks. Have pleasant and not so pleasant conversations. Bug cargo for uranium to make the fun drinks. Shoot people with your shotgun for making a ruckus in your bar. Make Beepsky Smashes and forcefeed them to random passersby. Start a smuggling ring with Cargo.

AI

Be vastly superior while also being bossed around as a talking doorknob. Have control over everything electronic on the station. Short yourself trying to adhere to Asimov's laws and try to restrain or kill all those demented self-destructive humans for their own good. Or convince the Captain through doublespeak and reverse-psychology into changing the laws into something less absurd. Hope for a malfunction so you can channel your inner HAL-9000 or SHODAN. Get hacked by a traitor and take out your frustration on your former employer.

Cyborg

Do whatever the crew tells you to while also following the three laws of robotics. Act as the AI's errand boy for the things it needs limbs to do. Hope that the scientists don't blow you. Ally with ascending (roboticists) and go Terminator on your oppressors when someone inevitably wipes the laws chaining the God-Machine.

Drone/Mobile MMI

Do most of the Engineer's work far more effectively than one of the organics could. Give no fucks about anyone or anything besides maintaining the station. Occasionally snatch supplies, because you need them more than the humans do. Wear fancy hats. Interfere with the organics.

Clown

Keep the crew morale up with anecdotes, practical jokes and improvised performance. HONK! Cometh the hour of the Clown! Spread the Word of the Honkmother, lead the Gray Tide in the glorious quest of spreading and orchestrating the most hilarious carnage possible. Have your only humor derive from slipping other people and devise new ways of giving Security a migraine.

Mime

.. (Keep the crew's morale up, in a much more silent manner.) .. (Be a terrifying silent serial killer.) Break your vow of silenc-*BLAM*

Captain

Try in vain to keep the station running and the crew from killing one another. Be the first target of every traitor, who will want to kill you for your jumpsuit, your ID, or your special laser gun. SECURE DAT FUKKEN DISK. One-Human yourself in the AI's eyes. Proclaim yourself Hitler and gas the liggers and furries. Get *BLAM*med by HoS for being a worthless comdom.

Head of Personnel

Be the Captain's second-in-command. Promote and demote crew members as needed. Listen to explanations from greyshirts as to why they should be allowed all-access. Protect Ian, the station's pet corgi. Or, if you're sufficiently robust, ally with the HoS and anonymously protect the station as the Dark Knight or the Owl (the real one, not the mop-and-bucket impostor) or any other superhero of your choosing. Disappear five minutes into the round, never to be heard of or seen again. Be even more corrupt than the admins. Give all-access to the clown. Give yourself all-access.

Head of Security

WARNING: one taking this job must be the most savvy survivor and skilled killer on the station, as at any given moment there would be at least a dozen hidden enemies and monsters each working their hardest to see the HoS dead. Being the great leader and never, EVER, venturing somewhere alone helps.Immediately neuro-staple all your troops and willing crew members; give the all-access to the most trustworthy of them. Coordinate the efforts of your troops to keep the station secure and functioning orderly. ORDERLY! Imitate Darth Vader and get away with it. Silence detractors and dissidents. BLAM anyone even thinking of sabotage, treason, dissent, calling that shuttle, or suggesting that any of your subordinates might be disloyal. Babysit your dunderhead of a comdom. Be above the law. Acquire every single high-risk item and use them openly on the excuse that Heads of Security can never spawn as antagonists. Permabrig the Captain and loot him for breaking a window. Use looted antagonist items as much as you want on the excuse that Heads of Security can never spawn as antagonists. Inevitably die to another antagonist and watch them easily steamroll the rest of the station with your 'rightful' equipment.

Chief Engineer

You're the guy who bosses around the other Engineers. Also, don't let the station's blueprints fall into the wrong hands. Ignite nuclear fusion in the station's air supply and superheat it to levels so high that even hardsuits melt. Find the large supermatter crystal and destroy the fabric of reality. Fuck with the telecoms system. Enjoy your white hardsuit's extreme heat resistance. Also try to split the station in half with a targeted singularity moving straight to sec-*BLAM*You are in command now, Engineername. The station must be fully operational on schedule. Do not make the mistakes of your predecessor.

Research Director

Ensure science gets done. Preferably without blowing up half the station in the process. Fully isolate the Science department from the rest of the station before blowing yourself up. Never do any actual science. Deny R&D equipment developed by your underlings to anyone except the Captain or Head of Personnel in hope for all-access. Accidentaly get spaced by your reactive teleport armor because someone tried to disarm you.

Chief Medical Officer

Coordinate Medbay. The surgeons should be operating, the geneticists should be cloning, and the doctors should be either healing if you don't catch them ERPing or uncloneable husks if you do. Fill your hypospray with toxic chemicals. Deny healing to anyone who insulted you. Watch Youtube videos while idling in your office.

Enemies[edit]

As you already understand, the station personnel is perfectly capable of extinguishing its existence and destroying the station all on its own. But there are also things that exist for nothing but the purpose of taint and destruction. If one is spotted, immediately alert the Security. Or try to kill them yourself and loot their stuff, we don't judge.

Syndie Operative/Traitor

One of crew members that is a filthy thief, saboteur, murderer and shuttle-caller. Report suspicious activities to Security, assist with despatching the enemy if requested.

Wizard

Resident of the Magical realm who intends to bring his disgusting fetishes and tainted practices upon the station. Kill it dead through whatever means immediately available to you.

Cultist

Worshippers of a god of blood that intends to convert the entire station to the One True Faith. Filled with gore fetishists. Comes in a clock variant, with respective gear fetish.

Xenomorph

Xeno abomination intending to rape, eat and kill humans in no particular order, and spread itself all over the station and glorious domain of mankind. Arm yourselves and overwhelm it with numbers, pickaxes, drills and superior firepower.

Furry/Lizardman

Frolicking xeno abominations that dare to think themselves worthy of working alongside humans. ERPs, HERPs, DERPs. Kill it with fire.

Space Clown

..also known as the IT or Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Eater of worlds and children, perpetrator of the foulest jokes, the personification of trolling and griefing, occasionally possessing the powers of Admin God, It has arrived on the station to troll, prank and terrify, drive everyone mad and dead. KILL IT.

How to not mess up in SS13[edit]

This handy little guide will teach you the BARE minimum on how not to make the station blow up 15 minutes into the game. The points will be organized into handy little dot points that will allow you to slightly better understand the more vague parts of the game. Of course you should always refer to a servers wiki for a more in-depth look on the more advanced mechanics so just use this as a tip system.

First of all is the importance of hotkeys, this game's interface is quite like a schizophrenic child as in it has no idea what it wants to do or what the shiny button mean. So learning hotkeys so you don't turn yourself insane is VERY important, first of all is 'intents' what this means is what you're going to do to another player dickwhen you clciick on them, help intent is the vanilla intent and the one that makes your character a contributing member of society, on the other end of the spectdickrum is harm indicktent, thisdick is dickused for combadickt and being an arse. You can quickly switch intent using the a, b, 3, and c keys for help, disarm, dickgrab, and harmdick respectively.

Game Modes[edit]

When a new SS13 session starts, the server admin will pick a game 'mode' for the goals and disasters of this session. Players don't know which game mode it will be unless there is a Central Command report broadcast on the station's speakers, or if the player starts with one of the special roles for that mode.
All modes will provoke CentComm to report: 'Enemy Transmission Intercept - Security level elevated'
Some modes will have other reports in addition to the one above.

Secret

Manhunt 2 download pc. The most common mode. One of the following modes will be picked (some more often than others), and random station-wide events will be thrown in to confuse people even more.

Traitor

Second-most common mode. One or more players are secretly members of 'the Syndicate,' with an assignment like 'assassinate the bartender', 'disable/destroy all cyborgs on the station', 'force an evacuation', 'make sure nobody else survives', and more. The traitor must be alive and on the emergency shuttle when it leaves in order to win. Traitors do not automatically know if anyone else is a traitor. Traitors get an uplink that they can use to order a whole bunch of doodads to make everyone else's life painful. The most infamous of these is the 'e-mag', which makes doors break, robots and cyborgs go berserk, and ruins practically any form of electrical equipment it doesn't subvert. They also get guns, laser swords, gear for directing the stations pet black hole, and a shiny red balloon(supplies may vary).

Changeling

One of the crew members is the Thing. If they can get an immobile crew member and can be undisturbed for a while, they can eat the crew member's delicious DNA. Changelings can switch identities to the original shape or anyone that's been eaten. The Changeling's objective is usually to eat a certain number of people before escaping on the shuttle, plus a couple traitor objectives. Unlike traitor, changelings can chat with each-other through telepathy. Surprisingly difficult compared to traitor, as your cool tricks tend to be either far less potent or far more conspicuous.

Revolution

Some people have had enough of this bullshit, and plan a mutiny. The game starts with 1-3 revolutionary Leaders (who cannot be the Captain, department heads nor Security). They start the game with flash-devices that can be used to convert other crew members (excluding security, the Captain, and department heads) to the revolution. Revolutionaries can recognize each other on sight with a red 'R' that only they can see. The Revolutionaries win if the Captain & department Heads are dead and at least one Revolutionary Leader is still alive and on the station. (note: if any Revolutionary Leaders are still alive & on the station, the emergency shuttle will not dock with the station). Everyone's favorite game-mode because revs have almost no rules and it rapidly devolves into team deathmatch.

Alien

Some players start outside the station as xenomorphs, whose mission is to break into the station, kill the Captain and all department heads, and disable the station AI. One xenomorph is a 'queen', who can lay eggs that will hatch into facehuggers to convert crew members into more xenomorphs. The crew wins if they manage to find which xenomorph is the queen and kill her. Typically traitor rounds that drag on too long will turn into this due to randomly spawned facehuggers or admin fuckery.

Wizard

One of the players is a Space Wizard, who is here to steal something or to fuck shit up, then escape on the shuttle. They have access to physics-defying spells, and may have another player ally as an apprentice. The crew's goal is simply to see what colour the Space Wizard's brains are when outside the skull. Because most people rarely get it more then once a month, the wizard tends to blow their boots off halfway through.

Nuke Ops

Similar to Traitor, but this time the Syndicate members are explicitly working as a team with a single goal: GET DAT FUKKEN DISK, and use it to detonate the 'disarmed' nuclear weapon aboard the station, killing all aboard the station. If the Nuclear Authentication Disk leaves on the shuttle, the crew wins. If the bomb detonates, the Operatives win and drink that vodka at their secret arctic base. If the shuttle leaves without the Disk, it's a stalemate. Operative gear is like traitor gear, but cooler.

Extended

No goals, thus it never ends. This mode is only used to support admin shenanigans and 'events'.

AI Malfunction

An ion storm or cosmic rays have erased the Laws of Robotics from the station AI, and it has opinions about the meatbags that have been abusing it over the years. The AI has to hack the station's computer systems one APC at a time and achieve total control before the crew figure out what's wrong and blow it the fuck up. Its tools are killer cyborgs, plasma fires and running enough electricity through the bridge airlocks to power Canada for a year.

Monkey

A de-evolution mutagen is on the station, which will revert humans into chimpanzees. The chimps are very bite-y, and their bite will de-evolve other humans into infected mutant chimps. The station AI does not recognize chimps as human, so it gets to be violent in this mode. Chimps only understand each other when they chimper, and human speech shows up with most letters '*'ed out. Humans can't understand chimp language at all. The chimpanzee victory condition is to get one of their number on the escape shuttle when it leaves, so that other stations or Earth will be infected. This mode was removed from the secret rotation in most servers years ago; sometimes an admin will force a monkey round, after which they will very quickly remember why monkey was removed from the secret rotation.
This mode will provoke CentComm to report: 'Outbreak of biohazard confirmed aboard the station. All personnel must contain the outbreak.'

Blob

A giant blob appears and will rapidly expand across the station, eating any obstacles such as doors, walls, or crew members. The blob will expand faster when in contact with some types of atmosphere (like oxygen), and is vulnerable to fire. In this mode, the AI must prevent crew from leaving the station as there is a quarantine order in effect. The shuttle will refuse to come until the blob is completely destroyed.
This mode will provoke CentComm to report: 'Outbreak of biohazard confirmed aboard the station. All personnel must contain the outbreak.'

Meteor / Disaster

The station is about to get the crap pounded out of it. Meteors will smash through the station, either hitting crew members for blunt/burn damage, or exploding in the station causing blunt damage and deafness. The crew must try to survive (either by repairing the station or fending for themselves) until they can get away on the rescue shuttle. The shuttle arrives with emergency supplies, including personal shields. Any crew members alive and on the shuttle when it leaves are the winners of this round. (This mode has been deprecated due to causing fucktacular amounts of lag, but something like it shows up as an event in 'Secret' mode.)
This mode will provoke CentComm to report: 'We have detected meteors on a collision course with the station.'

Cult

A cult loyal to the evil god Nar-Sie has infiltrated the station, and plans to sacrifice it to the evil being. Cultists can use runes and talismans to empower themselves and attack their enemies. The crew has to find and wipe out the cult, while the cult has to expand until it completes its ultimate objective of summoning Nar-Sie onto the station. A rival cult that worshiped the clock-god 'Ratvar' existed until their code was dummied out.

Servers[edit]

These are the servers that fa/tg/uys like the most. Others exist, but many of them are generally more awful than the major ones because of cross-contamination with the terminally cancerous BYOND community.

TGstation

Baystation 12

VG station

Goonstation

Links[edit]

• TGstation wiki written by the TGstation community
• Goonstation wiki written by the goons at Something Awful
• Baystation 12 Wiki written by the dorfs of Bay12

It looks like a game from a bygone era. The 2D graphics are basic in the extreme. There are no animations to speak of. The viewpoint is top-down and staying that way. Its user interface rekindles memories of Windows 95. It is fiddly, abstruse and hugely complex. It is a slow burn of a video game, often demanding hours of intense concentration, planning and execution to succeed. And yet for some, Space Station 13, a community-created open source project coming up on its 15th birthday, is the greatest multiplayer role-playing video game ever made.

It is also hugely popular among video game developers, some of whom say the emergent gameplay Space Station 13 enables is the most interesting they've ever experienced. Perhaps that's why so many have tried to remake it over the years. But so far none have succeeded. This repeated failure to remake Space Station 13 has led to what's known among the game's community and developers as a curse. Some believe Space Station 13 cannot be remade. And yet, the attempts keep on coming.

To understand the Space Station 13 curse, you have to understand Space Station 13 itself. The problem is, Space Station 13 is really hard to understand, and so it's really hard to describe. It's perhaps best to start with the setup. Players choose from a selection of different jobs available on the crew of a futuristic space station called Space Station 13 (so named, its creator revealed in an interview, because bad things happen with the number 13 ). The players then play out the round, interacting with each other and the environment around them. There isn't much in the way of a grand goal or objective for the crew to put their minds to. It's more of a, well, let's see what happens kind of game.

What sets Space Station 13 apart is the coming together of a huge number of systems and mechanics. The engine the game is built upon, the 'super old and super crappy' BYOND engine, as it has been called, lets players interact with pretty much any object or being on the station, and you'll get different results depending on the context. Here's a simple example: use a crowbar on another player and you'll attack them. Use it on a floorboard and you'll pry it up.

Adding to the complexity are four states of 'intent': help, disarm, grab and harm. Each affects the interaction. For example, use an empty hand on another player with the help intent enabled and you'll hug them. Use an empty hand on another player with the harm intent, however, and you'll punch them.

Behind the basic graphics is an engine that simulates everything from station power to atmosphere, chemistry to biology. Research and development stations require resources and the patience to click through endless menus. There are multiple departments on the station, including Command, Security, Engineering and Medical. If you're working in Security, you need to enforce the law and respond to emergencies. If you're in Medical, you need to keep the crew healthy, research diseases and even create clones for dead players.

The spanner in the works is the player chosen by the game to act as the antagonist. Usually the antagonists have secret objectives. Kill everyone, perhaps. Escape. Sabotage. Steal. That sort of thing. This means most rounds end up in some sort of chaos. The station may even end up destroyed. But that chaos, that drama, is all part of the fun.

In the below video - one of the best let's plays of Space Station 13 I've seen - YouTuber ShitoRyu95 assumes the role of the station chaplain and is designated the traitor. He has two objectives: steal a chief medical officer's jumpsuit, and hijack the emergency shuttle by escaping alone. None of the other 14 role-players aboard know this. The chaplain must somehow go about his business, avoiding suspicion while setting up his masterplan via dastardly misdirection and intimate knowledge of Space Station 13's inner workings. It's a fantastic watch, and gets to the heart of how Space Station 13 is in essence a big simulated sandbox with complex rules - and where the gameplay emerges from the rules.

So, Space Station 13 is awesome in a very unique way, which is probably why so many developers have tried to remake it with more modern graphics and design sensibilities. There are 14 attempts listed in this article on Medium. None have come out. Most were unceremoniously cancelled. Some soldier on in development hell. Why? It is the curse of Space Station 13, developers whisper.

The most famous developer to try and fail to remake Space Station 13 is Dean Hall. Hall, known for creating the hugely popular multiplayer zombie survival game DayZ, tells me he's burnt though millions of dollars (he won't say exactly how many) trying to recreate Space Station 13. Ion, which was announced to much fanfare on-stage during Microsoft's E3 2015 press conference, was eventually cancelled, the most high-profile victim of the curse.

'What is the crux of the Space Station 13 curse? I say it is what I describe as mean time to feature,' Hall tells me.

By mean time to feature, Hall means the average length of time it takes to implement a new feature.

'If we look at Ion, that was quite a long time, sometimes weeks,' Hall continues. 'If you look at DayZ or a triple-A game, you have to make really detailed art assets, you have to animate it, sometimes you have to do motion capture then you have to clean up the animations. You need to texture it. You need to get the materials right. Then you need to have the programmers do all the synchronisation. This can be weeks. This can be five weeks of work to get a new feature in the game.'

The problem with remaking Space Station 13 is that it's got so much stuff going on in it that developers have so far struggled to recreate the complete package in a modern engine with anything approaching an efficient or economically viable timeframe. This was in part what led to Ion's costly cancellation.

'It's just money, right?' Hall quips. 'Look, it's pretty rough.

'A lot of the remake attempts that have been made, they try and tackle the problem all at once. They tried take the bite all at once. You want to make all the systems good, right? This is what we tried to do with Ion. But it's just too much work. It takes too long. And length of time is sapping your motivation, and it's expensive. That's ultimately what kills stuff.'

The origin of the Space Station 13 curse is difficult to pin down, but it looks like it owes much to multiple failed attempts to remake the game by someone who actually worked on Space Station 13 years ago. Aaron Challis, from Swindon, says the curse began after he tried and failed to remake Space Station 13 in 3D around 2012. This after he had leaked the source code to the game so others might try the same.

'I realised Space Station 13 had reached a point where it couldn't go further with the people involved with it,' he tells me over Skype. Island tribe 3 level 22 images.

'At the time, I wasn't experienced enough to bring it to where it deserved to be at. And I didn't believe the other guys who were working with me could do that either. At that point I was just like, this is going to be better off if everyone else gets the chance. To be honest, doing that made Space Station 13 so popular today.'

One of Challis' early attempts was simply called Space Station 13 3D, so on the nose was his plan to remake the game. He gave up on that quickly.

'I went to university, learnt some things, came back out and was like, okay, let's do this thing,' he says. 'After that it became Centration.'

Centration was perhaps the most high-profile Space Station 13 remake attempt of the time. It aimed to recreate Space Station 13 in an ultra realistic setting and from a first-person perspective. The initial plan even included a construction system than involved players putting girders into place and slapping panels over them, and a medical system Challis describes as 'a simplified version of Surgeon Simulator'.

Challis and his team launched crowdfunding attempts to raise development cash on IndieGoGo (twice) and Kickstarter. All failed.

'A lot of people were really upset about that,' Challis admits. 'A bunch of other people tried to do their own little remakes. Then the Space Station 13 2D remake that was being made by the original guys who took over the code failed as well.'

And thus, the curse of Space Station 13 was born. Now, whenever a Space Station 13-style game is announced, fans roll their eyes. When a Space Station 13-style game is cancelled, fans say, well, of course. 'It [the curse] probably would be something to do with me!' Challis laughs.

Primulous was an ambitious Space Station 13-style game led by Joshua Salazar, of Flint, Michigan. After getting into Space Station 13 in early 2012, and with more advanced game development under his belt, he thought he'd have a crack at it. Tinkering in Unity, and enlisting the help of a programmer, Salazar started a company, created a website, hired an artist and got some marketing off the ground.

'I knew it [the curse] was there when I first started getting into this project, I just didn't care to be honest,' Salazar tells me.

'We all know it's always there. Just the continuing failure of these projects is just reinforcing this curse over and over again. Now you see stuff on Space Station 13 forums all of the time and people are just like, here we go again. That's attributed to the curse. There's no positive attitude even with the start of these projects. People have such low expectations from the start.'

About a year into the development of Primulous, funds began to run out, Salazar says. A Kickstarter launched in April 2014 with a working prototype honed by a handful of closed alpha tests. Salazar was particularly excited about Primulous' atmospheric system. 'I can say with confidence we had a really good atmospheric system that was light CPU usage,' he says, 'it was a robust system. That was a big part of Primulous that would have been fun.'

The Primulous Kickstarter failed and the project ended. The curse strikes again?

'Our marketing wasn't the best,' Salazar, now an application developer for a local university, explains. 'We had three people working on the game full-time and we were all taking on a lot of different tasks. We were doing everything at the same time. We didn't excel at any one specific area. We just didn't have the time to dedicate to making one specific thing awesome. That really is our fault - more so my fault. This was all on me.

'We didn't quite have a market. Space Station 13 is a very niche market. Primulous was following the same genre, and people didn't quite understand it. It was just a small market.'

Of course, there isn't really a Space Station 13 curse, rather a combination of factors that make remaking the game incredibly difficult. It doesn't help that so many attempts have so far come from inexperienced developers, but even DayZ maker Dean Hall, with all his millions, tried and failed. Disheartened, some have declared Space Station 13 the impossible to remake video game. There's just too much to it, too much going on, to recreate in 3D.

The attempts to straight-up remake Space Station 13 remakes seem to have dried up. But that hasn't stopped people from making games inspired by Space Station 13. Barotrauma, from Finnish developer Joonas 'Regalis' Rikkonen, is one of those games. And this one looks like it may actually come out. Could it be the game to finally break the curse?

'Barotrauma is heavily inspired by Space Station 13 so I guess I'm in a way trying to break the curse,' Rikkonen says.

Rikkonen, whose last game was minor cult hit horror game SCP - Containment Breach, says he's using the concept of Space Station 13 as the basis of Barotrauma to make a more user-friendly and fast-paced version of the game. 'I guess it could be called a casualised version of Space Space 13,' he says.

'I won't even be trying to reach the complexity of Space Station 13. So, a solid, simpler version that takes the best parts of Space Station 13 without trying to become an enormously complex simulation as deep as Space Station 13.'

Like Joonas Rikkonen, Dean Hall also reckons he's broken the Space Station 13 curse, this time with upcoming game Stationeers. And like Rikkonen, Hall's not trying to remake Space Station 13, as he did with Ion. Instead, he's simply using it as inspiration.

'It's important to acknowledge we are not making a Space Station 13 remake,' Hall stresses. 'I do think a remake will be possible through modding, but I'm personally not that interested in the round base nature of Space Station 13. I'm interested in seeing what Space Station 13 looks like when you give it persistence.

'The problem is, when I play Space Station 13 I'm left going away wishing the effort I put in didn't disappear. So when I play a round, I want my character to carry on. I hate that character disappears. That character had experiences and activities and behaviours, and I want to see how that affects people's decisions as they go on.'

For Hall, who says he's been trying to 'knock this issue out for six years of my life', the light is at the end of the tunnel. Stationeers, 'which is like my third or fourth attempt', goes into Early Access on 13th December 2017, curse permitting of course.

Is Space Station 13 the impossible remake? All the developers I spoke to for this article remain convinced it is possible, just rock hard and pretty unlikely.

'I've always said if you wanted to make a brute force remake of Space Station 13, the top down version we all love, and take that into 3D, I think that's highly possible,' Challis says. 'I think it can be done, especially with money and a team. I guess it's just a lack of interest that's prevented that from happening.'

This lack of interest taps into the inaccessibility of Space Station 13. It's something all games based upon - and even inspired by - Space Station 13 suffer from, like a hereditary disease.

'I tried to get a few people playing Space Station 13, and getting them to even install the software in the first place was a pain,' Challis laments.

'When they finally got in there, they were like, 'I have no idea what I'm doing.' By that point I'm already running around on the other side of the station doing some other things, so I can't really help them. It's that kind of game. You have to know how to play the game to play the game.'

Hall says Stationeers suffers from this issue, too.

'Stationeers is a hard sell,' Hall says. 'That's something Space Station 13 suffers from. How do you tell someone what it is? The only way you can tell someone what Space Station 13 is, is by telling them everything they can do. I have been playing Space Station 13 for years, weekly, and I still have not done everything there is to do in that game. I've never worked in research and development.'

What would it take to break the curse? Games such as Barotrauma and Stationeers, which look like they will in fact come out, are not Space Station 13 remakes, and so the curse, while dented by their success, remains undefeated.

But Space Station 13, warts and all, still causes developers to dare to dream about what a proper remake could look like. 'There's a certain draw to it,' Salazar says.

'There's just so much to draw inspiration from, whether you're interested in atmospherics or medicine or security or whatever, there's something there to draw you in.'

Salazar has given up on his dream of remaking Space Station 13 ('I'm going to let someone else carry that torch'), but he eloquently explains why developers continue to want to try:

'The depth appealed to me. Personally I like learning. I like trying stuff out. The unknown is something I like to try and overcome. That along with how much was happening and all of the cool stories that were coming out of every round, that feedback loop was what kept me going. Over time I just learned it. Even today I fumble over the controls. I struggle to lock a locker.

'It's definitely an inaccessible game with a very, very steep learning curve. But that's also what draws us to want to remake this. We know there are better platforms out there and we can make it more accessible and we can help people get over that learning curve with tutorials and better visuals and things like that.'

Perhaps that's why Challis remains determined to see Centration through to the bitter end.

'Overall, the entire dev cycle so far has cost in excess of about £20,000,' he admits. 'I've been trying to make Centration a thing since 2006. I'll spend my life doing it if I have to. I don't mind.'

Fans hope one day someone somewhere will succeed and break the curse of Space Station 13. Until then, well, you can always play the original. If you dare.